Your Online Presence > Strategy & Development
Women’s Resource Centre’s Journey into Social Media
Basic
By Leah Williams
Social media tools are the new normal. By now almost everyone has heard about blogging, and other social media tools such as twitter and Facebook. But how are these tools actually being used by non profits to communicate and engage with their audiences? Leah Williams shows how social media tools have benefitted the Women's Resource Centre.
The Women’s Resource Centre (WRC) is a charity which supports women’s organisations to be more effective and sustainable.
Head of Communications Leah Williams began experimenting with various social media tools as a way of engaging their stakeholders after attending an event at Charity Communications in October 2008 at which Rachel Beer of Beautiful World was speaking.
Blogging and other social media tools such as twitter, facebook, flickr, YouTube, delicious and Ning now form a central part of WRC’s communications strategy. Best of all the tools are free (although you can pay for enhanced features such as custom branding), and are genuinely helping WRC increase its impact.
Another great advantage of many of these tools is that they can be integrated into each other and/or your existing online presence (and often vice versa). So for example, WRC can easily show its twitter feed, flickr photos, youtube videos etc. on their blog, facebook page or website. This allows their different audiences to have a holistic view of WRC’s online activity. Often the people they reach through one social media platform will be different (their facebook audience may be quite different to twitter, blog or website audience for example).
In short, social media tools allow WRC to go to where their audience is, rather than just expecting their audience to find them. And, of course, all of these tools can be used to drive traffic to their website so people can find out more about their work.
Listening and learning
Before diving into social media organisationally, Leah felt it was important for her to find out more about the various tools and get some personal experience of using them. She started by setting up a personal profile on twitter and joined the online community at the Charity Place.
This allowed her to:
- Experiment ‘in private’ without (much) risk to WRC
- Listen & find out how other people use it (etiquette & good ideas)
- Make peer contacts (other people working in charity communications and using social media)
Leah now also helps the organisations WRC works with to understand and get the most out of appropriate social media tools.
Strategic fit
Leah began experimenting and eventually began to see how various tools were a good fit for WRC strategic goals which include:
- Promoting solidarity in a competitive world
- Advocating for the women’s sector
- Building the capacity of the women’s sector
- Demonstrating leadership with grassroots integrity
- Improving WRC’s national reach
- Achieving financial independence and stability for WRC
There were plenty of other drivers for taking social media seriously. For example using social media tools allows WRC to:
- Communicate with their members, supporters and peers in a more responsive way (engagement).
- Establish its brand and reputation, by extending them into new platforms.
- Make all their work more effective, e.g. conferences, capacity building, research, campaigning.
Read on to find out how WRC is using some of their chosen social media tools…
Blogging
Although the blog is very much in an experimental stage, it is a useful extra tool. WRC uses it to do quick diary-like updates (events, opinion pieces etc.) WRC sees it a bit like opening a window on its work, enabling people to catch a glimpse of what they do.
One easy trick is to take a picture of an event, upload it to Flickr, and then write a short post inspired by the picture – and you can post it to your blog directly from Flickr.
Blogs can be particularly useful for organisations which have a very static website (or one that is difficult to update quickly) – and some organisations which don’t have a website might find an adapted blog can replace a traditional website. As it’s so easy to update, you can share it around the team – so you get a multitude of voices on the blog, an insight into different areas of your work, and it’s less work for everyone…
Twitter is a free “microblogging” platform. It allows users to send and read short updates (up to 140 characters) called “tweets”. Subscribers can “follow” other twitter users of interest to them.
WRC uses twitter to:
- Raise their profile
- Reach new audiences
- Encourage debate and support around issues
- Network women’s organisations and supporters
For example Leah follows other women’s organisations on twitter so WRC can stay in touch with their issues, introduces more women’s organisations to twitter and introduces them to each other on twitter. It’s a very direct way to be in touch with people, and it can also be used for campaigning and even fundraising.
Facebook is a worldwide social networking site that allows user to add “friends”, and send them messages. Users can update their profile pages so their “friends” can be notified about what they are up to.
Many non profits now have a facebook presence. For small organisations it can be an easy way of getting an online presence without having to build a website.
Charities can build a facebook ‘page’, which people can then choose to follow (or ‘become a fan’ of). Then the charity’s updates will appear in their fans’ newsfeed.
WRC has only recently got a presence on facebook but are already using it for:
- Campaigning
- News
- Engagement
Flickr
Flickr is an image and video hosting website. Users can upload, organise, and share photos, “tag” uploaded material with keywords to make it easy for others to find images that might be of interest to them. Visitors can also comment on photos. Various tools also make it easy to pull your flickr “photostream” into other platforms like your website or blog.
WRC uses flickr to:
- Show pictures from events, training, fundraising etc.
- Provide a visual representation of their work and the women they work with
- Find images for newsletters etc. (copyright holders are often willing to allow their images to be used non commercially if asked nicely and there are lots of images available under a Creative Commons license).
YouTube
Youtube is a video hosting and sharing website. Users can upload, share and comment on videos. As with flickr there are tools to allow you to easily embed video on your website, blog etc. without needing lots of techie skills.
WRC made a film at their conference in March and have uploaded it to YouTube. They intend to start using film more as it can be more accessible and impactful than written reports.
On YouTube, you can also ‘subscribe’ to other people’s channels, which is another way of networking and learning – you can see how other organisations are using film clips.
So Women’s Resource Centre has subscribed to UNIFEM, YWCA and NCVO.
Delicious
Delicious is a social bookmarking service that allows users to tag, save, manage and share web pages of interest. Rather than having to save your bookmarks on every computer you use, they are stored centrally and accessible via logging into delicious from any computer with an internet connection. Amongst other things, users of delicious can “subscribe” to each other’s bookmarks and so discover web pages that might be of common interest.
WRC has only just started using this, but it could become a really good resource that other women’s organisations could use to find resources, information and web tools.
Ning
Ning is a social networking platform that allows anyone to create their own public or private social networking site with features including discussion forums, photo sharing, blogs, video and more. All in all it’s possible to quickly create a sophisticated web presence for little financial outlay.
WRC are using Ning for:
- Networking women’s organisations
- Peer support and advice
The Women’s Café, WRC’s presence on Ning is currently under development and not open publicly, however it is similar to NAVCA’s NAVCAboodle which was also developed in Ning. It is an online community for the women’s voluntary and community sector, so people can find other people working in similar areas (e.g. there are groups for people working in Wales, the North East and the South West), or interested in similar issues (e.g. groups for people interested in green issues or social media). People can start discussions, ask questions, get advice and support from each other etc.
Leah’s top tips
Leah has the following suggestions for anyone taking their first steps into using social media as part of their organisation’s strategy for communication and engagement:
- Be bold but not reckless. It’s your charity’s reputation on the line of course, but organisations need to start being more open. It can feel quite exposed or vulnerable, but you have to give up a little bit of control to allow people to communicate and engage with you.
- You don’t have to be perfect but you must be human. That means you have to sound like a human being, you have to talk to people and not just broadcast your press releases. You have to admit mistakes and give opinions.
- Experiment. All these things are quite new and there are lots of ways of using them that haven’t been discovered yet. Try things out and see what works.
- Learn from other people. Listen and look at what other people are doing before you dive in.
- Don’t think of it as just shiny new toys. It’s a whole new way of communicating and might require a big change in organisational culture. Who is allowed to ‘speak’ on behalf of the organisation? How does information flow?
- Know yourself. Be clear about your identity, your messages, your voice. This will make it much easier to know what you should be talking about and who you should be talking to.
- Know your audiences. Who are you trying to connect with? What are they interested in? Where are they?
Next steps…
If you read this far, it’s likely you’re at least a little bit interested in taking forward social media use in your organisation. So what next? Here are some things you can do after reading this article (ok maybe tomorrow):
- Investigate different social media platforms as an individual (join Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, navcaboodle etc.)
- Set up organisational profiles on some of these (basic info, point to your main website, claim your spot so unauthorised people don’t).
- Start internal conversations about social media and how it could work in your organisation. There will be lots of ways that it won’t work, but there will be ways in which it can really support your aims. What will you need to change to make it work?
Other things to think about
Once you’ve experimented, listened and learned, looked at which tools are the best strategic fit for your organisation it’s time to turn your mind to matters such as:
- Getting internal buy-in (bringing others in your organisation along with you)
- Time, resources (how much of these to have to devote? How you are going to maintain your presence on your chosen social media platforms)
- Policies (e.g. who has permission to speak, post etc?)
- Who is responsible?
- Openness, transparency, making mistakes
- Organisational identity and voice
- How useful is it really?
More Resources
Leah Williams’ slides – Women’s Resource Centre – our journey into social media
Rachel Beer’s slides for charity communications - Social Media for Change – Bringing charities and supporters closer together
NFPtweetup wiki – A meet up of Twitter users - and those interested in the potential of Twitter and other social media - who work at, or with, non-profit organisations. NFP tweetup on twitter; NFPtweetup on flickr; NFPtweetup on facebook.
1in10: A case study in social media campaigning – Slides of AmnestyUK campaign for International Women’s Day
