#Commschat on charities, hobbyists and measurement

Monday night’s #commschat focused on charities and their use of social media, with Just Giving’s marketing manager, @Salleeann, in the host’s chair. As usual, there’s a full transcript available, but I’ve attempted to pick out some of the key points below, freed as I now am from the shackles of 140 characters.

The evening’s core issue was the cost of social media. It’s the same for many corporates of course, even for agencies, but budgets are usually tighter in the charity space. But the question of whether small charities with small budgets compete on social media was answered with a resounding ‘yes’.

Generally speaking, charities have the advantage of representing issues that are, ipso facto, engaging. But in the real world, a worth cause alone is seldom enough. While there was some suggestion that good ideas will succeed, @PGeorgieva rightly stressed that ‘engagement and persistence are necessary’ supplements to creativity. This was quickly followed by a consensus around the need to measure that “engagement and persistence”, both the activity and its outcomes.

It’s only this kind of measurement that allows appropriate resource allocation. Free tools help, of course: Google Alerts and Analytics, tweetdeck, socialmention.com and kurrently.com were also mentioned as useful resources. But right now, it seems like most charities’ social media efforts are single-handed efforts – @RobMDyson at WhizzKidz, for example.

While charities have certainly had some great successes in social media, and will undoubtedly continue to do so, it’s clear that there is still a lot of education needed both across the sector and also within organisations. As @Yeloroom pointed out, some individuals achieved great things having taken ‘up social media out of interest rather than duty/role’. Formal measurement is required to lift it from this hobbyist realm.