I'm speaking at a conference on social media about how charities can measure and evaluate social media activity.
The first bit is relatively straight-forward: there are lots of free tools which can help you measure activity. I'll point to some of them later on.
The difficult bit is evaluating that activity, particularly if you're a hard-pressed charity with scarce resources.
A journalist I know quoted a social media expert to me last week. "Basically, he said trying to evaluate social media activity is both impossible and pointless. Does that help?". Well, yes and no, thanks Sam.
It's only pointless if you just measure activity because that doesn't tell you anything meaningful on its own. You might have inadvertently created a firestorm on Twitter that generates thousands of tweets. It'll get your numbers up - but perhaps not in the way your Board expected.
Or you might not get a huge response, but you still engage with the people you were trying to reach. So that's a success, albeit not on a grand scale.
Just as the PR industry has moved away from using AVEs to evaluate activity, so we must think harder about what success looks like in social media terms. So pointless, no. Difficult, yes, but not, I think, impossible.
What probably is impossible is to know everything that's been said, recommended, blogged or tweeted about your charity and its activities and issues day and night. So think carefully about how much time you can and will devote to finding out, and make it proportionate to your needs and levels of social media activity. It is very easy to disappear down the Twitter rabbit hole only to emerge, several hours later, in need of a stronger prescription from your optician...
I have to make a confession here: I'm no social media expert, I'm learning about this as I go along - from trying it, and from other people who seem to know what they're doing.
The key, as I see it, is not so far from evaluating the outcome of other communications activities.
- be absolutely clear, when you set your objectives, how you're going to measure and evaluate your success. If you can't say how you'll do it, they're the wrong objectives
- plan an integrated campaign in which social media activity plays a part
- know who your audience is, where they are, what motivates them
- know what success looks like - go beyond numbers of 'likes' 'friends' 'tweets' and so on. Is it new members, supporters, people getting involved in a forum or campaign on your website or elsewhere?
- decide which tools you'll use to measure activity
- know how you'll analyse the results
- evaluate and learn for the next time, and most importantly
- keep it up. It takes seconds to tweet, but Rome wasn't built in a day and neither is an online network.
Now for those tools - it's not an exhaustive list, but a good place to start:
google alerts, socialmention.com - let you know when you're being talked about
twitter search: use Tweetdeck to see who's saying what
tweetreach: see how far your tweets have gone
google analytics: see traffic levels, sources, key phrases for your site
howsociable: measure the visibility of your charity on the web. Useful for comparisons with other charities too.
alexa; estimate of reach, rank, page views and visitor information for your site. Track over time.
Bit.ly: shorten and share links, then see what people do with them. I love it.
Blog comments: how many, what content, how influential.
So here are my thoughts so far. What do you think?
Monday 11 October 2010
Monday 13 September 2010
The power of 'Why?' three times
If you have ever spent time with a toddler, you'll have some idea of the power of the question "Why?". Especially when it's repeated.
TODDLER "Why are you doing that?"
ME "Because I'm making lunch."
T: "Why?"
M: "Because it's lunchtime."
T: "Why?"
M: "Because it's the middle of day, sort of half way between breakfast and tea, and so we're probably getting hungry now so it's a good time to stop and eat. OK?"
A reasonable anwer; the logic stacks up; the toddler concedes. He is a bit hungry. Doesn't necessarily explain the cheese sandwiches though - he probably fancies fish fingers. But that's detail.
The thing is, no-one questioned me about why it's lunchtime before. I've only ever been challenged on whether it's lunchtime, what to have for lunch, or where to have it. It's so obviously the right thing to do mid-way-ish between breakfast and tea.
But what if it weren't? What if we only had lunch because we always had it, even if lunch made no sense? And how many of us unthinkingly do things becase they've always been done, and always been done that way?
Hand on heart, have you ever had a meeting with a new member of staff and found yourself saying "I know that might sound a bit odd, but it's how we do things here"?
Times are changing. They always do. So we can't expect that what we always did will cut it. Sometimes "Lunch" will be the wrong course of action and you'll have wasted a lot of planning, time, resources and creativity on a lightly tossed green salad with a twist that no-one needs.
So all I'm saying is this: When you sit down to consider how to write a communications strategy, remember the power of "Why?" three times. It could save your bacon.
TODDLER "Why are you doing that?"
ME "Because I'm making lunch."
T: "Why?"
M: "Because it's lunchtime."
T: "Why?"
M: "Because it's the middle of day, sort of half way between breakfast and tea, and so we're probably getting hungry now so it's a good time to stop and eat. OK?"
A reasonable anwer; the logic stacks up; the toddler concedes. He is a bit hungry. Doesn't necessarily explain the cheese sandwiches though - he probably fancies fish fingers. But that's detail.
The thing is, no-one questioned me about why it's lunchtime before. I've only ever been challenged on whether it's lunchtime, what to have for lunch, or where to have it. It's so obviously the right thing to do mid-way-ish between breakfast and tea.
But what if it weren't? What if we only had lunch because we always had it, even if lunch made no sense? And how many of us unthinkingly do things becase they've always been done, and always been done that way?
Hand on heart, have you ever had a meeting with a new member of staff and found yourself saying "I know that might sound a bit odd, but it's how we do things here"?
Times are changing. They always do. So we can't expect that what we always did will cut it. Sometimes "Lunch" will be the wrong course of action and you'll have wasted a lot of planning, time, resources and creativity on a lightly tossed green salad with a twist that no-one needs.
So all I'm saying is this: When you sit down to consider how to write a communications strategy, remember the power of "Why?" three times. It could save your bacon.
Thursday 2 September 2010
What to do about HIV in a recession
As a banner at the World AIDS Conference in Vienna pointed out, AIDS is not in recession. Unfortunately, the countries funding the response to the pandemic are, and this is a worry.
The global recession threatens our reponse to HIV in two ways. Firstly, it's restricting countries' abilities to respond to their domestic epidemics in the way they might have done in wealthier times.
When deciding priorities for limited funds, government departments often swing the axe where there will be least public resistiance. This never bodes well for unpopular issues, and HIV is down there with the best of them.
So we must make sure vulnerable people with HIV in the UK don't have the services they rely on cut from under their feet as we struggle to balance the books. Campaigners must show how investing in effective HIV services saves time and money elsewhere
Decisions about where to cut are rarely taken in the round either, so one department may cut funding which makes another's job impossible. It's one of the reasons UNAIDS asks every country to have a cross-government HIV Plan.
We don't have one in the UK, nor is there a realistic likelihood of one any time soon. We're busy tackling the deficit.
So though the UK had a strong start on HIV back in the 80s, we could so easily lose critical ground by cutting vital services or health promotion initiatives.
Canada is the salutary lesson here - they defunded needle exchanges when they wanted to save money and their epidemic rocketed. Their cost-saving cost them dear.
Secondly, the global recession means donor countries have less money for efforts to tackle the pandemic in lower and middle-income countries. This could be very bad news.
What will happen to people whose HIV drugs and services rely on fragile economies outside their borders?
We've spent recent years scaling up access to HIV treatment worldwide. Imagine living in a village or town where friends and family had just stopped dying - could we really turn off the supply? 'Sorry, this machine is temporarily out of order,' won't cut it I suspect.
So there are three things we must do to make sure we don't lose ground we've worked so hard to gain:
1.Find cheaper and easier ways of testing and treating people for HIV. This means you, wherever you live in the world. If you're stuck for ideas, ask your local community or voluntary organisation. I bet they'll tell you how.
2.Find new ways of raising global and local funds to support vital work. This is easier said than done, but I heard several good ideas discussed in Vienna.
3. Step up prevention efforts. There's no vaccine or cure for HIV, but we have learned a lot about different ways to prevent HIV spreading. With lifetime treatment costs for each HIV infection currently £350,000 in the UK, we can't afford not to.
It isn't all doom and economic gloom. The World AIDS Conference was a dazzling exposition of how far we've come, how much we've learned, what we must do next.
Money has never been more important. It's not 'the economy, stupid', it's how we deal with it.
The global recession threatens our reponse to HIV in two ways. Firstly, it's restricting countries' abilities to respond to their domestic epidemics in the way they might have done in wealthier times.
When deciding priorities for limited funds, government departments often swing the axe where there will be least public resistiance. This never bodes well for unpopular issues, and HIV is down there with the best of them.
So we must make sure vulnerable people with HIV in the UK don't have the services they rely on cut from under their feet as we struggle to balance the books. Campaigners must show how investing in effective HIV services saves time and money elsewhere
Decisions about where to cut are rarely taken in the round either, so one department may cut funding which makes another's job impossible. It's one of the reasons UNAIDS asks every country to have a cross-government HIV Plan.
We don't have one in the UK, nor is there a realistic likelihood of one any time soon. We're busy tackling the deficit.
So though the UK had a strong start on HIV back in the 80s, we could so easily lose critical ground by cutting vital services or health promotion initiatives.
Canada is the salutary lesson here - they defunded needle exchanges when they wanted to save money and their epidemic rocketed. Their cost-saving cost them dear.
Secondly, the global recession means donor countries have less money for efforts to tackle the pandemic in lower and middle-income countries. This could be very bad news.
What will happen to people whose HIV drugs and services rely on fragile economies outside their borders?
We've spent recent years scaling up access to HIV treatment worldwide. Imagine living in a village or town where friends and family had just stopped dying - could we really turn off the supply? 'Sorry, this machine is temporarily out of order,' won't cut it I suspect.
So there are three things we must do to make sure we don't lose ground we've worked so hard to gain:
1.Find cheaper and easier ways of testing and treating people for HIV. This means you, wherever you live in the world. If you're stuck for ideas, ask your local community or voluntary organisation. I bet they'll tell you how.
2.Find new ways of raising global and local funds to support vital work. This is easier said than done, but I heard several good ideas discussed in Vienna.
3. Step up prevention efforts. There's no vaccine or cure for HIV, but we have learned a lot about different ways to prevent HIV spreading. With lifetime treatment costs for each HIV infection currently £350,000 in the UK, we can't afford not to.
It isn't all doom and economic gloom. The World AIDS Conference was a dazzling exposition of how far we've come, how much we've learned, what we must do next.
Money has never been more important. It's not 'the economy, stupid', it's how we deal with it.
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