Which social media spaces are you in?

Social media stats

• Social networks and blogs are now the 4th most popular online activity ahead of personal email

• Member communities are visited by 67% of the global online population

• time spent is growing at 3 times the overall internet rate, accounting for almost 10% of all internet time

• £1 in every £3 in the DEC Haiti Earthquake Appeal was donated online. Facebook was the 2nd most important source of online referrals after BBC websites and Twitter 5th most important.

• There are more women than men on the majority of social media. 

• 2 Facebook (2), Youtube (4), Blogger (7), Twitter (12), MySpace (15) and Wordpress (18) are all among the global top 20 websites (Alexa).

Most popular social networks by country, 2009

Factors to consider

• Generation gap

• People take social media with them wherever they go

• Sites may change, but social media has changed communication forever

• Social media is increasingly how people engage with news

• Your content is in the users’ hands once it’s out there

The power of APIs

• What’s an API?

• Flickr App Garden

• Facebook apps

• API and success of Twitter: Picfog, Twitterfall, Twitter Grader etc.

• iPhone, iPad etc. means there will be much more to come.

Geotagging

• What is geotagging?

• Increasingly popular way of organising and searching data

• Can be used to highlight events in a city or country

• E.g. mashups such as Twittervision

• Photo searches on Flickr

Lessons learned

• Oxfam can no longer afford not to engage with digital platforms and outlets

• All businesses must adapt or die – why continue to spend all efforts solely on traditional outlets when audiences are elsewhere?

• It doesn’t have to be scary – simple yet effective tools and adaptations in ways of working can make a huge difference

• It doesn’t mean we are ignoring or belittling traditional media

Summary

• Along with Facebook, the most influential site

• Most viewed video – Charlie Bit My Finger (154 million)

• World’s biggest repository of video – you can find anything here

• Massive social impact: part of culture

• Video sharing now an everyday part of life

• Criticism of YouTube, mostly centred around censorship

How Oxfam's using it

• 6,000 videos labelled Oxfam – how to make sense of it?

• OxfamGreatBritain channel

• 245 videos, 1.6 million views

• 1,900 subscribers

• Video content around range of programme and emergency work – can be embedded elsewhere

• Oxfam S. Asia channel

Starbucks campaign

• Social networks alongside standard media campaign

• YouTube debate

• MySpace & Facebook actions

• Keeping story alive over 12 months

• Tim Fullerton talks about the campaign

Starbucks: YouTube debate

• Oxfam day of action video to move the story on

• Starbucks response video

• Third party experts step in

Starbucks: YouTube debate

Progressed story on two levels

Starbucks: YouTube debate

Campaign victory: closing the story

Similar sites

Vimeo.com – smart-looking, easy to use

Blip.tv – for independently-produced web TV

Yahoo video

Photo sites branching into video: Flickr, Photobucket

How Oxfam's using it

• From group to fan page

• One space to talk about all of OGB’s activities

• Currently 21,000 supporters

• But not being promoted widely enough to maximise our presence

• Trialled applications – still work to be done

How to use it

• Amount of users is enormous (350 million and counting), so extremely powerful for mass outreach

• Ineffective for fundraising but great for campaigning

• Often spontaneous explosions in groups/pages as campaign takes off virally

• To spread virally, must be big news or lots of fun

• It’s fundamentally a personal space, so treat it as such

• Provide link to your Facebook presence in lots of external comms

• Not everything works on Facebook

Similar sites

MySpace – Still relatively big in US, less important in UK outside music

Orkut – run by Google, big in S. America

Bebo – younger audience in UK

LinkedIn – the social network for businesses & professionals

Twitter – the microblogging tool

• The 38th most visited site in UK and fifth most popular social network in UK

• In UK, 30th biggest source of traffic to OTHER sites – implications for us of which are huge

• 12th most popular globally

Twitter’s power

• Iran – As media struggled for info, protesters used Twitter to organise, galvanise and disseminate info

• Mumbai bombings

• Amazon gay books furore - #Amazonfail

• Haiti earthquake

Far more than a website

• Different platforms for posting updates: mobile, iPhone, desktop apps.

• Mashups using Twitter data

• Live updating services

• Twitpic

Specialised uses of Twitter

• Reporting crimes: Boston police

• Latest weather reports

• Quit smoking

• Live traffic reports

• Know when to water your plants!

How Oxfam's using it

i) Live reporting

ii) Dissemination of newsworthy material

iii) Miscellaneous Oxfam promotion

iv)  Conversation/crowdsourcing

v)  Competitions

vi)  RTing/engaging with others

vii) Individuals tweeting from events e.g. @Louisoxfam

How Oxfam's using it

• Oxfam GB Flickr pool

• Set up the DEC on Flickr to share multi-agency humanitarian photos

• Has been used in cross-platform photo campaigns

• Oxfam not making enough of the community aspects of Flickr

• Could do much more with geotagging and maps

Similar sites

Picasa web albums - seamless integration with Picasa and Google accounts quickly gained the service a large following

Photobucket – approx. 50 million users

Imageshack – the fifth-largest photo sharing site

Smugmug – aimed at professional photo market

Not to forget that Facebook is the most popular photo sharing site by far…

Blogging

Blogging

• Why it matters

• New, potentially wider and digitally savvy audience

• Bloggers becoming as influential as journalists

• Our competitors not as known for it

• What it can do

• Raise awareness of Oxfam campaigns, projects and messages

• Expand our digital reach

• Gets us ‘networked in’ with key influentials in our various areas

• Word of mouth is one of the strongest forms of recommendation

Putting blogs to work for us

• Use this added value content across several media platforms

• Monitor what people are saying about Oxfam and listen to them

• Build up knowledge of blogs in your area

• Build relationships with key bloggers in your field

• Build them into your digital strategy early on – if you can’t write it who will? Think of RMOs, external guest bloggers, policy people etc.

Blogging – getting it right

1. Be conversational in tone2. Start a conversation3. Be unique4. Link5. Don’t go on for too long 6. Write regularly7. Catchy, interesting titles are a must8. Respond to comments9. Rich experience10. Don’t assume knowledge

Make your own social network

How Oxfam's using it

Yammer – Twitter for businesses

Ning – create your own closed social network

Netvibes – a useful tracking tool

• Netvibes Oxfam monitoring page• Ten minutes to set up – very useful for monitoring coverage

and buzz• Similar free useful sites: iGoogle

A special word for

• Maps

• Docs

• Calendar

• Reader

• Earth

• Checkout

• Labs – new stuff all the time

• As well as YouTube, Picasa, Chrome, Blogger

Social media strategies

• A coherent approach is critical

• Pull your social media plans together into one comms strategy

• Assess whether you have the right content to make it worth using each space

• Judge whether the audience in each space is right for your comms

• Consider how you will monitor and follow through in each space

• Consider the OI context for global moments?

Golden rules for using social media

1. 1. Go where the audience is: don’t expect them to come to you

2. 2. Social networks are about dialogue and conversation

3. 3. You need to be fun and engaging

4. 4. Tailor to suit each individual space

5. 5. Move quickly!

6. 6. Not everything necessarily works for social media

7. You can’t do it all on your own

8. Don’t overload users

Exercise

The 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference will be held in Cancún, Mexico, from 29 November 2010 to 10 December 2010.

Oxfam needs to communicate the human impact of climate change across its communications leading up to the summit, and put pressure on global leaders for immediate action on a fair and binding deal that benefits poor countries

How would you use social media to ensure that Oxfam’s messages are heard and understood by the most people?

Consider:

• What kind of multimedia content you would want to use

• Which social media you would engage with

• How you would approach each social media space

• How you would ensure communications were consistent and coherent throughout

• How you would best communicate the key messages appropriately