Becky's Ramblings

Since I gave up work to embark on this fulltime mumness I have been neglecting my computer so I have now resolved to be more vigilant so watch this space more to come i promise.

While I’ve still got one more day at work today was my official leaving lunch with friends, and I said goodbye to some great people. I know we will stay in touch but I suppose it’s not the same as seeing each other every day.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not about to change my mind I know I’m doing the right thing. There comes a stage where you just have to accept that you can’t give everything 100% and I had a choice between giving that to my son or to my job. I chose my son and I am really looking forward to a slight easing in the parental guilt department.

So after tomorrow I start my new career, worryingly I found out today my new role doesn’t get weekends off and the pay is not great but I am assured by fellow W + M s that the easy commute is well worth it.

So to all the Dyslexia Action girls I’ll miss you, love you all lots and I promise I’ll see you soon. 

Few would argue against the assertion that Charities lead the way in the use of social media, I suppose that is partly due to the fact that we are used to working with limited budget and resource so most charities recognised immediately the potential in this media which is essentially free to use. We are now reaching and engaging with a wider and more diverse audience through various channels this has a significant impact on raising awareness about causes that do not have the budget for mass marketing.

However I do think on occasion we are not exploiting this as much as we could. When you mention social media people automatically think of Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and various other platforms, what we tend to overlook is that your website is your most powerful form of communication and remains so even with the advent of all these others. Facebook and twitter users are already engaged in these platforms and are therefore able to see your content, but just by viewing or sharing a post they are not necessarily engaging with your cause. By using links, polls , votes and powerful content you should be driving supporters to your website. For example using a twitter vote during one campaign we were able to increase hits to our website by over 300% .

The other common misconception is that social media should be used simply to provide narrative for traditional marketing campaigns. I have read many campaign plans that include social media only as a kind of footnote saying ‘this will be supported by social media.’  Social media should not be seen as supporting traditional marketing but more as an integral part, a driver and , on occasion, an alternative.

I have finally manged to get access to the Beta platform and have spent the past few days looking around.

First impressions are that google have successfully combined many of the features that we have come to know and love in Facebook and Twitter. The feature that has particularly piqued my interest is the use of circles.

With Circles G+ appear to have succeeded where Facebook Groups and Twitter Lists have failed. The potential for circles both in fundraising and relationship building is huge.

The ability to tailor your messages according to circle means that you can easily make sure your content is relevant and appropriate, it will also provide a great measure for engagement as you will be able to progress people through a series of circles based on your interaction. I think that for charities this means a big step forward in connecting with our supporters and fundraisers.

On a more personal note we’ve all heard the stories about people posting on social networks and forgetting who can see,With Circles it is easy to restrict who gets the posts which means no more need for separating your work and personal accounts I have simply set up a Work Circle and a personal circle to eliminate any danger of professional embarrassment!

This is the strapline on the frontpage of the Google + Project, which is full to capacity so anything I say here is pure speculation and not from any experience with the real thing.

I have to agree the internet in itself is becoming more and more of a real world with many close relationships, both personal and business, being conducted online. What social media and the internet have developed is a very high level of transparency within our lives, with conversations likely to be ‘overheard’ and many people and organisations actively courting eavesdroppers in order to get their messages out. On the whole I think this is a great thing, maybe out of laziness or just because I work, have a child and maintain a home, I find maintaining and building friendships much easier when done from the comfort of home.

However there are some things that happen in the real world, in relationships, that are in danger of being replicated online. We already know that there is a great deal of Cyber bullying out there, but do you remember in school the grouping and cliques and the feelings they evoked? ( I was fortunate enough to be the popular kids pet geek which protected me from a lot of that) My fear is that the drive towards contact based searching will recreate the ‘it’s not what you know it’s who you know’ mentality online.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not condemning Google + in any way, as I mentioned earlier I haven’t had a chance to even look around yet, I just foresee the importance of you’re contacts becoming as important if not more important than your content and message.It’s all very well spending time and money honing and perfecting your topline messaging, but it’s no good to anyone if nobody hears it !

My advice to charities would be to take Google+ seriously and invest some time and resource into understanding it. Because whether you love them or hate them Google is going nowhere and Content is no longer King, invest time in creating and maintaining relationships otherwise your content will be sat in the corner and nobody will ask it to dance.

OK so now I have been messing about on Tumblr for a whole week and I have to say I do really like it.

I probably haven’t got to grips with all of the functionality yet but I do think it’s great fun, the dashboard is intuitiveand there is loads you can do. What I am struggling with however is the social networking side, this is probably as I don’t yet have many followers so I can’t really asses the interactivity.

I think I would have a hard time defining and justifying it’s use for a charity organisation as it feels to me like a very personal individual tool. it’s almost like a build your own website tool which is just not needed when you have a corporate website and facebook and twitter.

So I think for now, although I personally am converted, professionally I’m going to stick to my old friend twitter.