Social media: get with the programme

We are very encouraged by this post from Jude Habib from Third Sector Daily. Jude is looking forward to a sea change in attitudes to social media within the third sector.

When it comes to digital media, it’s time for the sector to get with the programme, says Jude Habib

Social media is clearly very important to us, not only for building our global community of supporters but also reaching our fundraising targets.

We’re not fixated by numbers. But how can we fail to be impressed by the fact that we have gathered over 1000 supporters on our Facebook group in just over a month. Not only that – we’ve also had over 8000 visits to our blog.

1000 supporters - a mini milestone

But what have we done to deserve this? Well, we’ve launched a website, started twittering/tweeting, added our photos to Flickr and made a few videos. OK, so maybe I’m making this all sound extremely simple – and of course it has required hard work and dedication from all involved – but compared to other forms of branding, marketing and fundraising activity it is pretty straightforward, rewarding (in that we actually get to have a conversation with our supporters) and economical (free in most cases).

We are simply using existing tools to reach out to social networking communities that are already present, ready and willing to get involved.

We know this isn’t the only way, we need to go to our supporters (not expect them to find us) and not all of them are hanging out in social networking communities everyday or reading RSS feeds from blogs

We are thinking of initiatives to reach out to schools, colleges and the workplace – encouraging supporters to fundraise in their local communities. We have a face-to-face “meetup” group in London on 4th February, Undress for Uganda we hope will happen in living rooms throughout the country (in our dreams the world) and to appeal the hearts of celebrities we will write letters.

We’re not bound only to the realms of socia media, we just know we’re missing a trick if we don’t talk to those who are willing to speak to us.