Social
networks have exploded in popularity in the last few years.
After signing up, users can create a personal profile and
keep in touch with friends and family by posting photographs,
videos and personal messages. And with millions of people
logging on everyday, they also offer charities a new way to
communicate with donors and fundraisers, particularly the
16-24 year-old group which can be difficult to reach through
traditional media.
Research by MySpace Impact – a hub which allows MySpace’s
10 million users to campaign for charities and social causes
through their profile – reveals that 17 per cent of
16-24 year olds have spread positive word of mouth for a charity
among family and friends vs. 10 per cent 25-44 year olds.
“Whether it’s global issues or specific, local
campaigns, young people are increasingly aware of the issues
in their community,” says Jamie Kantrowitz, senior vice
president, content and marketing at MySpace International.
“MySpace Impact allows them to get their voice heard
in a place that’s their own – their MySpace page.”
Audiences increasingly value personal recommendations when
it comes to supporting a cause or charity. In July 2007 the
NSPCC launched a Facebook application which can be downloaded
and attached to a user’s profile. The aim was to give
supporters a different way to engage with the charity, and
offer functionality not available on the NSPCC’s main
website.
“We realise that the whole world is not going to want
to visit our website, so we wanted to start communicating
with people in the spaces that they are already using,”
says Polly Gilchrist, head of e-fundraising at NSPCC. “The
application enables us to collect donations on Facebook, let
our supporters know about events and invite their friends
to take part in our initiatives.”
So far over 25,000 people have downloaded the application,
and around £10,000 in donations has been raised. In
October last year it was updated to tie in with the NSPCC’s
‘Be the Full Stop’ campaign, which called on people
to take action against child cruelty by doing one of 19 deeds.
“The functionality within the application enabled people
to do a deed, which could be something as simple as making
a donation or downloading one of our safeguarding applications.
Once you did the deed, the application was able to display
that fact to your friends,” says Gilchrist.
Downloads of the application doubled during the first few
weeks of the campaign, “which showed us that people
enjoy being able to do something within the application rather
than being led to another website.”
Engaging with social networking can be intimidating for charities,
and many have yet to take advantage of the vast audiences
available. “They often look at the barriers rather than
the opportunities,” says Gilchrist. “Quite a few
of the smaller charities don’t know where to start,
or where to get help from.”
Getting involved at the right time is crucial for success:
leave it too late and the users may have moved elsewhere.
“Some of these sites won’t necessarily be popular
forever, so it’s important that you get in just as the
social network is taking off. But moving with the swiftness
of foot required can be tricky for some charities,”
says Gilchrist.
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Holding back
Charities’ fears regarding losing overall control
of the brand or message may also be holding them back. “What
they need to do is say to themselves, ‘rather than
being in complete control of our message, we’re sufficiently
confident in it to put in out there and watch it take legs’...people
understand that should someone make a contribution to a
forum or user group, it’s their own personal view
rather than that of the charity,” says Martin Campbell,
managing director of Baigent, developers of charity websites.
They may also be wary about putting time and money into
utilising a social network which might suddenly become inappropriate
for them to be involved with. “Should Facebook be
taken over by a company that conflicts with their views,
that could become a problem,” says Campbell.
Setting up their own social network or creating an application
is not the only way that charities can utilise social networks.
Facebook allows users to set up groups for free, which can
then be used to communicate with members through wall posts,
forums, photos, videos, and direct messaging to their in-box.
Groups can also be closed down quickly and easily, making
it an ideal way for charities to dip their toe in the water.
Traditionally internet marketing has meant paying to put
adverts on a site that attracts the charity’s target
audience. According to Campbell, social networks, “allow
supporters to do marketing on a charity’s behalf,
as their friends can pick up the charity’s message
from them, rather than hearing it directly from the charity
itself.”
A charity’s social networking strategy should always
be based around its size and target audience. For a charity
short on time or resources, focusing on existing social
networks would probably be the most effective course to
take. But for a larger charity it may well be worth setting
up a social network of their own, a strategy ActionAid has
decided to employ.
“There’s a lot to learn,” says Nathaniel
Ashford, website and e-communications manager at Action
Aid. “Normally we’re the ones crafting content
that we hope people will find interesting, accessible and
that helps them get closer to ActionAid, whereas this is
about other people creating content and telling their friends
about it.”
By creating its own social networking site, ActionAid hopes
to avoid falling foul of user migration. “MyActionAid
isn’t going anywhere,” says Ashford. “We
hope that it is contemporary and attractive and we’ll
continue to try and keep it that way.”
ActionAid has applied some of the aspects of a mainstream
social networking site, such as profile customisation, to
MyActionAid. “There are so many social networks out
there that it’s easy to see which aspects of them
work and which don’t. You can then apply the ones
that do to your own format,” says Ashford. “Every
opportunity for communication is great. It’s about
increasing the contact with our audience ...if what we do
engages people and gets the brand out there more, that’s
a good thing in itself.”
Launching and operating a social network requires commitment
from the charity and substantial resources. “A lot
of the smaller charities are really just coming to terms
with the fact that they have to constantly resource a website,
and suddenly there’s now a whole new level of digital
content that needs resourcing as well,” says Ashford.
The lack of benchmarks regarding how fundraising on social
networks converts into cash may discourage some charities
from getting involved. “If a charity wanted to invest
in social networking, I could imagine a few managers saying,
‘what exactly are we going to get out of it’,”
says Adam Foyster, managing director of My Charity Page,
which has been described as the charity equivalent of Facebook.
The site lets people make donations online to their favourite
charity and raise awareness of an event they are fundraising
for among their friends.
“From the trends and patterns we’ve seen, communities
seem to build themselves,” says Foyster. “You’ll
find that should someone enter a marathon for example, they’ll
be part of a community for both the event itself, and the
particular charity they’re fundraising for.”
Social networks can also allow entrepreneurial individuals
to steal the jump on charities when it comes to gathering
support for an event or cause. “One university student
set up a Burma related petition on Facebook and had a phenomenal
response. But as these people are often lone individuals,
they really need to get in touch with an established organisation
if they want to properly capitalise on the support they’ve
built,” says Foyster.
The unique selling point of social networks is that of being
able to stay in touch with a disparate group of friends
with minimal effort. Subtlety and function are the key things
for charities to remember when developing an application
or marketing strategy: in-your-face advertising or needlessly
complicated software will win you no friends.
Foyster has no doubts about the fundraising potential of
social networks. “It’s an absolutely huge market,”
he says. “Charities have only just touched the tip
of the iceberg.”
Top three UK social networks
Facebook
is the most used social networking site in the UK, with
around 8.3 million users.
MySpace
is the godfather of social networks. It was launched in
2002 and has since been bought by Fox Interactive Media.
It is popular with music fans and helped to jump start
the careers of artists such as Lilly Allen and the Arctic
Monkeys.
Bebo
was founded in January 2005 by husband and wife team Michael
and Xochi Birch. It is particularly popular with young teenagers
and was recently acquired by AOL for £417 million.
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