Using Social Media To Boost Events - Chase 2010 & IoF West Midlands conference

IoF West Midlands :Next generation fundraising

How Social Media can boost your events

Jonathan WaddinghamDigital StrategistJustGiving

• Digital Strategist at JustGiving

• Work with charities to make best use of the web

• Research online giving trends to provide insight

• Manage JustGiving‟s social media strategy

Good morning!

www.slideshare.net/jwaddingham

It‟s a way for people to share and discuss information online

The point of it is people – anyone now has the power to create content online

From a charity perspective, it‟s a great way to engage supporters and tell your story

You can get your supporters to tell your story

What *is* social media? And what‟s the point of it?

Social media is all of this

http://www.flickr.com/photos/marijnversteeg/3181758137/

Strategy is important

http://www.flickr.com/photos/intersectionconsulting/4044928121/

What‟s the approach?

listen

target

reach out

share

measure

What‟s the approach?

listen

target

reach out

share

measure

Google alerts

Technorati search

Tweetscan

Backtype alerts

Delicious search

Flickr search

Your

Toolkit

How to listen

Monitoring sites: http://addictomatic.com

Monitoring sites: http://socialmention.com

Monitoring sites: http://www.samepoint.com

What‟s the approach?

listen

target

reach out

share

measure

Target - where is your audience?

What does your average supporter look like?

What brings the most traffic to your website?

Where are the conversations about you taking place?

Learning more about your audience

http://icanhaz.com/socialtech

Do you need to segment your audience?

http://www.forrester.com/Groundswell/profile_tool.html

What‟s the approach?

listen

target

reach out

share

measure

Reach out – on Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/pages/PDSA-Virgin-London-Marathon

Reach out – on Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/partnershipsinaction

Reach out – on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0imgzBNOqg

Reach out – on Twitter

http://twitter.com/scopeevents

http://twitter.com/WhizzKidzEvents

Reach out – on Twitter

http://twitter.com/M_R_F/status/6234406070

http://twitter.com/childsi/status/6661433240

http://twitter.com/romancircus/status/9257780448

Reach out – on Twitter

http://twitter.com/MichelleDewbs/status/8188051813

What‟s the approach?

listen

target

reach out

share

measure

www.facebook.com/yorkshirecancerresearch

Share your events on Facebook

Share photos of your events – on flickr

www.flickr.com/photos/breastcancercare/sets

www.facebook.com/kidneyresearchuk

Share photos of your events – on Facebook

Share videos of your events – on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/user/cancerresearchuk

http://icanhaz.com/frplaylist

Share videos you didn‟t even record on YouTube

What‟s the approach?

listen

target

reach out

share

measure

Measurement – on Facebook (insights)

https://analytics.postrank.com/

http://viralheat.com/

http://bit.ly/

Measurement – on social media

Measurement – using PostRank

https://analytics.postrank.com/

Measurement – using ViralHeat

http://viralheat.com/

Measurement – on Twitter

http://bit.ly/info/SMguide

Measurement – on Twitter

http://tweetreach.com

Look out for the NFPTweetup

http://icanhaz.com/tools1

http://icanhaz.com/tools2http://nfptweetup.org.uk

http://www.flickr.com/hellobeautifulworld

Measurement

Depends on the goals you set

Is it to get more people to your events so you raise more money?

What are you trying to achieve? What would success look like?

St Ann‟s Hospice – case study

www.sah.org.uk

Promoted the launch of the walk by holding a flashmob

A flashmob is a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place,

perform an unusual action for a brief time, then quickly disperse (wikipedia)

St Ann‟s did supplementary work with generic Hospice pages on Facebook and

Twitter to advertise the FlashMob and drive traffic to the main hospice pages/groups

The big event – Manchester Midnight Walk

Goal: increase awareness of the event and encourage people to register

Manchester Midnight Walk promotion

listen

target

reach out

share

measure

How did they record the event?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/st-anns-hospice-uk

listen

target

reach out

share

measure

How did other people record the event?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZ4NEK2ap-4

“So how did you hear about this?”

“Facebook – she passed it on to us”

Used other people‟s content on their own channel

http://www.youtube.com/user/stannshospiceuk

listen

target

reach out

share

measure

38%

Using a Facebook fan page for the event

http://icanhaz.com/stanns

£178k

PR value

(approx)

Generating PR

listen

target

reach out

share

measure

238%

Only 6 weeks into opening registration for the event for the „early birds‟ in April, St

Ann‟s already had 1,340 registrants (from a total target of 3,000) for an event that

didn‟t take place until June.

Early results

Goal: increase awareness of the event and encourage people to register

listen

target

reach out

share

measure

Set up the Midnight Walk twitter pages a couple of weeks after the event

All footage and Press coverage was put on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr

After the flashmob… keeping momentum going

Cross promoted everything between St Ann‟s site and Midnight Walk sites

Realised the value of investing time & effort building fans and followers

Painstakingly followed lots of Manchester people on Twitter

They are also building into their Content Management System the ability to

flag up which pages they want to tweet to help manage the process.

Social Media use after the launch

Promoted it on their website, in their newsletters and enewsletters, and put

permanent links on the front page of their website and every other page too

Promoting Social Media

www.sah.org.uk (their most visited page)

Promoting Social Media

Promoting Social Media

New - supporting their supporters

http://icanhaz.com/fundraisingguides

http://bit.ly/SMguide

(JustGiving guide to social media fundraising)

Had a Facebook group, but changed to fan page – lost a few people

Be careful how you set up your Facebook fan page!

Look out for opportunities – St Ann‟s have started work with Salford

University students on their Social Media Masters Course

Lessons learned

Generating content is often hard, but there are always great stories around

Finding the right people on Twitter to follow – looked at the Forever

Manchester site to find local people

Now using Twitter lists to find Manchester people

83%

Total net raised so far is £231,890 (last year £175,000).

17.5% higher than budgeted and 32.5% higher than last year

1,485 more walkers signed up than last year, a total of 3,285

Budgeted for 2,750 so achieved a 20.5% increase on target

Overall results of the Midnight Walk

Challenge is tracking FB & Twitter accurately

More YouTube – getting help on design and structure of NFP YouTube page

Growing the Facebook fan page

Having more conversations about their services through social media

Added links to social media on every page of website

What‟s next for St Ann‟s

If I could give one tip it would be: do one thing now –

you don‟t need a strategy in place, just try it out!

For example, set up a Facebook group/event or a

Twitter site and actively promote it on your emails –

see what happens as a result!

Catherine‟s advice

Catherine Williams, Director of Fundraising and

Communications

Remember the approach...

listen

target

reach out

share

measure

Jonathan Waddingham

jonathan@justgiving.com

@jon_bedford

http://blog.justgiving.com

slideshare.net/jwaddingham

http://bit.ly/JWblog

http://uk.linkedin.com/in/jonathanwaddingham

Carry on the conversation…