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Facebook launches app store

Earlier this week, Facebook announced that it would be launching its own app store, the key criteria being that all developers must use the Facebook Login in their apps. With over 900 million Facebook users, that’s a massive leveraging tool for new developers.

This development is certainly one way of addressing the problems presented to marketers by increasingly growing online mobile usage.

While the traditional model of reaching Facebook audiences has been via Facebook Ads, these are usually hidden if you access Facebook using a mobile app – which applies conservatively to 40% of users. So this reduces the number of opportunities that users have to see your ads, and therefore engage with your brand.

Although Facebook Apps have been around for a while, they remain optimised for desktop users. An app store geared to mobile users is another opportunity for brands to engage with their audiences in a richer, more compelling way.

As platforms like JustGiving continue to improve their mobile apps, I’m keen to see how new online giving apps take advantage of this new development to advance charity digital fundraising efforts.

Because one Facebook announcement wasn’t enough…

Already a feature for Facebook Groups for schools, Facebook announced earlier today that file sharing for all Facebook Groups is coming soon. Users will be able to share documents, images and books, but not music or executable files (the latter to mitigate it from becoming the next Pirate Bay, no doubt; the former probably to promote music sharing apps).

Hot on the heels of Google Drive, I think this is one step too far into the realm of Google Apps territory. On one hand, it seems like a natural step, reflecting the increasing influence of Facebook in our non-social lives. On the other, what’s next: Facebook Docs?

I think the success of both Facebook and Google Apps has been that, for the moment, largely speaking, most people can make the distinction of Google being for work and Facebook being for play – even (or maybe, especially) online/social/digital marketers. I don’t know if I would recommend a band/tv show/weekend event to my friends if I knew that colleagues in my work Facebook Group could see… and isn’t that one of the biggest challenges of social marketing?

Cookies, cookies, cookies

Following last week’s cookie law coverage, I’ve been receiving DMs about how to implement cookie notifications on charity websites. What is your charity doing to make your website compliant with the new cookie law?

Around the internet, our favourite sites are testing various methods, including the Guardian’s website.

Technology4Good Awards – your last week call!

If you  have yet to enter this year’s Technology4Good Awards, this is your last week call to get your nominations in by 18 May. Read AbilityNet’s Mark Walker’s introduction to the awards on the NFPtweetup blog.

Until next week

Rochelle

Image credit

The cookie law

From 26 May, the new EU ‘cookie law’ comes into effect which means that all websites belonging to organisations based within the EU have to ask permission from users to serve specific types of web cookies to their computers. The law also affects non-profit websites and personal blogs, regardless of whether the target audience is outside the EU.

One of the problems with this issue is that most people are unaware about what cookies are and why they’re important. When you visit a website, a small text file is downloaded to your computer with the website’s name and an ID that identifies you as a unique visitor.

Cookies that facilitate the user to complete a process essential to the operation of a website are exempt (for now). This includes websites with shopping carts, so your online virtual gift stores are safe for now.

However, visitors have to opt-in to accept cookies that collect non-essential information. These cookies have a variety of uses, for example:

• the ‘Welcome back, Rochelle’ greeting on Amazon
• being able to auto-fill address fields on forms
• visitor tracking with Google Analytics.

This last one is of particular concern across the board. Nearly all websites use some kind of tracking tool to be able to analyse traffic and visitor behaviour, and optimise accordingly, with the vast majority of websites using Google Analytics.

If you’ve been putting off optimising your website with insights from your Google Analytics, it might be worth doing it now whilst you still have a couple of weeks of monitoring your current traffic flow to see if it has made any difference.

The challenge for all site owners will be how to integrate the opt-in function in the user experience.

If you’re a WordPress user, check out the EU Directive Plugin and Civic UK’s Cookie Control Plugin.

The ICO has issued a practical guide on the new cookies regulations.

APIs drive online giving

The Guardian ran this article on the developments of APIs to facilitate online giving via social media that featured our award-winning Merlin’s Christmas Heroes app. When we built the app, one of the things of which we were most proud was how integrated we could make the user’s experience – pulling their comments back onto the app’s front page after they had made their donation.

This process was powered by the JustGiving API, and I’m excited to see what future enhancements they have up their sleeves to further develop it.

Although other service providers, such as Eventbrite, have followed suit with their APIs, I’d love to see a service as easy as PayPal’s copy and paste embed code to power a donation to allow page owners even greater control over the user’s experience.

Technology4Good Awards

The Digital Fundraising Award at this year’s Technology4Good Awards is supported by NFPtweetup, so if you have any great initiative or campaign you’d like to share be sure to get your nominations in by 18 May.

You can find all of the awards categories on their website here.

That’s all for this week – if you missed the first two waves of tickets to NFPtweetup 15, keep an eye out on Twitter next week!

Rochelle

Image credit

Facebook is still king

Is anyone still unconvinced by the power of Facebook? Maybe the latest figures will change this once and for all, as we learn it has 901 million users and remains the largest social network in the world. Included in these 901 million is my mum. Enough said.

Google keeps on trucking

Google Drive was launched this week, and sees it competing with iCloud, Amazon cloud drive and Dropbox to name a few. Google Drive offeres 5GB of storage space for free and up to 25GB for as little as $2.49 a month. It allows you to collaborate on documents, comment on shared items and receive notifications of replies, as well as store everything safely and access it anywhere. For charities already using Google Docs, this may be the next logical step. At beautiful world, not a day goes past without hearing the name Dropbox – I’m looking forward to seeing how Google Drive compares.

Google also introduced a ‘Share’ button for Google+ as it tries to boost its social networks presence across the web. This integration allows users to share content instantly with friends and people in their circles. At least with Google +1 they tried to distinguish it from Facebook’s Like button but I guess there just isn’t a better word for share…

I’m still firmly on the fence with Google+. I’d really like to hear how your charity’s using it – and what successes you have had? Will you add the share button to your site? Do you think Google Drive will benefit your charity? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below or perhaps at the next NFPtweetup?

What charities can learn from gamification

So, I found myself scrolling through the latest articles on Mashable (I do this more regularly than I eat breakfast most mornings) and I saw a post entitled ’4 tips for keeping your gamified community motivated‘ – and I laughed out loud. Probably not quite the appropriate reaction but as a Blackberry owner and therefore as someone who doesn’t play Angry Birds, I find the word gamified almost nonsensical. The last time I got excited about a game I was 10 and had just completed Streets of Rage on my brother’s Sega Megadrive. I was intrigued, however, so read on to learn that, gamification is ‘so hot’ right now… I nearly closed my browser at the opening line but I held out. This is what Mashable had to say:

• Tip one: Know what motivates the various groups in your community and feed those motivated.
• Tip two: Make rewards attainable, regular, relevant and open to community
• Tip three: Create an MVP (most valuable player) program to encourage continued involvement from your most active and important members.
• Tip four: Define rules, make sure the community plays by them, and if a problem takes place address it as soon as possible.

All jokes aside, it’s actually some pretty sound advice. It’s important for charities to understand its supporters and to continually learn more about them and nurture their relationships. Social media makes this all the more relevant as supporters can reach out to charities on a daily basis – and provides a fantastic opportunity to learn about your different audiences.

Rewards and incentives aren’t typically associated with charitable giving in the traditional sense but applying relevant goals for supporters to achieve can push people to go the extra mile, whether it’s campaign signatures, marathon training or fundraising totals. It also encourages community spirit as supporters can connect online and work together towards a common goal.

Again, the terminology in tip three doesn’t quite lend itself to the charity sector. However, the bottom line is look after your most loyal supporters. This could be as simple as always replying to tweets and Facebook comments – or a shout out to top fundraisers, a #followfriday mention or replying to non-cause related tweets sometimes.

I don’t really subscribe to social media rules or guidelines, however, I do believe that the age old rules apply: treat others how you’d like to be treated. Facebook and Twitter are naturally more informal, and for this reason, often more appealing for supporters. If you do receive some negative comments on social networks, don’t ignore them. Use it as an oppportunity to speak openly and honestly.

Social media is meaningless?

I wanted to end this week’s post with some food for thought from Rami Khater, Al Jazeera’senior new media producer:

“We should stop calling social media ‘social media’ but ‘media’ as all media will soon be inherently social” – cheers to that!

Until next time,

Teri

A bit of beautiful world news to kick off – as of next week, I (Ash!) will sadly be leaving the beautiful team. After having been the first beautiful intern to be employed full time, I’ve had the privilege to work in an incredibly fun, talented and hard working team over the last (almost) three years. I’ve learned more than I could have imagined and will miss everyone terribly. Not everyone will miss my dad-like humour though.

I’ll be around at the occasional tweetup (if Teri lets me come!) and I’m sure I’ll be back in the charity sector before too long.

I’ll be leaving beautiful bytes in the more-than-capable hands of Rochelle and Teri but I’ll be reading them to make sure the quality doesn’t slip. Only kidding. I won’t be reading them.

And that’s the dad humour I mentioned earlier.

More room for tumbleweeds?

After a fairly quiet period from the social network that everyone loves to mock, Google+ has rolled out a complete redesign. Along with new navigation and other features akin to Facebook such as a ‘cover photo’, it seems that Google has taken a leaf out of Volkswagen’s book and introduced a hefty amount of white space on the right of the news feed.

While appearing to be a vast improvement on the original design (in my opinion), it still feels like a desperately lonely place. All the redesigns in the world still probably wouldn’t be able to change this, leading us to question whether Google+’s product life cycle is already hitting maturity, or even worse, decline.

This doesn’t seem to be putting the internet giant off expanding the Google+ portfolio though, after rumours that they are currently planning to add Google Analytics to brand pages – a direct attempt to compete with Facebook Insights.

On a lighter note, the addition of white space has sparked a #UseForWhiteSpace topic on the network, with people posting funny pictures of how they are utilising the area. Maybe this was all part of Google’s master plan? Maybe not…

Facebook users most engaged with brands at the weekend

New research has confirmed suspicions (and other, previous research) that Facebook users are most engaged at the weekend.

According to SocialBakers, brands see highest levels of engagement on Sundays, though the figures tend to vary depending on the industry in which the brand is based. Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be figures for the non-profit sector, but it definitely indicates that it is worth testing different types of post, and the days on which they are posted.

Facebook Ads have also been found to perform better at the weekend, with some adverts seeing an increase of around 12% on Saturdays compared to Mondays. Again, if you are running, or planning to run, Facebook Ads, it is worth testing to see if there is significant uplift in response on a particular day of the week.

Mobile payments will catch on

New research is indicating that mobile payments could be the norm by 2012. Whether or not this is a realistic prediction remains to be seen, especially with concerns over privacy and anonymity.

However, this could be excellent news for the charity sector. The ease and speed at which this technology allows people to transfer money means that many forms of offline fundraising (street, door to door etc) could see a boost.

But what about adoption rates? It’s all very well offering mobile payments, but if no one wishes to do so, investment in the technology would be pointless.

For example, take online donations, which last year accounted for 15% of all charitable donations. A few years ago, this would have been almost unthinkable, but access to technology and a change in people’s behaviour has driven growth in this area.

The same could potentially be expected from mobile payments, especially if the service is commonly available (i.e. built into mobile phones as standard and accepted in a majority of high street shops) and easy to use.

Want to produce a viral campaign? Good luck!

A recent study has found that chance is the biggest factor in virality, particularly in relation to tweets. While some have attempted to produce a formulaic approach to getting content to go viral, there is still no real way to account for the affect of chance.

Our advice? Aim to make a relevant campaign that is popular with your followers rather than trying to produce something that attempts to appeal to everyone and ‘go viral’.

More next week, but not from me!

Ash

Image via Inside Facebook

We know that in a majority of cases, DM campaigns that include localised variables pull vastly better than blanket ones do, so there is no reason why the same thinking shouldn’t work online.

New figures indicate that local Facebook pages are around five times more engaging than larger, corporate ones.

While the numbers sound great, five times the engagement on a page with 100 fans compared to 100,000 fans is still no competition. However the theory should multiply up as local pages garner larger numbers of fans. I’ve seen this done really well by bike company Specialized, who have allowed each of their concept stores to maintain their own social media pages. It means that any time you see an update or offer from the page, it is immediately relevant to you.

This also fits in with the ethos of social media and the way it should be integrated throughout the organisation. Such content heavy communications work best when everyone gets involved.

This may sound ambitious, especially if you are still trying to drive adoption of social media within your organisation, but on the other hand, this could be an excellent time to implement a strategy incorporating local pages. Start as you mean to go on and all that!

A relevant infographic!

Lots of interesting statistics in this non-profit specific infographic, but the one that really grabbed my attention was that every usable email address is worth an average of $12.92 (roughly £8.17). It becomes an even more interesting when combining it with the average number of email addresses non-profits have on file – around the 48,000 mark.

If only half of these email addresses were usable, that is still around £200,000 worth of donations sitting in your database.

Go! Now!

Image via Mashable

Campaign ‘sequel’ to Kony 2012 released

A follow up to the popular Kony 2012 video has just been released. A full ten minutes shorter that the first, the second video gives an update on the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) and addresses some of the negative comments generated after the first video.

The aim of the video remains the same – to put pressure on world leaders to bring the LRA to justice.

Given the ‘success’ of the previous video (the awareness it raised really was staggering), the second video is likely to prove just as effective. So, who is responsible for this level of success? I feel the dreaded ‘slacktivist’ (boooo! hisss!) term coming up…

Slackers give Slacktivists a bad name

Kony 2012 would have fizzled out like a damp corner-shop firework had it not been for social media. The tweeting, liking and sharing of the video ultimately led to its success, actions often associated with the demonised ‘slacktivist’.

However, the infographic below sheds light on the model behind slacktivism, and shows that you don’t need to go on hunger strike to affect social change. Plus one for the slacktivists!

Image via Mashable, Convio 2012 Benchmark

More next week,

Ash

Facebook Timeline increases brand engagement

According to a new survey by Simply Measured, the introduction of Timeline has increased fan engagement by 46%.

While this is really promising for the future of social media and its function in the overall marketing mix, perhaps there is a more fundamental reason for this change in behaviour.

Brands have been proudly showing off their Timelines after no doubt investing large amounts of time polishing and updating them with company details, important events and promoting particular posts along the way.

So while fan engagement has increased with brand pages, it is arguable that this is a result of increased brand engagement with Facebook. The heightened focus on content has meant that fans have something new with which to interact, and perhaps, in part, have caused this rise in interest in brands on Facebook.

How many assisted conversions are you getting from social media?

No idea? I’m not surprised. More advanced web metrics are complex enough to track, but try and include social media in the mix and you may as well pull a number out of a magician’s hat.

Up to now, tools that measure social interaction have been fairly simplistic in their metrics, measuring the tweets, likes or +1’s of a page. However, this is set to change with the introduction of Adobe Social as well as a new set of features for Google Analytics.

The aim is to give credit to social sites that helped generate revenue (or donations!) through your website – a so-called ‘assisted conversion’. Using these tools, it will be possible to identify visits to your website from social activity, and match future transactions that occur, therefore showing how valuable social activity is in real terms.

The Adobe Social tool won’t come cheap apparently, but also shouldn’t be too expensive to drive everyone but the big boys away.

More next week,

Ash

After recently reaching 500 million users (yes, five-hundred-million!), Twitter is also celebrated its sixth birthday yesterday. While going through several facelifts, the core functionality of Twitter has largely remained unchanged. It really is remarkable that such a simple idea has had such longevity.

I think we should all have cake to celebrate, don’t you?!

Eventbrite

Following the relative success of Square for iOS, Eventbrite have also jumped on the mobile payments bandwagon.

The introduction of their ‘At The Door Card Reader’ will allow tickets to be bought and sold on the day of an event quickly and easily. This has clear benefits for events fundraisers being able to accept card payments or donations from attendees or participants, as well as being able to collect data to help drive further support.

Pinterest copyright woes continue

After weeks of articles written discussing the questionable legality of ‘pinning’, it seems that Amazon could become the next party to get dragged into the ring.

Pinterest uses Amazon servers to host their site, and some copyright owners have been issuing DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notices directly to Amazon since they were having no luck with Pinterest.

The latest argument against ‘pinning’ copyrighted material, is that there are new, profit-generating applications being released that use content from Pinterest, and copyright owners are not being remunerated for the use of their work.

Honestly, we can’t call how this one will play out. We’ll be following the story closely.

…And the brand most engaged with the UK is…

PG Tips!

Measuring social engagement is a hotly debated topic and is a common NFPtweetup talking point. After this week’s news that PG Tips is ‘the most engaged with UK brand’, the subject of measurement reared it’s head again.

The iPeerIndex Engagement Index rated 250 UK brands and took into account several factors when ranking pages – the number of likes for each page carried relatively low significance. According to the survey, approximately 20% of all PG Tips fans were at some point engaged (i.e. actively liked, commented, shared etc a post) with the brand over the period of a week. This figure is really quite staggering, especially when comparing it to other channels.

Who can say they get a 20% engagement rate in their email marketing? And even if some do get this, does the response drive the same level of goodwill as a conversation taking place on a Facebook?

It’s sure getting hot in the social media kitchen!

More next week,

Ash

YouTube announces live streaming for non-profits

YouTube has previously livestreamed events for the ONE Campaign, RED and the American Foundation on Equal Rights. This week, YouTube announced that it would be opening up live streaming to all non-profits registered on their non-profit programme in a number of countries, including the UK.

This presents an amazing opportunity for charities to reach international audiences through live streaming all kinds of events – conferences, performances, training, debates…

Find out about joining YouTube’s non-profit programme, or if your charity is already signed up, find out how to get started with YouTube Live Streaming.

The end of Posterous?

Earlier this week, Posterous announced that it had been acquired by Twitter, prompting speculation that Posterous would be no more.

Integration between the platforms already exists: links to your Posterous posts can be automatically tweeted when published, so it will be interesting to see what further developments both companies have up their sleeves.

We’re big fans of Posterous at beautiful world so the topic of alternatives is being hotly debated. Posterous’ nearest competitor, Tumblr, has experienced exponential growth in the last couple of years, with a growing community and an increasing number of brands adding a Tumblog to their marketing mix. Then there are the old stalwarts, WordPress and Blogger, and newer mobile-only platforms like Path (I feel a blog post coming on…).

If you’re in a similar situation, do let us know what you’re thinking; for now, we’re clinging onto our Posterous blogs for as long as possible.

Pinterest to revamp profile pages

At SXSW Interactive yesterday, Pinterest announced that it would be revamping profile pages and launching the platform’s iPad app.

With 11 million users (and growing), charities, such as Merlin, Child’s i and Women for Women International, are getting on board and we’re looking forward to seeing how charities use Pinterest in their fundraising strategies in future.

CNN goes shopping?

So CNN might be buying Mashable for a rumoured $130 million.

Beloved by digital and digital-loving folk everywhere, Mashable is a go-to blog for social media and web business news read by 20 million unique visitors every month that was started in 2005 by a 19 year old Scot from his bedroom.

In the wake of AOL’s acquisition of The Huffington Post, it is testament to the importance being placed by traditional news outlets on blogs, and subsequently the influence of bloggers alongside their journalist brethren. Press coverage is often an important part of any integrated campaign, but alongside hammering up your journalist contacts, consider approaching bloggers in your campaign’s niche; their readers are often more loyal and engaged than traditional news outlets, and therefore more likely to connect with your campaign.

Activist Angry Birds

You wouldn’t usually equate Angry Birds and activism, but MTV has teamed up with Rovio, the makers of Angry Birds to allow players of Angry Birds Space to access a Golden Egg Level when they take part in MTV’s A Thin Line campaign against cyber bullying.

Although the campaign is aimed at young people, I’m sure there are fans of Angry Birds outside their demographic that will be wanting to take part (*cough cough*). Debate may abound about slacktivism, but I think that this style of campaigning, especially for awareness raising, should be encouraged because you’re engaging someone with a mechanism that is, well, fun!

Enjoy the rest of your week!

Rochelle

So, the big news this week – Facebook Timeline is now available for brands. We’ve been eagerly awaiting this new functionality since before Christmas and speculating about what it will allow us to do differently with our brand pages.

While it poses a great opportunity for brands to engage with their fans on Facebook, we’ve been wondering whether the benefits of Timeline have been slightly over-hyped. Are brands more excited about Timeline for Pages than fans?

Take Red Bull for example. On the day Timeline was launched, they ran a scavenger-hunt style competition to follow a trail of clues through their Facebook posts. A great way to engage people, I thought.

I’ll be honest, I couldn’t decipher the second clue and gave up. From reading comments on their wall I wasn’t the only one – most people thought they had completed the trail after the first clue.

Difficulty of the challenge aside, is this level of interest sustainable, or more to the point, necessary? After all, the most important thing we do on social media on a day to day basis is produce and post new content to spawn conversation and ultimately, relationships with supporters.

So, if this is the case, is Timeline merely a feature introduced by Facebook to engage brands with the social network and ultimately, affect the decision to dedicate larger shares of advertising budgets on Facebook Ads?

These thoughts aside, since launch, we have discovered some really great features such as ‘sticky’ posts that you can pin to the top of your Timeline and of course the opportunity to display some gorgeous imagery as your ‘Cover’.

However, for every yin, there is a yang, and the worst we have come across is the inability to set a default landing tab for new visitors. Though still accessible through the tab tiles along the top of the page, it is less than ideal to expect users to go looking for welcome pages or promotional tabs.

Is this more evidence that Timeline is there to engage the brand rather than fans?

What has your experience been of your brand page with Timeline? Have you set it up already or preparing something similar to Red Bull? We’d be really interested to hear your trials, tribulations and successes!

Kony 2012

It will have been difficult to miss the traction a recent campaign known as Kony 2012 from Invisible Children has gained over the last few days. Social feeds are filled with a link to a twenty-nine minute long video that aims to rally the masses behind Joseph Kony’s arrest.

First of all, I can’t help but feel that it has been let down by they message of making Joseph Kony ‘famous’. There is a word to better describe their aim, and that would be ‘infamous’. Such a small detail, but in my mind, lets campaign down at the first hurdle.

On to more, umm…fundamental issues. The first call to action is to share the video, and it is pretty clear that people are doing just that. However, several people have questioned the effectiveness of a ‘share’ considering the scale and nature of the problem. Opposition to the campaign ranges from this really interesting article questioning whether the whole thing is a ‘scam’ to this hilarious meme image doing the rounds on Facebook (right).

However, what this does highlight is how the web is improving learning and increasing awareness to help people make more informed decisions – which can be a double-edged sword if that only highlights your failings.

A branch of thought from this is the old ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity’, though perhaps this isn’t true if the bad publicity undermines a charity or non-profit’s credibility to the extent that people don’t trust them.

What this is though, is a good example of something creating a buzz even if the campaign may not be genuinely successful. Campaigns are all about achieving objectives and, for charities, that ultimately means social change.  So the valuable metrics are not usually things like views and shares (unless it is purely awareness raising), but wider implications like getting project funding or changes in legislation etc. and the positive outcomes these can bring.

Google Ads with Google+ shares receive improved click-through rate

New figures from Google indicate that Google Ads that have a ‘social annotation’ (where the ad has been shared on Google+) receive 5-10% higher CTR than ads without them. While this is a great figure, what I’m not seeing is the number of ads that have actually been shared on the social network.

I mean really, who does that?