We had a fantastic 6th NFPtweetup at Breast Cancer Care last Thursday (check our posterous for the briefest summary).  So, before the night’s memories and #NFPtweetup mentions fade, I thought I’d try to capture the essence of it here:

The 6th event felt like it began long before it did, with an outpouring of excitement via Twitter as people made their way to the venue and those who could not attend in person expressing their disappointment in 140 characters.

After the t-shirt competition winners, @PontoonDock, @amyrsward, @HaveFunDoGood and special prize winner @RochelleDancel received their t-shirts, the event carried on with three great presentations:

UNICEF: Charlie Simpson – A media sensation

UNICEF were looking for a positive, UK based, Haiti appeal fundraising story to engage with supporters through the media. After coming across Charlie Simpson’s tale, they promoted his story through the press. What UNICEF wasn’t expecting, was how the story would then grow into a worldwide phenomenon.

The ‘Charlie Simpson effect’:
•    Caused UNICEF UK’s web traffic to go off the charts after press coverage
•    Was responsible for 30% of UNICEF’s Haiti coverage
•    Galvanised people to support a 7-year old boy to an unprecedented degree, with donations amounting over £208,000 to date
•    Inspired many to come up with their own fundraising initiatives for Haiti – fundraising enquiries went from about 4 a day to 50 a day

Once they realised the scale of its impact, UNICEF made use of the opportunity to get other people fundraising. UNICEF attributed the viral success of Charlie’s story to its authenticity; although @citizensheep pointed out that such fundraising stories also need to tug at the heartstrings in the first place; being a cute kid on a bike certainly helped a lot.

UNICEF’s impressive graphs illustrated the tipping point where Charlie’s fundraiser transformed from local success into global phenomenon. However, the biggest lesson we took from the presentation is when opportunity strikes, be prepared to take advantage of it quickly. You can’t predict when your communication will go viral online, so be ready with all available resources to ride the momentum of a wonderful opportunity.

UNICEF was also kind enough to share that, of their top referring sites during the ‘peak Charlie Simpson period (20 – 30 Jan)’ was Facebook, which accounted for 17% of referrals.  Twitter accounted for just 0.3% of click-throughs – which is clearly not the whole picture in terms of the contribution it will have made.  It was certainly considerably overshadowed by Facebook though, which isn’t really surprising when you compare the difference between user numbers.

British Red Cross and Merlin: Impact of social media on fundraising for Haiti

This joint presentation by British Red Cross and Merlin demonstrated how a larger and smaller charity used social media in an emergency response.  They focused on their Twitter use to illustrate social media upsides and downsides in their Haiti fundraising communication.

According to both charities, social media allows for immediate, high reach, cost-effective and personal engagement. Because it can be done anywhere, people are able to receive updates from locals and aid workers on the ground. This instant spreading of emotional reaction and updates on their progress makes social media incredibly effective in an emergency appeal. Responding to positive and negative comments was essential in their social media use and they felt their use of social media had resulted in much greater levels of brand awareness.

For British Red Cross and Merlin, the downsides of social media engagement include the lack of direct control over what others say about their charities. To protect their brands, both charities view it necessary to monitor and manage comments, which made it time consuming. They also said that the fundraising income generated from social media channels is still minute compared to traditional channels, but that it was too early to expect more.

Some attendees like @calemox and @watfordgap saw the downsides not as weaknesses, but as opportunities. While charities can’t control what people say about them on social media, they are able to nip rumours in the bud at a speed that is very hard to do offline. Social media channels may not have produced spectacular results in terms of fundraising income – yet – but they are fantastic tools when it comes to driving traffic towards charities’ websites.

One of the final slides covered social media management within both charities. Essentially, who’s responsible for ‘doing’ social media is less about which department’s remit it falls under. More important is that whoever does it is actually communicating with people. The key word, as always, is engagement.

Whizz-Kidz: Measuring Social Media Metrics

Last but by no means least, Whizz-Kidz’s Rob Dyson combined honesty and humour for his presentation on social media metrics. Taking us through his journey exploring various free-to-use social media measurement tools, Rob encouraged us to take into account their pluses and minuses to help the other charities attending to figure out what might work for them. Other attendees chipped in with other measurement tools worth trying (also see JustGiving’s notes from the 6th NFPtweetup).

For Whizz-Kidz, Rob monitors social media mentions. This enabled him to identify case studies, as well as people to engage in conversation with – who may or may not be Whizz-Kidz supporters. He suggested spreading the conversations across different networks, and to generate interest for your cause by making the conversations relevant to different audiences in different places.

In Rob’s conclusion, he talked about being selective about what you measure. Learn what’s important for your social media measurement as you go along.

We know that simply being able to measure something isn’t always the same as it being worthwhile, and that the real question is what, within the range of metrics, are the important ones to measure?  Without knowing what you’re trying to achieve, it’s difficult to identify what counts as success – so our advice is always to start with your charity’s or department’s strategic objectives when deciding which activities are important and always to refer measurement back to these objectives, to decide whether you are generating value for your organisation.

Rob also said he believes it’s important not to get hung up on ‘strategy’, since the fluid nature of social media makes communication an art more than an exact science (do you agree?).  For those who are trying to get management buy-in for using social media, Rob’s tip is to keep a record of your social media successes in order to evidence its impact to senior management – which sounded like good advice to us.

The evening came to a close with the launch of Becauseitsgood.org – a third sector community blog started by Enable Interactive, with the aim of encouraging those working in digital communication for the third sector to share ideas and insights to improve the way digital is being used.

Everyone at the 6th NFPtweetup took valuable lessons from the presentations with them and those who were able to stay longer extended their night at the Lord Nelson with conversations probably best left out of this blogpost!  We don’t think we’ve ever seen that many people from so many charities in one pub and it was a lot of fun.

I reckon the 6th NFPtweetup might have been the best one ever – despite a slightly more formal structure than usual.  It’s so successful because it’s so genuinely collaborative.  It takes the efforts of a lot of different people to make it work – the team at beautiful world, sponsorship from Just Giving and, for this event, Enable Interactive, too, Breast Cancer Care for providing the venue, the lovely speakers with their great presentations, as well as all of the attendees in person at the event and online, both sharing thoughts via Twitter. Together, the whole really is greater than the sum of its parts.

Thanks to everyone who made the 6th NFPtweetup a fantastic event. We’re counting on all of you to help us make the 7th NFPtweetup even better – so, if you came along, or followed online, please let us know what you thought by completing our short survey.

Rebekah

P.S. Check out our Flickr gallery to see some photos from the night.