BeGoodBeSocial – How to use social media in your organisation

I attended a really interesting event in the BIG HQ last night. (7 April). It was sponsored by blackbaud and was the second BeGoodBeSocial event organised by Ross McCulloch of Third Sector Lab. Speakers included Sara Thomas of MND Scotland, Marc Bowker of Quarriers, Rob McAllen of Cumbernauld House, and Rob Dyson of Whizz Kidz.

Sara spoke about Developing a Social Media Fundraising Strategy, Marc Spoke about the Power of Engagement and Rob Dyson spoke about Communicating in a Big Society.

Some of the main points from the talks are below and if you want to see the videos of the event then log on to www.begoodbesocial.org.uk where they will be uploaded shortly.

Social media – facebook, twitter, blogging, – have a facebook page for your organisation, (not a profile), the more people “like” the page the better, have a twitter account, the more followers the better, blog about what you are doing – the more followers, the better.

Have a basic stragtegy of what you hope to achieve with social media and how you are going to measure the success.

Your communications dept (or volunteer) depending on the size of your org. can integrate the social media into your overall communications. It must all be “joined up” to have the best effect.

Staff and users of your services are another great way of raising your profile. Encourage staff to talk positively about what they have been doing at work on their personal facebook account – with links to your org facebook, twitter, blog, etc. Remember to make users of the service anonymous. Users can also be very effective ambassadors for your organisaion in the same way.

When communicating – blogging etc – be authentic, be honest, be informal but still professional, be first person, don’t argue and don’t be offensive. If you can get other people to blog about you on their own blogs that too will raise your profile. It is important to have lots of ‘thank you’s on your blog and people are always interested in “this is where we spent the money that you donated” stories.

Facebook and twitter is where the people are and the conversation is happening.

When you are using facebook and twitter it is important to include facebook and twitter logos on your printed literature.

If you want to know if anyone one in social media is referenceing your organisation then you can do a search in samepoint.com – lets you know how many negative and positive things are said about you.

Co-ordinate you social medias to increase your impact for instance. Have a tweet about an event that is on your facebook page, have links to your blog and your photos on flickr, you can build narrative into tweets and host campaign materials on flickr, tag and annotate pics on flickr with links back to facebook. If you want some feedback from marketing you can ask question on facebook and get collated answers.

We’re keen to get more rural orgs along to the next #BeGoodBeSocial – if you’d like to help make that happen please get in touch.