As with any business in a recession charities need to be where their audience is or they run the risk of being left behind, and it’s clear some smaller charities are struggling to change lanes and adopt social media as a key part of their strategy. Some charities, however, have made the leap and have been reaping the rewards of new social opportunities.

Age Concern with partner Innocent Smooties developed ‘The Big Knit’. Started in 2003 the campaign has raised, to date, over £600k for older people in the colder winter months. The campaign now includes Flickr, YouTube and Blog channels which enable the people who’ve got behind the campaign to be part of the story. Clever widgets such as the ‘Hatometer’, which can be embedded into supporters blogs and websites, shows how many hats have been knitted so far.The founder of the Charity: Water, a not-for-profit dedicated to bringing clean water to impoverished villages in Africa, got an e-mail from Amanda Rose, a British woman who wanted to test the idea that Twitter, with its 30 million users, might be able to raise money. Twestivals were set up by local volunteers of Twitter users in 200 cities across the world who organised parties, concerts and gathering raising $250,000 in four days (check out http://newcastle.twestival.com for the North East Twestival). The Twestival ethos has been picked up by local Twitter users who have used the concept to raise money for local charities.

Macmillan Cancer Support What’s New? community was developed to build a support network around both the charity, cancer sufferers and their families. It shares information, provides a forum for people to share experiences, ask questions and connect with each other. They also use it to highlight events and campaigns, recruit volunteers and raise money.

The key is using the community around the charity to develop valuable social capital in a win, win scenario. The charity wins because it reaches a much wider audience with its message and hits its campaign target, the partner/sponsor wins because it leverages its brand in innovative positive ways to new audiences. The community wins because it gets behind a charity, has fun and raises much needed cash.

So, how can smaller charities and not-for-profits with far less resources use social media?

Firstly, it’s important to understand that pretty much everything a charity currently does to raise awareness, educate and raise money is transposable and can be given real power with some essential social media tools.

Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, Flickr and YouTube are key tools for getting your message out there and getting people to follow, and be part of, charity activities. Each channel can be set up easily and provide a digital presence for the charity as well as offering separate pages for individual campaigns. Together they can significantly improve the overall visibility of the charity online and help develop a diverse support community around the charity. Having corporate sponsors of your social media channels also provides sponsorship opportunities that can generate revenue for the charity.

Twitter, the micro blogging platform, is superb at building a charity’s profile and that of the people who work within it. To get the most out of Twitter here’s a couple  things to consider before setting up a profile for your charity.

- Define “influence” (What do you want to say)
- Establish Your Angle (Who are you targeting)
- Make it Easy to Get Involved
- Do not use Twitter to BROADCAST your brand message
- Focus Beyond Tweets, send people to where they can join you or donate

Engage with people. Social capital, the good you generate by connecting with people and sharing knowledge, ideas and thoughts is at the heart of social media. The amount you give of yourself is comparable to what will come back to you when you need help promoting your charity, events or campaigns. Find out where you target audience is and connect with them.

Once you’ve connected, be active. Think about what your audience wants from you, what interests to them and talk about it. It should be a mix of information relating to the charities activities, events you’re organising, the people of the organisation  (The volunteers and staff etc.) getting on with the good work of the charity. Be opinionated, but don’t broadcast, it’s not about pushing your message down people’s throats.

Social media has the ability to reach people you’re not even aware of, who might be looking to contribute their time or donations to a charity like yours. If you’re campaigning make you messages to the point and desirable. The idea is to hook people (capture their interest and make them want to pass your message onto their friends) into your message and send them via a link to your website or micro site for the big hitting message, which charities have never had trouble coming up with!

Be personal. People like to talk to people, so give your staff the encouragement to talk about the charity’s good work on their own social platforms, educate them as to what is acceptable and preferable, and release them to drive your message to their friends, families and peers.

Taking donations online. Building donation widgets into your website, blogs and social media platforms is easy to do and offers charities the chance to gather donations when you’re talking about your cause or campaign. Facebook for instance accounts for 20% of JustGiving’s revenues, so getting on the right platforms can enable you to tap into valuable, sustainable new revenue streams.

JustGiving, Mgive, Everyclick, Myspace Impact are just a few of the corporate donation models available. Some are free, some charge a set up fee and a percentage of the donations it processes on your behalf, but all give you the opportunity to press for a donation at the point of impact, when people are feeling inspired or touched by what you are trying to achieve.

So, opportunity is still abundant in difficult times. Smaller charities with less resources can take a great deal from the execution of social media campaigns by other charities, which are well documented online. SlideShare, the online resource for presentations on every topic under the sun, lists over 1800 presentation regarding charities using social media. Start there and find ways to reach more people, publicise events and raise money.

The edges of our media space are expanding faster than our ability to make sense of them, of new technologies, of how people use them and of the shake out, that will mean some old media will fall by the wayside.

But this is an unravelling story seen from two very different perspectives. The user, swept along by the rush of the crowd to try new media, to make that media fit their lifestyle and the marketer, trying to position a brand where its’ target customer is.

We are at this juncture, living through exciting and yet worrying times because history repeatedly reminds us that the intervening years between the birth of something new and it being fully realised, is a path marked with successes and failures in equal measure.

It is our fear of failure that plays into the hands of those who make their living trying to predict the future we marketers so desperately want to know about.

A recent TimesOnline article has marketers raving about the simple insights of a young man, who whist on work experience wrote a short paper on how teenagers use media. According to him, teenagers (boys mainly) use their games console for conversations, not their mobiles, which incidentally is primarily used for text and music. They don’t read newspapers, preferring instead to get their news online and they don’t buy movies or music, seeing nothing wrong in pirate DVD’s and peer-to-peer downloads.

And what about teenage girls? I speak from experience here as I have a teenage daughter, who has Facebook, MSN and YouTube open simultaneously on her laptop and only uses her mobile or ipod for music / texting whenever she is on the move, and disconnected from her laptop.

What surprised me about this article wasn’t necessarily the insights it revealed, it was the reaction of people to these insights. It was like the volume had been turned up by this young man and for the first time these marketers could hear the authentic voice of a generation.

Who can really know where we’re going; the futurists, the edge dwellers and technology hipsters?

Egos and reputations are at stake, which makes people, who in their time gave us clarity and made sense of where we were, look further and further ahead, not for us this time but to cement their own reputations, their own place in history. They fixate on new worlds, where they can coin new phrases, name new movements and re-claim their place in media folklore. They change the language (For no other reason it seems than that’s what they feel the world expects of them) from social to collaborate to individual and so on.

I don’t have much time for them to be honest. As a user I’m loving living through the revolution and as a Marketer I’m busy trying to make sense of the changing world for our clients and helping them understand how their brand engages their customer across social media spaces.

And what will win through in the end. Which media will still be around when this revolution reaches it zenith? Well history also has a lesson to teach us about this too. New technology is only revealed in retrospect to be turning points in a revolution.

So we need to accept we’re as bound to get it wrong as we are to get it right, so move forward or be prepared to get left behind. Enjoy being part of history in the making, leave the future to the generations to come after us.

I’ve planned a few focus group sessions in the past when I was part of the team that re-branded Frisp Crisps and I have to say I remember them as being interesting and generating some useful feedback, particularly that the crisps were considered as being quite ‘foody’ and filling, more than a snack. That fed into the decision that new ‘foody’ such as Buttered Jacket Potato & Mature Cheddar would fit with our customers’ perception of the crisp brand.

It was also useful to see them place packaging in order of perceived quality, heavy gauge paper type bags being clearly seen as a premium bag and the rather flimsy film packaging of own label brands being a value brand. This was all good stuff for the re-brand, and we felt some real insights into how people relate to products came out of those focus groups.

I can’t help thinking though that 80% of what came out of the focus groups was understanding we already had and that’s the crux for me really. We are taught that to understand we must ask questions which is all well and good but when we consider asking a question we’ve normally considered a number of potential answers and are looking for verification, it’s human nature to do so. Do some of the answers generated by focus group attendees therefore reflect what they think or what the brand manager thinks?

Like focus groups, social networks and communities enable us to observe and engage with our target audience. Some of the biggest brands in the world, Mattel being one, have embraced the principle idea that listening to what their target audience talk about (Manly themselves and their families) will deliver as yet undiscovered insights and prompt questions that the brand team have not yet thought of relating to their products and importantly about their target audiences lives. The community in question for Mattel is ‘The Playground’, a private community for the mothers of young children.

I’d argue that the anonymity of talking freely online empowers people to say what the truly think without the influence of our own ‘self awareness’, of wanting people to perceive us in the way we want to be perceived. This will reshape how we learn about our target audiences but will this replace traditional focus groups or market research? I think not.

Social media isn’t a new broom to make a clean sweep of traditional marketing metrics. It’s offers brand managers another dimension of metrics, that will keep our thinking honest and our minds focused on our audience.

 

Social Media Funnel

I’ve seen lots of social media maps, some good some not so good.

The problem is they sit there in lofty isolation, a sea of mostly unfamiliar names and quirky identities.  They are a secret cypher known only to social media cool kids it seems. These maps are not connected to the real world (The one in which hard pressed marketing professionals are fighting hard for their budgets and their jobs) in any recognisable way. We’re missing an opportunity here and, if we’re honest, being a little bit condescending to boot. Another thing, social media buzz words are such a crock! Real people don’t talk like that!

So here’s something all marketing and sales professionals understand, ‘The Funnel’. Everyone, more or less goes through the same process of Awareness (I have a need), Consideration (Evaluate the alternatives), Preference (The sum of looking and listening to arrive at a decision) and finally Action (Satisfying the need).

I though it might be useful therefore to visualise how a number of social media channels working together (The list isn’t exhaustive by the way) can help sign post people through the funnel to some meaningful action connected to your brand, product or service.

Of course there is always a note of caution. Social media channels have to be aligned to target audience, and that means you have to get inside the minds and lives of the audience and build the right channels. The “If you build it they will come” attitude to building social media channels wont work and will more likely damage your brand.

Growing your Digital Footprint

We find ourselves drawing this diagram all the time for clients when we’re talking about social media so we thought we’d reproduce it here and get some feedback.

Conversations tend to go something like, “Why social media?”.

After introducing them to the idea that engaging with audiences, listening and harvesting feedback, gaining insights into audience thinking and breaking down corporate barriers is the most rewarding business change event they’ll ever implement it’s much much simpler to draw it.

If their corporate, e-commerce, flash website sits at the centre of their digital marketing strategy, implementing a social media strategy around it is making a much bigger target of your brand, that will attract the as yet un-reached, empower critics and creators who want to talk about your brand increasing their digital brand footprint.

The excitement in the voice is hard to hide when clear value, both for the audience and the brand is this obvious.

Why do we need a social media presence?

• Increase customer base.

• Build awareness.

• Establish thought leadership.

• Educate customers.

• Customer-source part of your product development to try new ideas.

• Reach new channels of customers.

• Improve internal communication.

Manage Objections. (Thanks to Pistachio Consulting for the following excellent arguments which I’ve used alongside my own thoughts)

Here are five objections (budget, audience size, loss of control, priorities and uncertainty) and ways you can address them:

Budget

Before committing to any budget expenditure adopt a listening strategy to help people understand where conversations are happening online and what topics around your brand and services are being discussed. Arm yourself with evidence that people (Customers) are talking about the services you provide and your company is missing out by not joining in.

Don’t limit yourself to a new “social media” budget, and don’t even remain within the confines of marketing, publicity and other outbound communications. Social tools can make substantive contributions across the organisation —HR, R&D, project management, customer service, administration, IT

Taking this idea one step further, be as clear as you can about the value or potential value social tools can contribute within each of these areas. What can be done less expensively or more profitably?

Audience Size

The audience value proposition just does NOT work the same way old school “tonnage based” advertising via expensive mainstream media buys always did. You’re not just trying to scoop up tons and tons and tons of eyeballs, hoping to extract actual business results out of some crap small percentage of those that you “reach.” Things can be more closely targeted and more tightly mapped onto fundamental metrics of business success. “Tons of eyeballs” metrics at their best are usually just proxies for “a hope of selling more.”Three takeaways about social media/social networking audience sizes:

It’s Social media and social networking audiences are growing fast.

Even small audiences that are well-targeted or influencers are quite valuable.

Off-platform benefits.You’re not always just trying to reach the direct audience. On Twitter in particular, we see massive applicability and advantages in SEO, market knowledge, word-of-mouth “passability”to others outside of the platform, and as a content-generation engine the pulls together flows of content that can be displayed and syndicated using widgets and other RSS-based tools.

If you want to get a handle on demographics you might try using a profile tool like the one developed by Forrester. You can at least see what percentage of your audience are likely to be Creators, Critics, Collectors, Spectators, Joiners or Inactive and therefore gauge where your company can engage with its audience.

Loss of Control

You can argue that they’ve already lost control. You can argue that they never even *had* control. Instead, underscore the increase in learning. Companies can learn an incredible about of information about their products, their customers unarticulated wants and needs, how to make it easier for customers to buy, how to serve customers better, and THAT’S just talking about the customers. This magnitude and value of learning is also available for the engineers, the researchers, the manufacturers —compare notes, parse problem-solving, crowdsource and figure out more, faster.

Priorities

Get laser focused on management’s existing business problems and pains. Apply the tools and opportunities you know about to the priorities they know they already have. Be very diagnostic in understanding and maturely articulating what could be achieved and how.

Uncertainty

Don’t forget, this stuff can be really SCARY. That’s okay. Encourage them to take a flexible stance, to start dipping their toes in, and to remain learning-focused whether or not they are ready to jump in whole hog.

Yes, ideally, the company should start to respond and manage its message contributions as soon as there are issues to respond to. But I don’t buy that they should not engage in formal listening until they’re ready to engage in formal responding. In many cases, the longer they listen first, the better their response skills will be.

If something major breaks, by all means address it, but it’s MORE important that the listening period not be delayed by fears over how the company can respond. It’s NOT okay to clap hands over eyes and ears just because the mouth – and corporate mind – need more time to prepare.

Why do all of this?

The relationship between you and the reader is one-to-one. In time it creates a bond of trust which over time they share with their peer groups and keeping your customers close to you in economically uncertainty times should be a priority for everyone.

Contact the Better team to discuss how we can support your Social Media project. Better Brand Agency is a brand agency offering brand, graphic design, marketing, social media and social networking, web and digital services based in Tees Valley, North East and North Yorkshire.

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The decline in advertising revenues coincides with greater availability and use of television-style content online and the growth of digital video recorders (DVRs) that allow users to skip adverts, putting even greater pressure on advertising revenues.  A report by OFCom found that up to 78% of DVR owners regularly used them to skip through adverts.

OFCom also found that online advertising continues to grow and Google have now announced that research undertaken by them has found that ads on its YouTube portal have a greater impact than those on television.

View the full article here avaible on Marketing Magazine website

Roughly 86% of respondents in a survey conducted by Locomotion Creative in Nashville say they expect social media to impact the way companies do business and generate sales. Additionally, 64% believe their competitors are probably incorporating social media into their strategic plans.

The survey, which explored awareness and usage of social media — including social networking, Wikis, podcasts, e-mail and blogs — was sent to Locomotion Creative’s opt-in e-mail distribution list.

“While not a scientific study per se, the survey gives us a reasonable and reliable snapshot of attitudes held by business executives about the growing importance of social media,” said S.A. Habib, founder of Locomotion Creative, a marketing firm. “It reinforces the fact that companies must continue to give increasing emphasis to social media as part of their marketing plans.”

Survey respondents also acknowledged the growing importance of social media beyond business communications. More than 80% said social media will impact the way colleges and universities deliver instruction, while 77% say it will impact the way they interact with family and friends.

Download the social media survey by clicking here.

Offline advertising is showing diminishing returns. McKinsey predicts that by 2010, traditional television advertising will be one-third as effective as it was in 1990.

This is partly because online media is growing at the expense of offline. A UK survey by Media Week showed that time spent for both live/realtime TV and teletext tv decreased by 1% and 2% respectively between 2006 and 2007, while internet usage by 50%; an IDC study of U.S. consumer online behavior found that the Internet is the medium on which online users spend the most time (32.7 hours/week). This is equivalent to almost half of the total time spent each week using all media (70.6 hours), almost twice as much time as spent watching television (16.4 hours), and more than eight times as much time as spent reading newspapers and magazines (3.9 hours).

It is partly because of the rise in ad avoidance strategies. DVRs owners (according to an IBM survey) watch at least 50% of television programming on replay, thus avoiding television advertising. It is partly because of a major decline in public trust in brands. People trust people more than they trust the media. In a 2006 survey of U.S. consumers, Forrester found that 83% of respondents trusted friends’ opinion, but only 75% trust product reviews in a newspaper, magazine or TV. (Groundswell, Charline Li and Josh Bernhoff).

The answer would seem to be to move the business online. More than half of the world’s Internet users have made at least one purchase online in the past month, according to Nielsen. The web also seems to offer promising growth for advertisers: Nielsen estimates that spending on online advertising will escalate at 19.2 per cent annually till 2012 and will surpass the TV advertising budget in the US in the next decade.

But advertising on the web poses challenges. Online banner click-throughs on Yahoo!, Microsoft and AOL have declined from 0.75% to 0.27% according to ad monitoring firm Eyeblaster.

Paid search ads now represent the lion’s share of online ad spending. Contextual search ads are great for selling specific factual propositions (flights to Malaga, hotels in Brussels) but they are less effective at communicating emotion. In a recent report from The Wharton School, marketing professor Patti Williams observes that it’s unclear how a company like Crest can leverage search advertising: “How many people are going online to search for toothpaste? It’s not [obvious that] a little ad on the screen is going to attract them. For the biggest bulk of media spending, online is just hard to figure out. The Internet is not that good at big brand-building objectives, so there are a lot of companies struggling with a way to take advantage of the tremendous opportunity Google and other searches offer.”

A 2007 global Nielsen survey found that consumer recommendations are the most credible form of advertising among 78 percent of the study’s respondents. And there are perhaps clues for advertisers in the shift of online consumers to social networking sites. In the UK, social networks overtook webmail by percentage of visits in 2007, with social networks accounting for 5.17% of all Internet visits compared to 4.98% for email services. Advertisers want to follow consumers but that’s difficult. When you are chatting to a friend the last thing you want is to be interrupted with a clumsy brand message. Privacy settings in most networks preclude direct marketing. Facebook recently announced that it was opening up key pages to allow for contextual advertising.

So how do Brands engage with the consumer in a way that provokes conversation and endorsement? The most successful strategies for engagement with social media is for a brand do something which allows people to pass on a key message about your brand.

People can talk about you for three reasons:

You have given them useful information.
H&R Block set out to build awareness of their online tax return offering by creating content customised for channels. The budget was 5% of their annual digital spend only 0.5% of their total ad spend. They grew awareness 52%, and saw an 11% growth in tax services business, feeding net income which rose to $544m from an $86m loss the previous year.