This is a guest post from one of our new Bright Workers, Jessica. Want to join her? Head over to Bright Works now!

If it wasn’t for Twitter I wouldn’t have discovered Bright One. In my follow-happy early days as a novice tweeter, I scoured Twitter for any organisation that consolidated my two main interests; charities, and PR. And Bright One appeared.

I read the description of Bright One as a ‘volunteer-run communications agency for social ventures’ without really taking it in (more fool me). It wasn’t until recently that the ‘volunteer-bit’ really sunk in. I spend 50% of my working day volunteering for a homeless charity, so I know the importance of a voluntary workforce, especially for start-ups and businesses that need low overheads.

Volunteering has given me a mass of experience and boosted my CV in so many ways, and most importantly has given me a sense of purpose and a feeling that I have really made a difference. I’ve volunteered with quite a few different charities over the last few years, so the idea of volunteering with an organisation that can put me in touch with even more causes in an easy and accessible way seemed ideal.

The Bright Works app is perfect for me. I volunteer in the mornings, and work as a Receptionist in the afternoons, which is generally very quiet apart from the odd visitor and phone enquiry. It means that I can spend time online exploring other interests (don’t tell my boss…) and trawling Facebook for hours on end is hardly the most fulfilling of pursuits.

So as long as the project isn’t too extensive and I can pick it up/put it down at will then I can do it!

I’m looking forward to the Bright Works app adding the same sense of purpose to my afternoons that I already get from my voluntary work in the mornings. I’m also looking for more experience so I can one day get my dream job of working in PR/Marketing for charities, so Bright One ticks another box there.

Join Jessica and our other Bright Workers in completing small tasks for charities – whenever you can and wherever you are. Head over to Bright Works and sign up now!

Everyone keeps going on about the gloomy economic climate and inevitable double dip… and while we leave such judgments and forecasts to the professionals, where does this leave charities and how can Bright One help?

In order to cement their place in the ‘marketplace’, one of the most important things a charity can do is to ensure their proposition is bang on target. Bright One can help clients achieve this focus and ensure it is concisely and clearly communicated.

Macmillan Cancer Support is one such charity that recently felt the need to address its public image and counter the common misconception that the charity just provides palliative / end of life care to terminally ill patients. While Macmillan nurses are a key part of the charity’s service, Macmillan wanted to draw attention to its entire suite of services.

The charity’s new integrated brand campaign Every Step of the Way centres around a TV advertisement, which you may have seen, along with print, digital and radio too (keep your eye out on the underground). Targeted at a broader audience than Macmillan has previously targeted, it encourages the public as a whole to reassess the charity’s role. Macmillan’s suite of services is spelled out in every step of the advertisement, from the nurses and therapists helping you through treatment, to the advisers telling you which benefits you’re entitled to and the community supporting you online. An effective twist is that the filming focuses on the feet – reinforcing the message that Macmillan supports you every ‘step’ of the way.

The response to the TV advertisement has been varied to say the least. While some have condemned it for lack of emotion (an impression given by the lack of eye contact), others have praised it for accurately portraying, without ostentation, the situations that one faces when affected by cancer: ‘flashy it isn’t – but it shouldn’t be’.

It is a far cry from Macmillan’s previous campaign, Good Day, but the creative brief was wholly different… Does that mean it is more effective or less so? Please post your comments below.

The piece is written by Hayley Chow, whose Twitter bio describes her as being into “PR, volunteering, sarcasm and Yorkshire.” Hayley is a fantastic Bright One volunteer (no sarcasm from our end there) and you can find out what she gets up to while volunteering with us by reading her case study on Behind the Spin.

Below are a few snippets from the article, but if you want to find out more about volunteering with us then get in touch!

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I applied to volunteer for Bright One after a friend had just started volunteering. All I kept hearing was “Bright One is great”, “Bright One is unique” and “You should so join”. And so I did. I have now been volunteering for 7 months, even though it hasn’t been that long, I feel as though I have learnt so much from the experience so far, not only have I helped out on a few projects, Bright One has opened many doors for me too in terms of career.

I graduated last year in English, and must admit that when I applied to Bright One, I did not have much (if any) PR or marketing experience. I just thought Bright One was original and something I haven’t come across before, but that is one of the many great things about an enterprise like this; I’ve been able to gain so much invaluable experience. I never thought about PR as a career, mainly due to the fact that I didn’t realise there was a PR industry but after working on a few projects, I realised that PR is a mixture of all the things I have always had an interest in.

Bright One is something I definitely want to be involved in for many years to come, the work they do is so vast and brilliant.

A team of Bright One volunteers began working with Centrepoint in August. The volunteers introduced the campaign to journalists and bloggers in the lead up to Christmas, and ‘More Than A Gift’ was written about in a wide variety of media, from London magazines to beauty bloggers. The team also helped coordinate a radio campaign that reached 32 million listeners and a partnership with Someone Once Told Me that showcased people touched by Centrepoint.

Overall, the campaign was a great success. Donations increased 53% up on last year and were 23% above target. Best of all, donations improved the lives of some of the most vulnerable, marginalised young people in our society, helping them to turn their lives around.

This is a guest post by Ken Punter, Digital Media and Publications Manager, World Vision UK.

World Vision launched its first national Week for Children on 8th June with an urgent appeal for 5,000 new child sponsors. Five is very much the theme of our campaign, with over 5,000 children in need of sponsorship in five sub-Sahara African countries that have amongst the highest child mortality rates in the world. This is largely due to the five main killers of under-fives: malaria, HIV and AIDS, pneumonia, measles and diarrhoea.

We are aiming to raise awareness of the nine million children who will die from preventable illnesses this year. 99% of these avoidable deaths will occur in the developing world, so we are urging members of the public to give just a little to make a huge difference to the lives of children and their communities.

A large part of the initiative was to increase awareness of the campaign. In additional to our outreach to national and regional print and broadcast media, we used a number of digital channels to communicate our message.

People would be communicating to their friends and peers as potential sponsors, whether through word of mouth, blogs or Facebook, who may then pass on the information to other potential sponsors. In addition to the Facebook fan page that has videos and images, we also created a YouTube and Flickr channel to increase visibility on arguably two of the most popular sites in the world. These sites also make it easier for readers to share the information and provide an interface many are perhaps more familiar with.

Twitter and Facebook allowed us to increase our interaction with supporters. Most importantly, it allowed our messages to be spread more effectively. Through these channels, we are also able to acknowledge and thank those who helped spread the message.

Blogger outreach is seen by many to be a fundamental tactic when creating any digital campaign and we took a relatively conservative approach even though we felt that our information could be relevant to many blogs. Initially we identified several blogs who we felt were a good balance between influence and relevance to our campaign.

Throughout we asked the questions: have they written about World Vision in the past? How likely were they to write about this campaign? This allowed us to concentrate and build relationships with a small number of bloggers. We continued with this organic approach to blog relations through the Week for Children, only approaching those bloggers who reached out to us via Twitter or Facebook.

When looking at any type of communications campaign, we always look at how digital tactics fit in with offline tactics and “real world” activities – we believe that they should always work together and not in silo. To this end, every piece of content created is related or repurposed for use online, via the offline media or in the “real world” with each tactic driving traffic or interest to the other.

For instance, we partnered with Channel 5 for a series of reports on the five killers of children under five in Zambia and Mozambique, to be broadcast during the 5 o’clock news slot throughout the Week for Children. Channel 5’s news correspondent, Jonathan Samuels, met with mothers who have lost children and looked at how simple interventions are saving lives and transforming communities. This was communicated to both our Facebook Fans and Twitter followers, who then spread the message to their friends.

Social media tactics can go some way to helping improve the reach of a campaign. Facebook Fan Pages, blogger relations and Twitter can help you build a relationship directly with supporters and key opinion leaders. However, only by combining the digital tactics with traditional communications tactics could we optimise our campaign.

To participate in World Vision’s Week for Children and become one of the 5,000 Britons to sponsor a child please visit www.worldvision.org.uk or call 0800 501010.