Social media and not-for-profit organisations

What’s ahead? A mix of answers and questions... Some sharing good practice...  Definition and different tools  The Good  The Bad  The Ugly

Range of Not of Profit sector  Government – central, local, regional  Charity – big, small, membership, fundraising, campaigning...  Big Society  Local groups  Trade unions  Campaigns  Arts organisations

So what is social media?  Dictionary definition: ‘Social media - A term used to describe a variety of web- based platforms, applications and technologies that enable people to socially interact with one another online. Social media sites have content based on user participation and user-generated content (UGC), rather than read-only media.’  Social networking, micro-blogging, video/photo sharing, wikis (E.g’s you may have come across: Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, blogs, Wikipedia).

TIMES ARE CHANGING  Consumer behaviour  Technology  Media landscape

Some Facts 100 million users 300,000 users added every day 60% outside US During first Leaders’ Debate 5.5% of all global activity on Twitter was on the debate JRF 3,902 followers Countryside Alliance 1,120 TUCnews 4,164 Oxfam 123,001

The Bad  Because it’s easy to create and distribute content, it’s also more difficult to capture people’s attention.  There’s a lot of recycled non-social media stuff used.  The vast majority of Web content is pretty marginal - if that. So we’ve got to put extra time and effort into creating good stuff.  And that’s really not so bad after all!

The Ugly...  DON’T force people to get involved with social media if they really aren’t comfortable with it. It can have disastrous consequences...  And what can happen if you get it wrong when you try to make something out of a bad situation…

Social Media Twitter in DWP  Different government departments have made different use of social media – depending on their audience.  Previous Employment Minister Jim Knight was a big fan – which had some press office people worried!  Working with Martha Lane Fox – we made a real effort to move forward – but it isn’t easy.  Jobcentre Plus use it to tweet vacancies, with local jobcentres tweeting up the latest local jobs available.

NEW MEDIA BREAKS INTO TOP 10 SiteUnique VisitorsGrowth  1Yahoo! News40.2 M6.1%  2CNN Digital38.7 M0.0%  3MSNBC Digital33.8 M-15.3%  4AOLNews22.6 M-4.3%  5Fox NewsDigital17.0 M1.3%  6NYTimes.com16.5 M-18.1%  7Tribune Newspapers16.1 M-2.2%  8ABCNEWSDigital16.0M31.8%  9GoogleNews13.3 M-2.7%  10Huffington Post13.1M94.2% Source: Nielson Online

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR JRF? Audiences Transparency Engagement

Now it’s your turn...  How can your organisation social media to communicate with your audiences: -Service users -Colleagues and internal communications -Recruitment -Fundraising -Sharing information -Pleasure!

Risks and rewards  What about risks?  Rogue users  Oooops  Poor quality  Costs  A conversation with the world

Summing up  Feedback  Questions  Ideas  Next steps