The buzzword is digital and the result can be dynamite; the question is how do you use the former to generate the latter? The answer is: using traditional customer-oriented marketing in a new-fashioned way!

In line with various white papers on the subject, the key to driving engagement with your supporters and service users is to create a more personalised experience on and offline. In this digital age where the internet is the first port of call for information, Bright One is looking at the internet’s role in building charities’ brand experiences.

The ‘Social Graph’ uses personal information that people put online and looks at how they relate to their social connections. This commonly uses the social networks that you are probably on: Facebook; Twitter; perhaps LinkedIn – as well as scoping the rest of the internet. It gives you the ability to target markets via both their own online social activity (such as Likes) and that of their social connections. Take Facebook for instance: there are fans or ‘Likers’ of a brand, and their friends. The latter is a whole new target group for your brand – ready set with accessible contact details.

The ‘Social Graph’ potentially allows you to reach a larger number of people. It also allows you to use your markets’ online information to target them with personalised messages, which are statistically far more effective than generic messages. The British Heart Foundation is just one charity including this approach in their strategy; is it time for you to take notice of the tangible results that social media can generate too…?

This is a guest post by Zoe Amar, Head of Marketing and Business Development at Lasa, a charity which provides services to Shelter, Age UK and thousands of other charities across the UK. She is also on the board at Bright One and is a Chartered Marketer. Zoe tweets from @zoeamar

Social media gurus keep telling us to ‘listen’ as well as ‘engage.’ Now that Twitter, Facebook et al are well established charity communications and fundraising tools, and we’re all tracking our social media mentions, I think we need to maximise their potential for market research.

Social media offers valuable leads about what your audience is thinking- right now. These channels are ‘free,’ but they are not substitutes for bigger market research projects such as focus group exercises, interviews or omnibus studies. What they provide are raw, immediate and unvarnished insights into your stakeholder’s most pressing needs. And many of us are using all of these tools already. So we are ‘listening’- we just need to know how to do it systematically so that we make the most of the huge amount of powerful data available through social media.

At Lasa we have a tight budget for market research, so I’ve learned some quick and cost effective ways to gather useful data through social media. Here are my top tips:

• Twitter is brilliant for pushing out surveys. Last year we ran an online survey to find out what the charity sector thought about ‘Big Society.’ (As a charity which supports thousands of charities across the UK each year, we wanted to know their views). We sent it out through our @Lasavoice  and @LasaICT Twitter accounts, and we also asked a different charity sector opinion leader (with at least 1000 followers) each day to retweet it. Interest in the survey snowballed and more people began to tweet about it. Over 400 charity sector professionals responded and the results were covered by the BBC Politics Show, Metro, The Guardian and Third Sector, amongst others. We did all the work in-house so the only cost was £150 for the Amazon vouchers which we gave away in a prize draw for respondents. If your survey covers a hot topic, offers good incentives and is quick to complete, then Twitter is a great way to get it out there.

• LinkedIn groups offer useful data. Often the dark horse of social media, LinkedIn can be a great way to source market research. At Lasa we seeded our Big Society survey amongst charity sector discussion groups, which created a lot of word of mouth interest and boosted responses. The charity sector groups are also very active and are good places to pick up nuggets of valuable information.

• Who you follow on Twitter determines the quality of your insights. Make sure that you’re following journalists, competitors, trade associations, trade press, government departments, MPs and any other key stakeholders. Since Twitter is often the first place that news breaks, this means that leads sometimes need to be verified, so take care that they come from a reliable source and doublecheck them if necessary. It’s easy to just dip in and out of Twitter reactively, but if you can get into the habit of checking the timelines of your most important stakeholders regularly and following up useful tweets then nothing will slip through the net.

In today’s rapidly changing climate, your market research needs to be ongoing 24/7. There is no better tool for that than social media.

Last week, our very own Dan Howe took part in a Q&A on the Guardian Social Enteprise Network. Below are his “best bits”, but you can also catch the rest of the experts’ advice over on the Guardian.

Research your social media audience: There are some research tools out there, like Rapleaf, which can identify the social networks your audience are registered with from their email addresses. You could use these, as well as speaking to your current users to see what online communities they are part of, to develop your social media strategy.

Start by listening: When it comes to first steps with Twitter, like most other social networks, they have their own etiquette and unwritten rules. When starting out, listening can be just as important as participating. Spend some time in the online communities to gain an understanding of what is the best way to approach your audience.

QR Codes don’t work: I did an experiment recently where I printed a bunch of QR codes out, pointing to a trackable link, and attached them to posters. I still have yet to have a single user open the link. Although they might be useful once they become more regularly seen, at the moment I wouldn’t count on them.

Facebook ads are useful: Facebook ads are costly, but they can be very specific. On a recent non-profit campaign, I experimented and spent US$25 on them. I got 124 new fans as a result. I targeted the ads to users who “liked” very specific topics related to my campaign, and they were all users who became very engaged.

Finding relevant people to follow on Twitter can seem like a daunting process. There are millions of people on Twitter, so how do you find the right ones to follow? Below is a list of useful tools to help you find people to follow.

1. The Twitter Search Engine
The Twitter search engine (search.twitter.com) is a powerful tool. Type in any general search term that is related to your company, nonprofit, or interests, and you can see a live feed of everyone who is tweeting on that topic. It may take some patience to weed through all the spammy, irrelevant mentions of the keyword, but you might be able to find some interesting people through the Twitter Search Engine.

2. Other Twitter Accounts
Looking at who other people are following is also an easy step in following relevant people on Twitter. Many Twitter accounts have “lists” that sort accounts in categories, which can be useful for browsing.

It might be best to start off with an influential person or website in your industry. For example, if I were a nonprofit, I would probably look at a Twitter profile like Idealist (@Idealist) and see who they are following and who they are talking about and do the same with those people and so on.

3. Online Twitter Directories
There are many new websites popping up now that serve as directories for Twitter accounts and groups. Here are some you may find useful:

1. WeFollow – WeFollow is probably the best, and is easy to use. Simply sign in with your Twitter account, add yourself to the directory, and see who else has added themselves in that directory. You can also see who the biggest “influencers” are in that category and who has the most followers
2. Twibes – Similarly, Twibes acts as a directory for Twitter accounts
3. Mr. Tweet – A service that recommends users you should follow
4. Twellow – Another comprehensive directory for Twitter accounts

4. “Find People” Function on Twitter
If you click “Find People” at the top of your Twitter page, you can click on “Browse Interests” and select the relevant category to see accounts that are recommended by Twitter.

Twitter now also has a function on some user profiles which presents recommended accounts to follow on the sidebar.

The background image of your Twitter profile can be a useful tool in building your brand.

Many users add a static background image with a “sidebar” of content that reflects them or their brand. The sidebar is a loophole around the limited amount of information Twitter allows its users to display on their profile page. The sidebar can include anything from a photo of that brand or individual, a brief description of what they do, a list of their websites, and a method of contact.

Below are some examples of Twitter profiles that have been successfully branded by companies or individuals:

Bold Creative’s Twitter account (@boldcreative) displays a simple sidebar image with its logo and important contact information and a URL that directs back to its website. All the information you need to understand what the company is and how you can find out more is there.

Pepsi (@pepsico) advertises a current campaign, the “Dream Machine,” on its sidebar, directing users to the Dream Machine Facebook Page. They also feature members of Pepsi who are tweeting for the company, so that users can know who exactly is behind all those tweets. Many companies opt to do this because it creates a more personal touch to Twitter accounts owned by large, seemingly impersonal companies.

GM (@gmblogs) similarly displays the people who are in charge of their Twitter account, probably for the same reasons as Pepsi. GM also displays their Twitter policy – a disclaimer that states that any 3rd party articles linked to from their account is not their responsibility.

Charity Water (@charitywater) is one of the nonprofits that has done an excellent job with its online presence. Its Twitter is beautifully designed, with a simple background that points users to a specific campaign.

Travel Channel’s Twitter (@travelchannel) has a nicely designed background that is branded well. It points users not to its website but to its other Twitter accounts for its various shows. If you go to these other Twitter accounts, you will see that each of them are also consistently branded with the Travel Channel, sometimes even using similar sidebar graphics – which is brilliant. Even in its variety of shows, the Travel Channel manages to maintain a consistent image.

As you can see, these companies have successfully used the user’s screen to provide relevant information and links — all simply in their background image.

5 Steps to Make A Background Image With Sidebar on Twitter

It’s simple to create a background image that has a sidebar on twitter. Here is the simplest method:

1. Take a screen grab of your Twitter account (with the window maximized.)
2. Paste the screen grab into a photo editing program of your choice (like Photoshop).
3. Create a sidebar graphic in the empty space you see to the left of your Twitter feed, making sure that it is not too wide or too close to the top or left side of the canvas.
4. Select the rest of the image that is not the sidebar and delete it.
5. Save your background image, upload to Twitter, and you’re done!

If you are well versed in graphic design, you can get fancy with this method – for example, you could a background color, add a gradient as the background color (as Pepsi has done), and so on.

If you are searching for a generic background, or one with a ready made template, websites like Twitrounds or Twitrbackgrounds work well.

1. Follow relevant Twitter accounts.
What does “relevant” mean, you ask? Once you define the niche for your brand (for example, “nonprofit”), a simple search on Twitter with the relevant keywords will bring up several recent tweets that mention that keyword. You can sift through these accounts and see which accounts could be relevant to your brand.

Once you find a few key Twitter accounts to follow, the rest of the process is quite organic. You can look through the followers of these accounts and see which ones are relevant to you, or even search through their lists if they have got any set up and do the same.

Following relevant accounts usually prompts people to follow you back. This is not to say however, that you should follow every Twitter account imaginable. Notice the phrase “relevant accounts” — why would someone follow you back if they are not interested in what you have to say? Make sure you keep everything, from your tweets to your tweeps, relevant, and the rest will follow.

2. Use hashtags.
People search for hashtags on Twitter all the time. By adding hashtags to the end of your tweets, you can bet that someone will stumble upon it and decide to follow you. One simple hashtag might be #nonprofit.

3. Engage in conversations.
One thing your Twitter should not do is to simply promote yourself. Nobody wants to follow a Twitter account that is simply an RSS feed of their blog posts or news.

To capture the attention of others, and to remain personable and personal, it’s important to engage in real conversations with others. The simplest way to do this is to @ reply – either answering questions that have been posed, asking a question, commenting on something they have posted, and so on. But as always, don’t simply do these actions to do them – be sincere in your every interaction and you will see better results.

Retweeting is another way to engage and to distribute ideas or links that you believe are valuable to your audience. For more info on retweeting, take a look at Twitter’s own guide.

4. Add value.
Simply tweeting about your day is not going to be particularly interesting to your audience, so you should keep in mind this golden rule: add value.

Whether it’s releasing a nugget of information from your organisation, or tweeting about something you just read on the internet (with a link, of course) – whatever you post should be relevant and valuable to your reader. “Content is king” not only for blogs but for Twitter accounts as well.

5. Stay relevant.
If you are running a Twitter account for a nonprofit organisation, keep it relevant to nonprofits or what your organisation is doing. Unfortunately, no one really wants to read about what you had for lunch!

The presentation has had over 1600 views on Slideshare (not quite at 2020 views just yet!) and created plenty of buzz on Twitter with the hash tag #cc2020. It’s also been great to see people writing about CharityComms 2020. You can read reaction from PR Week, Brand Republic, Just Giving, School for Social Entrepreneurs, and the blogs of Steve Bridger, Darragh Doyle and Amy Sample Ward.

We’ve even received additional entries, bumping up the number of contributors in the presentation to 21. Thanks to Stuart Witts of Marie Curie Cancer Care, Rob Dyson of Whizz Kidz and Susan Farrington of the MS Society for their five predictions.

The updated presentation is embedded below:

Rob Dyson even recorded his five points in an Audioboo, which you can listen to here:

Thanks also go to the original contributors: Jonathan Waddingham from Just Giving; Steve Bridger; Vicki Browning, Director of CharityComms; John Carnell, Founder and CEO of Bullying UK;  Gail Scott-Spicer from The Scout Association;  Sue Fidler from Charity Email;  Gideon Burrows, Editor of ngo media; Adeela Warley, Head of Communications of Friends of the Earth; Lynda Thomas, Director of Externall Affairs for Macmillan Cancer Support;  Zoe Amar from Lasa; Julia Cream, Head of Communications for Timebank;
Jaz Cummins, Web and New Media Manager for Amnesty International UK, Amy Sample Ward;
Rachel Beer, Founding Partner of Beautiful World;  Victoria Rae, Head of Communications of UNICEF;
Jude Habib from Sound Delivery,  and Joe Saxton from nfpSynergy.

And a special thanks to Vicky Browning at CharityComms for agreeing to work with Bright One on the project in the first place!

Following last month’s inaugral Bright One training session on ‘Talkability’, a group of Bright One volunteers and clients were given an exclusive training session by Melanie Seasons, Social Media Strategist at Onlinefire, all about ‘Social Media and Online PR’.

During the session, Melanie described why Audience Mapping is important (Understanding who your target audiences are and what they ‘do’ online, as you need to know what platforms are best to engage on and if you already have advocates) and some of the tools you can use to find them. These tools included paid-for services such as Radian6, right down to free tools such as Google Blog Search, Addict-o-matic, IceRocket, and BlogPulse.

She also took the attendees through the basics of Social Media Relations, where organisation engagee with their audiences through Social Networking (Twitter, Facebook), Pro-active outreach (e-mail, newsletter, events) or Online press offices (blogging, video).

The attendees were also left with a few final thoughts to take away with them:

• Starting from scratch can be tough – establishing a social media profile does not happen overnight
• Expect growing pains – you’ll figure out as you monitor where your audiences are online
• Sign up to it all, but don’t expect to be able to do everything – concentrate on what works for you, and build a strategy from there

All in all, it was a fantastic session, so many thanks to Melanie for giving us a superb insight into Social Media!

We thought that it’d be good to let you all know how we here at Bright One use the internet to reach out to people, so we’ve made the below Bright One Online guide(using the excellent online tool Prezi). It shows you where you can find and connect with all of Bright One on the internet, and keep up-to-date with what we are up to. To watch the guide you can either navigate through it manually (by clicking on the arrow which takes you through each point) or hover over it until you see “autoplay” and it will take you through it..

You can find the links to all our online presence below…don’t be shy, come and find us!

]]> http://brightone.org.uk/bright-one-online/feed/ 2 http://brightone.org.uk/welcome-to-bright-ones-twitterverse/ http://brightone.org.uk/welcome-to-bright-ones-twitterverse/#comments Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:16:33 +0000 nicolajones http://brightone.org.uk/?p=1515 We were playing around last week with a really cool tool which we thought we’d share with you: MentionMap.

We were playing around last week with a really cool tool which we thought we’d share with you: MentionMap.

MentionMap helps you to “Quickly find relevant people to follow.” You can use MentionMap to see Twitter conversations as a network and click any user to explore more about them, which means it’s a really neat way to visualise who you talk to most on Twitter.

It shows you your main connections and then who they are connected to in the thinking that you might also be interested in talking to them – almost like it’s suggesting new Twitter connections in a really nice visual way. Of all the tools available for checking out your impact on Twitter, this has to be one of the most visually friendly and easy to take future actions from.

We liked it so much, we thought we’d try it out for Bright One:

Bright One’s MentionMap shows we are heavily involved in conversations around some of our clients, in particular the PixelProject, Childsi and Junction 49.  Interestingly enough we’re also strongly connected to organisations we’re friends with – Media Trust and UnLtdWorld.  These connections are important to us, as it’s good for us to be involved in conversations around charity and social enterprise PR and communications, not just promoting our work and the work of our clients, but actively learning what is happening around the sector. That experience and learning will make us a more rounded team. It also highlights we might want to connect more with some of our other clients, and our volunteers individually, helping us to see where we need to focus our efforts on.

Pretty neat right? So why not check out MentionMap – either for fun, or to see how distracted you’re actually getting on Twitter!