The insiders’ guide to social media for charities by Rob Newsome
charitycomms.org.uk
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The insiders' guide to social media for charities
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Welcome Let’s start with an assumption; an assumption that you know what social media is. What you might not know is how to best use it and how it can help your organisation achieve its goals. In the UK over 37 million people have a Facebook account, over 15 million have Twitter and nearly eight million are on LinkedIn. But despite the numbers, social media is still a relatively new communication tool: Facebook isn’t even a teenager yet, and Twitter has yet to reach double figures in terms of lifespan. Finding how it works best as a medium is still a question of trial and error, of testing, revising and testing again. At CharityComms, we believe in charities innovating and experimenting to find the most effective way to communicate with their audiences. But we also believe in sharing success. So we’ve talked to the comms practitioners at the forefront of social media – the ones who have invested time, energy and creativity to find out what works and what doesn’t, and who are actually delivering successful social communications for their charities. We’ve mined them for advice that we’ve included as ‘top tips’ and mini case studies throughout this report. Social media managers from charities as diverse as Sightsavers, Sue Ryder, Dogs Trust and the RNLI have generously shared their experience – you can find the full list of participants on page 33. Social media, used strategically, can help you engage with existing supporters, attract new ones, raise awareness and fundraise. But there are plenty of people who are
afraid or unsure of social media; often those higher up in organisations. This uncertainty tends to come from a lack of understanding of how it all works, and a fear of the potentially public consequences of failure, plus the desire for a definitive set of principles to guarantee success. Sadly, there isn’t a one size fits all solution and there are very few hard and fast rules, but this is what makes it such an exciting avenue to be explored. The aim of this guide is to help you make the most of a massive, sometimes daunting area that’s full of possibility. Our previous guide came out at the end of 2011 and plenty has changed – if you can believe it, selfies weren’t even a thing back then. Social media is constantly evolving, and our plan is to update this guide on a more regular basis to cover changes and upcoming channels. This is less of a ‘how to’ and more of a ‘here’s what’s out there’ – you can find links to other resources at the end of this guide if you’re starting from scratch (see page 33). We hope our guide, and the experience of our contributors, gets you thinking about how you can make better use of social media and inspire you to take some chances and try things out. Rob Newsome, digital and social media assistant, MSF UK Vicky Browning, director, CharityComms
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The insiders' guide to social media for charities
Contents 4
One: Strategy, audiences and content
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Four: How to make the most of social media
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Two: Channels
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Campaigns and lobbying
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25
Raising money
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26
Finding influencers
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Google+
Converting online conversations into offline action
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YouTube
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Integrating social media with your other communications
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Showing your expertise
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Promoting your social media feeds
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Tumblr
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Making the case for social media to senior management
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Vine
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Snapchat
Using social media to engage young people
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Viral campaigns
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New and upcoming channels
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Crisis
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Three: Tools
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What’s next?
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Five: References and acknowledgements
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The insiders' guide to social media for charities
One: Strategy, audiences and content Before you take the leap into social media and sign up to every channel going, stop and spend some time thinking about what you actually want to achieve.
Social media can help achieve your organisational goals The best starting point for deciding which channels to use is to look at your organisational goals and decide how using social media can help you achieve them. Proving social media has assisted in achieving your goals will help demonstrate the need for investment in the future.
Who are your audiences? Think about your current and potential audiences. Establish profiles of these groups – what are they interested in? What do they need or want from your charity?
TOP TIPS
Engaging audiences on social media Know your audience. Audit your content, start some deep social listening and produce audience personas based on your findings. Test your content. Target your content towards specific sections of your audience. If it fails to perform, try again. Monitor and measure your engagement. Keep up your social listening, and measure the quality of conversations you’ve sparked on your channels. Match them with conversations your potential audience has about your key issues elsewhere on social. Chris Hosker, social media and community manager, The Children’s Society
How do your existing audiences use social media? To get an understanding of where your potential audiences are, survey your existing ones. Ask your volunteers, staff, donors and even board members about their social media use. This will give you a good idea of which channels to target if you want more of the same, or could highlight gaps where completely new audiences may exist.
Listen to what people are saying. Even if as an organisation you don’t use social media, your supporters – or people with even a vague interest – will, and will be talking about you. When we set up our @SueRyderCharity Instagram account, we discovered over 1,000 photos tagged with #SueRyder that would otherwise have gone unnoticed and unacknowledged. It may be that listening requires you to act – change tack or stick to your guns. But whatever you decide to do after listening to people, state your opinions with conviction and make sure you address concerns or praise accordingly. It’s this two-way conversation that makes social media such a powerful tool. Joe Freeman, social media manager, Sue Ryder
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The insiders' guide to social media for charities
What are your competitors doing? Check out your competitors and similar sized organisations. See which channels they are on. What type of content are they sharing? How often are they posting? What do you like about what they do and what do you dislike? You’ll find links throughout this guide to examples of how different charities are using different channels.
What resources do you have? You can easily spend all day on social media, and unless you work in a larger charity and it’s your job, you’ve probably got other things to do. It’s all well and good to say you’re going to tweet three to five times per day, but factor in the time you’ll also spend replying to people, for example.
Get the whole organisation to think social If you can persuade everyone in your organisation to start seeing the benefits of social media you’ve got a rich source of potential content. Colleagues going out to meet volunteers could come back with pictures and quotes which could make a great Facebook post, for example.
TOP TIPS
Resourcing your social media activity You should match resource with ambition. There is so much scope for social and if you have enthusiastic staff in place then the sky’s the limit, but beware of trying to achieve too much too fast. Try turning experiments into projects with schedules and deadlines. It’s a buzzkiller but you might actually do it properly! Athar Abidi, social media manager, British Heart Foundation
Encouraging staff to get involved I try to encourage every member of staff to get involved. For large scale campaigns or fundraising actions, I’ll usually prepare internal comms and suggest supportive content that they can send. I’ll also scout out staff members who are particularly enthusiastic about social, and co-opt them as social media advocates for their team. This way, I can get social onto the agenda in other teams, where the social team might not have had influence before. Chris Hosker, social media and community manager, The Children’s Society
Engaging audiences on social media Harness the power of hyperlocal – if you have branches in various communities, from Shetland to the Scilly Isles, empower and embed your volunteers to run your social media accounts in those communities as they will be able to have a much more meaningful and authentic relationship with your supporters. Emily Pykett, former social media manager, RNLI
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The insiders' guide to social media for charities
Types of content Remember you’re competing for attention. Ensure what you’re sharing is interesting and relevant to your audience. Don’t just post for the sake of it. Decide on the tone of voice you’re planning on using – this may vary for different channels but needs to be consistent with your overall brand. Perfect pitch, CharityComms’ guide to creating a consistent tone of voice may help here. Posts with images and videos tend to perform far better than those without. It’s predicted that by 2017 over 60% of all internet traffic will be video, which is why Facebook and Twitter are now providing native video offerings of their own.
TOP TIPS
Engaging audiences on social media • Create compelling content – ideally, with personal relevance – to capture attention in the cluttered social environment and entice your audience to interact. • Think visually – use strong imagery and multimedia to engage. • Have a clear content calendar and plan out messaging in advance. • Be reactive to external moments, stay on the pulse and be relevant. • Be human, be open, be honest – get your followers talking and talk back. • Don’t be afraid to experiment. Have fun, try new approaches and content types at different times, and then use your analytics to see what worked. • Remember to think about the direct benefit to your audience – if you’re asking them to share content, what’s the value in their communication with their own followers? • Keep it simple and be clear on each post’s objective. Alicia Robinson, digital communications lead, WaterAid Use images whenever possible! We would never (or maybe very rarely) put up a Facebook post without an image or video in it, and we are trying to include them more often on Twitter too. Keep messages simple so that you can catch someone’s attention quickly, and make it really clear what you want them to do once they’ve read your message. Katie Miall, digital marketing and social media manager, Alzheimer’s Society
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The insiders' guide to social media for charities
Calls to action What do you want users to do when they see your content? If you want them to donate, register for an event or sign a petition, let them know. The most successful content will have a clear call to action.
Measurement This of course depends on your goals. If your goal is to increase your media coverage and you’ve used Twitter to build relationships with journalists that’s great. If you want to establish partnerships with businesses and you’ve done that using LinkedIn, again, great. Try not to get too bogged down in how many likes/followers/ retweets you have, unless you are running an awareness campaign. You can get more meaningful stats using Google Analytics: you’ll see some basic stats in the Google Analytics Acquisition section under the Social tab. Set up goals and conversions to properly measure your social media calls to action.
TOP TIPS
Engaging audiences on social media Have clear asks. We get a much bigger response when we’re really clear about what we want people to do – read, share, comment, forward – so spell it out. We’re always looking for new ways for our audiences to get involved rather than just passively absorbing content, but the feedback loop is important - you have to show people what you’re doing with their contributions so they know it’s valuable and not just an empty action. Kate McCoy, social media manager, Sightsavers
Measuring success We use a range of measurement tools. We have a very sophisticated monthly scorecard that aligns with AMEC measuring that tells us how output influences outcomes in terms of our supporter journey, from awareness to taking actions such as liking, sharing, donating, nominating, signing-up or watching our videos. We set KPIS for reach/sales etc before each marketing campaign and benchmark success against those. We analyse the top two performing posts on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in weekly and monthly metrics reports. We keep an eye on how things are going day by day and are quickly alerted when we reach milestones in follower numbers or reach. Emily Pykett, former social media manager, RNLI
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The insiders' guide to social media for charities
Adapt Chances are after you’ve tried posting different types of content on different channels you’ll come to find what does and doesn’t work. This will allow you to adapt and adjust your social media strategy accordingly.
What is success? What does success mean to you? How many likes/followers you have? Probably not. Proving a return on investment for social media is difficult. How much do you judge someone visiting your site and signing up to your newsletter to be worth for example? Again, using Google Analytics you can use conversions and put a monetary value on the actions your supporters are taking. How do you measure social media success?
TOP TIPS
Engaging audiences on social media Learn from what works – we closely monitor post success and try to replicate those that get the best responses. And experiment – the frequency of posting on social means that there’s little cost to trying and failing so if you try a new tone or tactic and it doesn’t work you just move on to something else. Kate McCoy, social media manager, Sightsavers
CASE STUDY
Great work we’ve done: Dogs Trust Our ‘Wag’vent Calendar campaign celebrated success stories provided by our followers. This worked because our followers enjoy seeing dogs in their new homes: they love a happy ending. It also gave them a chance to get involved as they could upload their own stories via our website – in a hope to be included in the campaign. Occasionally behind a window we would have a donation appeal, or a link to our Amazon Wish lists – which did very well. Abbie Smith, digital marketing officer, Dogs Trust
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The insiders' guide to social media for charities
Out-of-hours Social media doesn’t stick to 9-5. People are constantly checking their phones: this could be on their commute, last thing at night or first thing in the morning.
TOP TIPS
Resourcing your social media activity
This means you need to be prepared to take advantage of opportunities that arise outside of office hours. Here’s how Mind has it covered.
Around one third of our best performing posts are published out of hours, so we are turning our attention to how we resource our channels at evenings and weekends, when most of our target audiences are online.
Guidelines for staff
Emily Pykett, former social media manager, RNLI
This is an issue which seems to divide many people. Do you want a set of guidelines telling your staff how to behave on their own social media profiles? Or, do you trust them to behave in an appropriate manner? Here is the BBC’s recent social media guidance for news group staff and this blog lists examples of over 300 social media policies.
Encouraging staff to get involved We’ve seen staff using their own social media channels – Twitter especially – to good use in encouraging event participants, thanking them and strengthening our relationships. A lot of our shop staff are also active on social media. Having so many people with their own accounts can become difficult to manage. However personal contact with as many of them as possible works well. This way you can explain your objectives and also offer encouragement and support. This personal, one-to-one contact also helps when you need to offer constructive criticism or ask people to remove unauthorised accounts – which does happen from time to time. Joe Freeman, social media manager, Sue Ryder
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Two: Channels Bebo and MySpace were given a mention in our previous guide, sadly they don’t make the cut this time.
Notifications: Your new followers, your tweets that have been retweeted, favourited, replied to and mentions.
Here are some channels you will have heard of and a couple of others to think about.
Mentions: See who has tweeted using your @ name. If you tweet @CharityComms you’ve just mentioned CharityComms and we’ll see your tweet in our notifications and our mentions.
TWITTER What do you need to know? – 140 character updates shared with your followers and potentially their followers. – There are around 15 million active users in the UK. – 76% of users connect with mobile devices. – Twitter has 236 million active users worldwide. – 500 million tweets are sent every day, with 80% coming from mobiles. Best for: Sharing short updates and engaging with key influencers. Less good for: Sharing in-depth policy insights.
Terminology Profile: Your tweets and retweets will appear here for everyone to see. Timeline: Your feed: here you will see the tweets of people you follow and their retweets. Retweet: Sharing a tweet with your followers. Following: The accounts you follow. Their tweets appear on your timeline. Followers: The accounts that follow you. Your tweets appear in their timeline.
Direct messages: Private messages between accounts that follow each other. Hashtags: A way of categorising tweets. For example, if CharityComms has an event on digital media we could start a #CCDigital hashtag. This means tweets including this hashtag can all be searched for together. Anyone who clicks the hashtag will see all other tweets marked with it included. Reply: Send an @ message in response to someone’s tweet. Favourite: This is used in different ways by different people, but in general it means someone likes your tweet, or is acknowledging that they’ve seen it. Lists: You can divide your followers into lists, making it easier to keep up with different sets of people. For example you could have a list of celebrity supporters and another of your board members. Discovery: Content Twitter thinks you might be interested in.
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Now what?
Managing your account day-to-day
Your page is set up, you’re following some of the people/ organisations you know and like and you’ve picked up some followers of your own. What can you do next?
One of the best ways to manage your Twitter account is to sign up for a dashboard tool such as Hootsuite or Tweetdeck. In one screen you can see your notifications, messages, and search results for topics you’re interested in. You can also schedule tweets to be sent out automatically. There’s more about those in the Tools section of the guide.
1 Getting to know you Twitter’s a great medium to show off your brand. It provides a perfect opportunity to show that there are real people working behind the scenes and that you’re not just a logo. 2 Engage Talk to people. Join in conversations, be interesting and helpful. Ask questions, respond to questions. Introduce people. Share others’ content that you think will be interesting to your audience too. 3 Share your news and success stories If someone’s following you it’s because they’re interested in your work. Let them know what you’re up to. 4 Raise awareness Not everything you tweet is going to ‘go viral’ but by posting relevant and interesting content you’re increasing your chances of being retweeted. RTs from influential people can help you reach new audiences. 5 Listen Find out what people are saying about your organisation, your causes and your campaigns.
• Keep an eye on your Mentions tab to see new interactions and followers. Reply, retweet and favourite as appropriate. • Check your timeline. Look at what the people you follow are talking about. Join conversations if you’ve got something interesting to add. • Monitor. Look at hashtags/keywords relevant to your organisation. For example, CharityComms has a saved search on Tweetdeck for people using the #comms hashtag. • Use Twitter Analytics. Notice which types of tweets work best, and at what time.
Paying for it Twitter, like most of the established social media channels, is coming up with ways to make money from its product. On your homepage click the small image of your profile and you will see Twitter Ads. Here you have the following options to run an advert to increase the following: • Followers • Website clicks or conversions • Tweet engagements • App installs or engagements • Leads on Twitter
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You can then target by: • Location • Gender • Languages • Interests • Keywords – target searches or users who tweet using certain words • Followers – target users who follow certain accounts. For example, you could enter the name of a similar charity to target their followers. You then set a budget for the campaign and you’ll be charged for the engagement you’ve decided on. Read how Dignity in Dying used a promoted tweet campaign to get over 18,000 retweets.
TOP TIPS
Encouraging staff to get involved We’re keen to connect our 20 centres nationwide with local audiences via individual Twitter feeds. Most centres have one staff member managing their feed. They use Twitter to promote events such as microchipping and Open Days. Management-wise, we have access to all feeds but only provide advice and assistance when necessary. We are conscious not to have inactive/sparse Twitter feeds, and so will follow this up at a local level if needs be. We remind members of staff that although they are tweeting for their own centre, they need to uphold the Dogs Trust brand and engage with the whole audience nationwide. Abbie Smith, digital marketing officer, Dogs Trust
A couple of charities worth checking out on Twitter: Unicef WWF UK Read how quickly things can spread on Twitter – Learnings from a Twitter storm.
CASE STUDY
Great work we’ve done: Age UK Our #NotByMySelfie campaign was developed as a distinct social strand of our wider No One Should Have No One campaign. We took out the sadder elements of the offline campaign and allowed people to share the positive alternative on their social channels. We got a great response and showed that if you can come up with a hashtag that conveys your campaign message and make the selfie integral to that message, you can get the public to engage. We replied to everyone who uploaded a selfie to thank them and put out a secondary ask. This started a conversation that we could take wherever was appropriate, be it recruiting volunteers, eventers or a text donation. Athar Abidi, former social media manager, Age UK
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FACEBOOK What do you need to know? – As of May 2014 there were 30.3 million active users in the UK. – Half of all Facebook users have more than 200 friends. – 44% of users like content posted by their friends at least once a day. Best for: Creating communities and encouraging longer conversations. Less good for: Reaching young people – have they moved on?
Terminology Page: Your organisation’s presence on Facebook. Activity: Here you can see notifications of how people have interacted with your page. Insights: Information about your page’s performance. You can see the reach, and engagement levels of your posts. You can also compare your page’s performance to other organisations. Likes: The people who have found your page and indicated they’re interested in it by clicking ‘like’. Your posts and content will appear in their timeline.
Now what? 1 Choose your tabs: At the top of your page you can edit your about section and choose the tabs most relevant to your organisation. 2 Share content: Images and videos. Posts with images receive, on average, 50% more likes than those without. On a busy, cluttered timeline an eye-catching image will stand out. 3 Ask questions: Without a character limit Facebook is an excellent way of getting to know your audience. Ask them questions about why they support your cause, for example. 4 Advertise your events: Before you go to any event you want to see the guest list: on Facebook you can see all the confirmed attendees and there’s room for people to chat. 5 Custom tabs: You can add custom apps to your page. A good idea is to include a sign up form for your newsletter, so you can keep in touch more regularly.
Managing your account day-to-day • Check your notifications. You’ll see them for new fans, and things current fans have liked and shared. • Like and reply to comments your fans have left on your posts. • Keep an eye on the posts users have left of their own on your profile and private messages. • Like other charity pages or other companies/products you want to connect with. • Post your content or share others’ on your page. • Monitor Facebook Insights to see how your posts are performing, and notice any changes in number of likes and active users.
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Paying for it When you post on Facebook you’ll notice the option to ‘Boost Post’ next to the regular ‘Post’ button. This is one of Facebook’s ways to make money. When you post to your page’s wall only a limited number of the people who have liked your post will see it, depending on who is online at the time. You can pay to make sure it’s seen by more of your fans, and also those who haven’t liked your page yet. There are other advertising options. At the top of your page you’ll notice a ‘Build Audience’ link, click this and there’s ‘Use Adverts Manager’, with the option to ‘Create Advert’. You’ll be presented with the following options: • Send people to your website • Increase conversions on your website • Boost your posts • Promote your Page • Get installs of your app • Increase engagement in your app • Raise attendance at your event • Get people to claim your offer • Get video views
Once you’ve decided the action, you need to select who you want to take it. Facebook allows you to target your ads by: • Location • Age • Gender • Interests • Behaviours • Connections (people who already like your page and those who don’t) Then you decide how much you’re willing to spend and create your advert.
A couple of charities worth checking out on Facebook: RNLI Diabetes UK Read how Plan UK manages its global Facebook network.
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3 Post content your audience will like and share.
What do you need to know?
4 Connect: Use your personal profile to connect to people you’ve worked with, ex-colleagues, agencies you’ve worked with, business people you’d like to have involved with your charity, decision makers and influencers.
Over 15 million users in the UK in 2014. Here’s a handy infographic on the sort of people using it. LinkedIn is the social network for professionals. If you’re looking to make contacts with the business world or want your content seen by professionals with an interest in your organisation or your area of expertise it’s the place to be. Best for: Making connections in the private sector. Less good for: Sharing your fun, new campaign.
Terminology Profile: This is your personal page. You’ll need one to manage your company page. Connections: The people you have personally connected with, colleagues etc. Groups: You can create and join groups to take part in discussions and share ideas. Pulse: A timeline of content tailored to your profession. Mail: Private messages between users. Company page: Your organisation’s page, which people choose to follow.
Now what? 1 Set up your personal profile so you can start on your charity’s Company Page. 2 Fill out your Company Page with as much relevant information as you can. This is where you show what your organisation is all about.
5 Start a group: For example, CharityComms has a group for our Heads of Digital leads, our PR Network, our Creatives group and our Brand Breakfast. It’s an ideal way to get people who work in the same area from different organisations talking and sharing ideas and experiences. 6 Look for volunteers with LinkedIn for Volunteers.
Managing your account • Check your notifications. You’ll see who has liked your own posts, posts on your company page and who has viewed your personal profile. • Add people who have asked to connect with you; connect with others. • Written a blog? Share it on LinkedIn publisher. • Post to your Company Page. • Check the analytics tab to see how your posts are performing.
Paying for it • Premium Display Ads – These are adverts which appear on the right hand side of a user’s LinkedIn page. • Sponsored InMail – These are messages sent directly to the mail inbox of your chosen targets. • Sponsored Updates – Sponsor your content to appear in target users’ timelines.
A couple of charities worth checking out on LinkedIn: Oxfam The Prince’s Trust
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GOOGLE+ What do you need to know? – Over one billion registered users: active users are said to be around 300 million. Best for: Dividing influencers and sharing specific content with them easily. Less good for: Your influencers might not be using it… Google+ hasn’t quite taken off in the way it was expected to when it was launched in 2011. That doesn’t mean it can’t be a useful tool though. It’s widely reported that using Google Plus can have a positive impact on your search engine rankings, and there of course a committed core of users on the platform for you to connect with. Posting to your page is quick and easy, you can create circles to differentiate types of people and you can select which circles see which content. There’s also a Communities section which you can use to find people with similar interests. One feature that you may find handy is Google Hangouts. These are video chats that you can have with numerous people all joining in.
A charity worth checking out on Google+: Technology Trust
CASE STUDY
Great work we’ve done: Sightsavers To launch our A Million Miracles fundraising campaign we broadcast a live cataract operation via Google+ Hangouts. In the run up to the operation we’d been introducing the characters – surgeons, the patient, their family, Sightsavers staff – on Twitter, Facebook, blog posts and videos to build a relationship and an audience for the live broadcasts. We had an amazing group of bloggers sharing their stories and tweeting for us too. The technology failed on the second live broadcast when the patient’s bandages came off, but we were able to give updates via Twitter and drive people to the website to see the video later. We made a two minute video of the whole campaign which lived on beyond the live broadcasts and reached a much wider audience. It worked because the audience had such a strong connection with the individual who was having his sight restored having seen how difficult his life was when he was blind. Kate McCoy, social media manager, Sightsavers
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YOUTUBE What do you need to know? – The world’s second largest search engine. – Over a billion people use YouTube with over four billion videos being viewed daily. – Over 300 hours of video uploaded every minute. Best for: Short, hard-hitting or funny videos. Less good for: Your feature length documentary. YouTube is the video sharing network now owned by Google. This is where you can easily upload and share your video content. You can use embed links to host the videos on your own or others’ websites. You will create your own channel where all your videos will be stored. This can also be shared on your Google+ page. YouTube has a non-profit offer which allows charities to include donate buttons and also tailored call to action messages which appear over your videos. Many charities are still getting to grips with how best to use YouTube. Thinking of it as a search engine is one way to improve your results. Another important side to YouTube has been the rise of vloggers (video bloggers). Mind has recently taken on a vlogger, Zoella, as its first digital ambassador.
A couple of charities worth checking out on YouTube: Save The Children Scope
CASE STUDIES
Great work we’ve done: RNLI Often, the best results aren’t planned and are a massive team effort: a video of a lifeguard rescuing a six-year-old boy from a rip current went viral simply because it was incredible footage. You could see the lifeguard’s arms paddling on the bodyboard, hear the poor boy screaming, the lifeguard was shouting “I’m coming to get you buddy” – it was pure human drama, sent shivers down your spine. It was picked up by Sky and all the major news channels so views went through the roof. It happened to coincide with a major safety campign – Respect The Water – so we were able to promote lots of safety messages off the back of that. And it was all thanks to the quick thinking lifeguards who got parental consent and uploaded the footage in super quick time. Emily Pykett, former social media manager, RNLI
Great work I admire: #BHF’s HardAndFast I always consider the BHF’s #HardAndFast campaign featuring Vinnie Jones demonstrating hands-only CPR as a brilliant example of a digital campaign that also encompassed work from all areas across the charity. While it was a serious message the content was fun, actually helped to save people’s lives and generated a huge amount of conversation online. I think this example should be of particular note because of the work involved across the organisation to make it work as well as possible. As an example of charity communication work, it’s up there with the best. Joe Freeman, social media manager, Sue Ryder
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What do you need to know?
What do you need to know?
– Over 300 million active users, over 100 million of those joined in the last year. – Bought by Facebook in 2012 for $1 billion. – On average 70 million photos are uploaded every day.
– Over 70% of its users are female. – Total users estimated to be 70 million.
Best for: Sharing high quality images with a highly engaged audience. Less good for: Driving traffic to your website. Instagram is a photo and short video sharing site. You can set up your charity’s own Instagram page and share photos, which you can edit with filters and various other image enhancing tools. Using appropriate hashtags you will attract new followers, likes and comments. Posting the images to Facebook is easy although Twitter makes it somewhat harder, the site is even currently trying to persuade celebrities to stop posting Instagram links entirely.
A couple of charities worth checking out on Instagram: WaterAid MSF
Best for: Driving people to your website through strong imagery. Less good for: Engaging with men. Another image based social network, Pinterest revolves around users’ Boards. On their Boards they share their own pins (an image with a description/link attached) and repin others’ pins. It’s a way of bookmarking and collecting images which represent your interests. A particularly visual charity could create a series of boards sharing the different kind of work it is involved in. How can charities use Pinterest?
A couple of charities worth checking out on Pinterest: Dogs Trust NSPCC
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TUMBLR
What do you need to know?
What do you need to know?
– Yahoo bought Tumblr for $1.1 billion in 2013. – It has over 400 million users, with over 200 million blogs.
– The 25th most popular website on the Internet. – It has 174 million monthly visitors.
Best for: Posting content that might not fit on your website.
Best for: Conversation: replies are generally aimed at one person.
Less good for: Engaging with people no longer in their teens. Tumblr is a micro-blogging channel which you can customise to suit your charity’s brand. It concentrates on shorter, shareable content, making it easy for people to share your content and for you to share your audience’s content. It’s ideal if you’re encouraging young people to get involved with your cause. Tumblr can work well if you’re running a campaign with a slightly different tone or type of content than you’d normally post to your website.
A couple of charities worth checking out on Tumblr: Greenpeace Oxfam GB
Less good for: Broadcasting your work. Referred to as ‘the front page of the internet’, reddit is essentially a global bulletin board where users up vote or down vote content they like or dislike. How can charities use reddit to spread their message?
A couple of charities worth checking out on Reddit: Save The Children Scope
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VINE
SNAPCHAT
What do you need to know?
What do you need to know?
– 40 million users. – Over 1 billion loops daily.
– Total Snapchat users: 60 million. – Over 400 million snaps sent daily. – Just over 70% of its users are under 25.
Best for: Quick, creative videos. Less good for: Professional quality videos. A video app owned by Twitter, playing videos of no more than six seconds on a continuous loop. They can be easily shared on Twitter or embedded on to a web page. The fact they can be filmed directly from a phone makes them incredibly easy to make. They can be used to capture a spur of the moment thing – like an animal doing something cute! Or, perhaps something more useful, like a really quick and simple ‘thank you’ message for donors. Read how Dogs Trust was an early adopter of Vine.
A couple of charities worth checking out on Vine: Diabetes UK American Red Cross
Best for: Sending exclusive content. Less good for: Getting that content shared. Snapchat is a photo messaging app which allows users to take photos, record videos and add text and drawings, and send them to their contacts. The photos then disappear after 1-10 seconds depending on how long the sender has set. How charities can use Snapchat.
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WHATSAPP What do you need to know? – A social messaging service bought by Facebook for $19 billion in 2014. – It has around 700 million monthly active users. – 30 billion messages are sent on it every day. Best for: More private conversations. Less good for: Getting content shared. WhatsApp is an instant messaging tool a lot like traditional SMS, but it’s free to send and receive messages. WhatsApp is a great way to share your content with supporters whose mobile phone number you have. The fact it’s a direct message to a mobile makes it a more intimate and personal experience than many social sites. Use WhatsApp to share your blog posts, provide news and updates, and communicate with your customers and readers. Give them a reason to like and trust you. A WhatsApp group is one of the best features. For example if you’re running an event, get all the phone numbers of attendees and invite them to join the event group. You can then keep them updated with what’s happening.
New and upcoming channels PERISCOPE An app from Twitter, Periscope allows users to live-stream video from their phones.
VIBER Like WhatsApp but with the option of video calling.
BUBBLY Allows users to record and share voice messages.
WHISPER Users can share and receive messages anonymously.
ELLO Supposedly the ad free answer to Facebook. Know of another social media site worth a mention? Email admin@charitycomms.org.uk
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Three: Tools Here are a few other tools to help you get the most out of your social media.
Social media management tools HootSuite A social media management dashboard which allows you to manage Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ all in one place. Tweetdeck A management dashboard for Twitter. It allows you to see all your Twitter streams, ie notifcations, messages, hashtags all in one screen. You can also use it to schedule your tweets. Followerwonk Allows you to analyse your Twitter followers. Sprout Social A social media management system focusing on engagement, publishing and analytics. It integrates with Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn. BuzzSumo A social analytics tool that recognises popular topics of discussion. Keyhole A hashtag tracker for Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Free content tools Storify Allows you to curate your social media posts into a story. Flickr An image hosting website, with many images available for use under Creative Commons licence (ie free). Canva Design software to make images for the web. Gimp Image manipulation software. If you use a social media tool or app you think deserves to be listed here please get in touch admin@charitycomms.org.uk
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Four: How to make the most of social media CAMPAIGNS AND LOBBYING Social media campaigns Social media is an ideal platform to raise awareness about your cause. You can get your messages seen by the right people, make the case for change and – possibly most importantly – make it easy for supporters to take action. Social media is integral to online campaigning. The most successful campaigns have a very clear message aimed at a specific audience. For example, Scope’s End The Awkward campaign was aimed at a 25-30 year old, metropolitan audience. Good ideas, executed well can spread easily online as sharing the content has never been simpler. If supporters find the campaign interesting or feel it has value they can tell their own audience at the click of a button. Finding Mike was an incredibly successful campaign for Rethink Mental Illness. Keep an eye on Third Sector’s Digital Campaign of the Week for inspiration.
TOP TIPS
Engaging audiences on social media Give audiences what they need to show their support – great visual assets, inspiring statements or good news stories encourage sharing because the supporter can feel proud to be a part of what we do. Kate McCoy, social media manager, Sightsavers
CASE STUDY
Great work we’ve done: Alzheimer’s Society We ran a cross-channel campaign around the G8 summit on dementia that had a mainly social focus. We created a video that tried to raise awareness about the lack of significant developments in dementia research, and promoted this across our social media channels using promoted tweets to increase our reach. We also made use of our email data to let our supporters know about the event, and encouraged them to share the video with their own audiences. It took a lot of work to get everything in place, but it was great to run something that took advantage of a big news event in a meaningful way. Katie Miall, digital marketing and social media manager, Alzheimer’s Society
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The insiders' guide to social media for charities
Lobbying Using social media in political campaigning has hugely grown in importance for charities. For large charities, asking supporters to lobby for change is a regular and focused activity. Shelter recently used social media to encourage 10,000 people to sign their petition for more affordable housing to be built. “Social media has increased the opportunity and power of self-organising, leading to an emerging trend of grassroots, micro-level campaigning activity. This creates new challenges for campaigning charities if they are to remain relevant and influential.” Read more from Peter Gilheany on ‘Grassroots campaigning – a ‘bottom-up’ approach’.
TOP TIPS
Encouraging staff to get involved The policy team all have logins to the policy twitter account and tweet themselves from events – we’re trying to demonstrate and share their expertise so it’s essential they’re the ones contributing. It’s about trust and giving people the confidence to feel comfortable – training helps, and being there to guide people. We encourage the whole organisation to contribute information for use on the main account but it’s managed centrally. We’re looking at rolling out training for everyone to use their personal accounts for work purposes, if they’re willing to. Kate McCoy, social media manager, Sightsavers
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The insiders' guide to social media for charities
RAISING MONEY Can you raise money with social media? Ask Cancer Research UK, they raised £8 million from a campaign they didn’t start! Chances are your organisation won’t be on the receiving end of a #NoMakeUpSelfie type phenomenon. However, if you’re using social media to drive people to the right pages on your website they can easily donate to your charity online.
How to raise money online Remember, social networking sites don’t raise money – people do. And people will only become your fundraisers if they are emotionally committed to your cause. Social media offers the chance to communicate with your supporters to build up that emotional attachment. Another, very different example of how Cancer Research UK is raising money is Dryathalon – where participants are encouraged to give up alcohol for a month. In 2013 it raised over £3 million and over £5 million in 2014. Social media provided an ideal platform for people participating to share what they were doing, their fundraising achievements and their medals. Relationships are key once again. If you have built up a good relationship online with supporters who are interested in your cause, you will find them much more open to supporting you financially.
CASE STUDY
Great work we’ve done: WaterAid The social media campaign we’re most proud of is our most successful ever for To be a girl – which won Silver at the 2014 DMAs for ‘Best Use of Social Media for Customer Acquisition’. Through compelling storytelling and talking about taboo subjects – such as menstruation and open defecation – we elicited meaningful comment and high levels of interaction on social channels. We tested a range of creative executions – refreshing and optimising along the way – closely aligning paid and organic to create continuity, and took people on an integrated digital journey with multiple touch points. With #MeAsAGirl, our share-anddonate mini social campaign, we benefited from large-scale reach as celebrities and influencers shared their own content and helped us to spread our message further. It was a great cross-team effort, with everyone coming together to align channels, and deliver brave and challenging content. The result was that social not only drove huge volumes of engagement and traffic to our microsite content, but it also generated a significant amount of donations among new audiences too. Alicia Robinson, digital communications lead, WaterAid
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FINDING INFLUENCERS You can use social media to reach out to people and organisations who can make a difference to yours. Establishing connections with the most influential online personalities can build your work, extend its reach and help get your message out. Use lists to keep track of influential people who work in, or talk about, your area of work. Follow them and begin building relationships.
CONVERTING ONLINE CONVERSATIONS INTO OFFLINE ACTION Online action is important, but is far from the be all and end all of any charity’s engagement strategy. Your organisation will no doubt have offline events and campaigns. Use social media to promote them and get people talking and involved in the discussions around the event. Meet them offline and make them an integral part of your charity.
CASE STUDY
Great work I admire: @HumansofNY I really loved @HumansofNY’s project for the UN. This is a popular blogger and photographer who runs humansofnewyork.com and went with the UN on a 50 day tour of the world to gather photos, stories and to raise raise awareness of the Millennium Development Goals. It’s a great example of working with an influencer to get a message across and it’s such a natural fit with the way he usually works. It didn’t feel contrived or forced and the stories were really powerful. Such fantastic content that was a genuine pleasure to read. Kate McCoy, social media manager, Sightsavers
TOP TIPS
Measuring success Social media success for us, is engagement – leading to people taking action. From visiting their local centre to adopt a dog to ensuring their dogs are microchipped. Although having 800,000+ likes on Facebook is great, what’s important to us is how many of those are engaging with us daily – taking on our advice and rehoming our dogs. Abbie Smith, digital marketing officer, Dogs Trust
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INTEGRATING SOCIAL MEDIA WITH YOUR OTHER COMMUNICATIONS Remember, social media is just the medium through which your messages are being delivered. Having established what your charity’s aims and objectives are, you will see where social media fits in with the rest of your comms. Integration with your other communications can be as easy as planning and ensuring social media activity and communications are carefully timed to happen together. Your campaign activity will be planned so that you launch your press releases, online video, Twitter hashtag and Facebook campaign all at the same time. This will maximise your campaign’s impact across all channels. For more on integrating your comms across all channels, download CharityComms’ free best practice guide One voice.
TOP TIPS
Integrating social media with other channels It’s essential to integrate at every opportunity, and to plan integrated campaigns rather than channel specific activity. Social media should sit in the middle of the process – use other channels like email or media to get the reach to kick start something, send people to social to consume or share, then send them on to your site or action-based destination to get the rest of the story and complete the journey. Integrating channels can give engagement a boost – we’ll often email supporters to ask them to take actions on social. You can reach people directly rather than relying on them seeing your posts. Kate McCoy, social media manager, Sightsavers
CASE STUDY
Great work we’ve done: Sue Ryder At Sue Ryder, our #Not9to5 campaign – calling for expert 24/7 care for families of carers of people who are dying – allowed us to share some very personal stories that helped us generate over 1,000 petition signatures in our first few weeks of the campaign running online. While the results weren’t ground-breaking, what I am proud of is how for the first time here, this was a properly integrated campaign with marketing, digital, PR and campaigns all working together effectively to deliver a project. This was a real shift in terms of working together and had a huge impact on the overall results of the campaign. Joe Freeman, social media manager, Sue Ryder
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SHOWING YOUR EXPERTISE Your organisation being seen as the ‘experts in your field’ has obvious reputational benefits and helps you stand out from the competition. Using social media to share your expertise in the form of engaging content can only add to your reputation. Traditional ‘broadcast’ marketing doesn’t work on social media. Rather than simply telling your audience what you want them to do, you’re providing content with added value. It’s about giving audiences something meaningful which they can interact with. Creating moving, funny, informative or just entertaining content means supporters will come back to your channels of their own accord. If your charity is one of many working in a particular area, this is even more important. Make it easy and desirable for your supporters to find you.
PROMOTING YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA FEEDS Once you’ve decided to set up a particular social media channel you’ll be wanting the likes and follows to start rolling in. A good way to get existing supporters liking your channels is to ask them to via email. Include links to your social channels in your email templates too and in staff signatures. Add social buttons to your websites, at the top, or header section of websites so they appear on every page. Remember, most social media users are on numerous channels, so be sure to cross-promote. Promote your channels offline too on your print marketing, at your events and even on business cards.
TOP TIPS
Engaging audiences on social media Talk to people, and if you can, reply to everything. If you’re posting a question, or asking people’s opinion on something your charity is working on, it’s important to acknowledge what they say. Sometimes social media is seen as too much of a broadcast tool when it works best as two-way communication. Also – listen to what people are saying about you. Having searches set up on Twitter for just your charity’s name – or name as a hashtag – can often show conversations you’d otherwise have missed. Joe Freeman, social media manager, Sue Ryder
CASE STUDY
Great work I admire: National Trust and the British Legion I’m a sucker for the work The National Trust does on digital and I’ve always been an admirer of the British Legion’s work and its annual poppy appeal campaign. Both organisations are part of the fabric of English society and they have both worked out how to use social to dispel ideas of their being ‘out of touch’. Working for a charity associated with older people I am currently trying to do the same for Age UK and finding that confounding people’s expectations is a lot of fun. Athar Abidi, former social media manager, Age UK
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MAKING THE CASE FOR SOCIAL MEDIA TO SENIOR MANAGEMENT Facts and figures are the best way to get buy-in from senior management for social media. Talk about it in terms they will understand: building trust, reputation management and customer service for example. Explain social media is something your audiences expect you to be on and isn’t just a fad; your organisation cannot afford to be left behind. The bit they may want to hear even less: it’s now not just enough for them to understand social. There is an increasing expectation that CEOs should have a presence on social media themselves. This infographic about the corporate world talks about the link between CEOs with a social media presence and the trustworthiness of an organisation. Why not quote Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Group founder: “Embracing social media isn’t just a bit of fun, it’s a vital way to communicate, keep your ear to the ground and improve your business.” How to invest in social media from The Scout Association.
TOP TIPS
Measuring success I’m a strong believer that social media should be understood at all levels of an organisation so that everyone can see how important it is (and can be) – while also understanding the potential risks involved. To this end, having an executive team and board of trustees who know who your social media manager is, and understand how this role works will help digital as a whole to be better integrated across the charity, with appropriate levels of support and investment. Joe Freeman, social media manager, Sue Ryder
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USING SOCIAL MEDIA TO ENGAGE YOUNG PEOPLE Young people have grown up with social media, it’s second nature to many and they’re in the know about the latest channels. It’s your job to keep up with them. You need to go to them: they’re not going to come to you on sites they consider ‘old hat’. The importance of this can be seen from Ipsos Mori results about the 2015 general election, with a third of young people saying social media would influence their vote. This American teenager wrote his thoughts on social media sites, which gives an interesting alternative view.
VIRAL CAMPAIGNS We’d love nothing more than to present you with a ‘Here’s how to create a viral hit guide’ – sadly, that doesn’t exist. A viral campaign is one that’s been shared quickly and widely between Internet users. You will have heard of #NoMakeUpSelfie and #IceBucketChallenge. Chances are your campaign won’t ‘go viral’. Both of those mentioned above were user-led; people joined in because they were being nominated by their peers not because a charity was telling them to. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t be prepared for a viral campaign. Something your charity posts, or more likely, something a supporter creates could capture the imagination of the public and you’ll become inundated with tweets, Facebook posts and visits to your website. Having a plan in place should this happen is vital to make sure you make the most of the opportunity. Where’s our viral campaign? The Comms Insider. Read why viral campaigns like Ice Bucket challenge hurt other charities.
CASE STUDY
Great work I admire: #FightforYashika and #YourMencap The #FightForYashika campaign (a campaign by students to save their classmate from deportation) perfectly showed how to drive grassroots mobilisation from a very valuable audience – young people. And more recently, Mencap’s bottom-up success with #YourMencap (to celebrate its new five year plan, Mencap encouraged staff and volunteers to share what the organisation’s values meant to them) used the audience’s willingness to quickly get involved with a non-brand led idea. Chris Hosker, social media and community manager, The Children’s Society
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The insiders' guide to social media for charities
CRISIS One of the main reasons organisations are put off using social media is a fear of what might go wrong. With the right planning, chances are a social media ‘crisis’ isn’t going to have a long term, detrimental effect on your organisation.
contents 31 Talk to others If you’re not sure what to do, speak to people in your organisation about your response. Have a system in place for people to be available if a crisis should occur.
The very nature of most social media means that there is a potential for conflict. You’re sharing information, messages and possibly opinion with strangers, there will be people who don’t like or agree with what you’re saying, and there are those who are just out to cause trouble.
Out of hours If you’re a smaller organisation and you don’t have an out of hours policy it is fine to say “We’ll look into this, we’ll get back to you.” Perhaps put the hours your social media does operate on your profile.
What is a crisis?
Keep everyone in the loop Let the rest of the organisation know what’s happened in case they get phone calls or emails about it.
Someone disagreeing with you on Twitter isn’t a crisis. Someone posting that they’ve had a bad experience with your organisation on Facebook isn’t a crisis. A crisis is something that negatively impacts your brand in the long run. With this in mind, how you react to that tweet or that post is important. Is it a complaint or feedback? Be sure not to overreact. Take a minute to reread what’s been said. Is someone actually criticising your organisation or offering a helpful opinion? Either way, acknowledge them and let them know what you’ll do as a result. Take it offline The best way to avoid a prolonged issue with a disgruntled social media user is to take it offline. Ask for an email address, and then see if you can give them a call. Speaking in person rather than over a series of 140 character messages is definitely going to work better for both of you. Heat of the moment However wrong, rude or insulting someone has been, take a few minutes to collect yourself before you respond.
Don’t feed the troll A troll is someone who spends their time upsetting people on the internet. They often deliberarely try and cause arguments and attempt to provoke reactions. If it becomes clear you are dealing with someone who is purely out to try and get a reaction from you, don’t be tempted to respond and give them what they want. Post things you’d be happy with your boss and your mum seeing A rule we’ve read many times, and should keep you out of too much bother! For more advice on handling a social media crisis, download CharityComms’ best practice guide to crisis communications.
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The insiders' guide to social media for charities
WHAT’S NEXT? The continued rise of user generated content. As supporters engage more with charities online and apps make it increasingly easy for users to make content, it is inevitable that the more creative charity supporters will create their own. Interesting examples include Macmillan Cancer Support’s The Source, where Macmillan’s online community shares tips on how to talk to a friend, colleague or family member with cancer, and Mind’s Mental Health Selfies slot on YouTube featuring real people’s experiences of trying to understand and cope with issues around mental health. Charities will need to become increasingly flexible and willing to ‘let go’ of their brands to ensure they can make the most of this. User generated content adds value and credibility to a charity as people can see just how passionate and engaged their peers are.
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Five: References and acknowledgements Further reading
About Rob Newsome
JustGiving – Guide to fundraising on social media
Rob is now digital and social media assistant at Médecins Sans Frontières, but when he wrote this guide he was CharityComms’ digital content editor, having joined in June 2012 as communications officer. Before this, Rob worked as a PR and comms officer for a charity in Delhi after completing his MA in Multimedia Broadcast Journalism.
Sounddelivery – Getting started with social media Social Misfits Media – Something to tweet about
Acknowledgements A big thank you to all the kind folk who gave us the benefit of their wisdom and experience. Kate McCoy – @K8McCoy Katie Miall – @katiemiall Joe Freeman – @JosephFreeman Chris Hosker – @Chris_Hosker Alicia Robinson – @lisha_rob Athar Abidi Emily Pykett – @TotallyDorset Abbie Smith
@robnewsome_ LinkedIn: Rob Newsome
About CharityComms CharityComms (charitycomms.org.uk) is the professional membership body for charity communicators. We believe that effective and inspiring communications should be at the heart of every charity’s work for a better world. We’re here to improve the standard of communications and champion its role in the sector. CharityComms membership gives you access to great content, examples of best practice, free seminars and exclusive networking events and a host of opportunities for professional development. Find out more at charitycomms.org.uk/membership @charitycomms
Designed by Bowley Design First published September 2015