Getting an organised message out from the grassroots
Smart charities like NSPCC, Macmillan Cancer Support and Oxfam are great at using social media as a communications tool. But the bigger the charity, the harder it can be to unify social media feeds into a coherent and useful output. There is, however, a solution: using technology to create smart automated content curation systems, i.e. systems which amass, sort and present material in an organised way around subject matter.
The Arab Spring marked a turning point in the way the masses finds out about up to the minute news. No longer the preserve of traditional news outlets, people on the ground turned to social media as a way to communicate unfolding events in real time.
This new phenomenon of "citizen journalism" arguably reached a peak with the situation in Syria. As the Syrian state of affairs grew ever more complex and violent, many news outlets struggled to immediately get to the heart of the storm. The real story was often being told on social networks and it was being told directly from the source.
Angry aid workers
Amongst the crescendo of angry voices were aid workers, many affiliated with charities, who were keen to tell the more human side of the story through their charities’ eyes and to drive their message as far as possible.
Most campaigns that marketers run are likely to be less dramatic than the terrible events of Syria, but as vociferous advocates of their cause, the workers closest to the story (and the people who are part of it) will always generate the boldest most useful content. Hooking into their journey is a powerful means of amplifying the campaign as it happens.
In recent times, a lackadaisical approach has crept into the industry. The tried and tested formula of generating useful content is to run a campaign, send out a photographer to take a few pictures, and then get someone - perhaps a copywriter if you are feeling fancy, otherwise anyone who was there will do - to write up some blog-worthy content about the experience.
Unfortunately, taking this predictable approach entirely misses the essence of most campaigns, which are meant to be engaging, disruptive and deliver real benefit to the causes they are attempting to promote.
Rarely will the most powerful message be delivered by the paid professionals parachuted in to take some soft focus photos with their unnecessarily expensive cameras. It will instead come from the people on the ground who are snapping away on their broken-screened iPhone 2s and uploading instantly to their social media channels. They are the people who care about their cause and are passionate about making a difference to the communities that will directly benefit from the campaign.
Building a connection between the public and the work charities do on the ground is vital for any charity. Charities are constantly looking for ways to increase awareness of their causes and to build on their supporter base. New technology has changed the way people communicate and audiences now want to consume information more rapidly.
Multiple global operations
For the charity manager running multiple global campaigns staffed with varied teams made up of trained professionals and volunteers, real time social media content is probably the most powerful way to showcase the great work that the teams are doing whilst simultaneously marketing a strong message on behalf of the charity. The challenge comes when attempting to harness this vast pool of information.
Even when we appreciate the communications and marketing potential of worker-generated social media feeds, the gathering and curating of the right updates in a unified way can pose a headache. This is especially the case when workers in the field are posting messages from far-flung corners of the world onto all manner of social platforms: everything from Facebook to Flickr, Instagram, Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter and YouTube…
The list almost feels endless. Ensuring all the right messages are collected, organised and then pushed out in a coherent way (i.e. curated) can be a daunting challenge.
This problem is at the root of why managers in many top charities are starting to think about more intelligent systems that can capture user-generated information in real time, whilst being powerful enough to allow cataloguing of information, and crucially, allowing the repurposing of information in other media formats.
With so much new information flowing into organisations, charities need a system to provide a quick and efficient way to find content related to the campaigns they are promoting. In essence they can tame the fire hose of information that is generated by their employees by being able to intelligently and easily sort through big data and pull out what is relevant for their campaign.
A smart system is needed that can provide a user friendly interface to allow users to search, filter, categorise, and export anything that is relevant to their cause. Such a system will solve the problem that blights many large organisations (and the principle applies way beyond the charity sector) where many different departments are working on many different things often without any knowledge of overlaps between their work and failing to realise the potential of combining their efforts to achieve their shared goals.
Helpful web technologies
Fortunately, cutting edge web technologies, such as Google App Engine platforms, can help dramatically. One charity that’s already identified and solved the issue is WWF. They did this by commissioning a "Content Curation System" that ingests relevant social media messages from different platforms all around the globe and catalogues the myriad feeds through a user friendly interface.
The end result is powerful: a swiftly created, automated body of worker-generated content that can be used in many different ways - everything from marketing collateral through to lobbying material and external comms.
As well as reducing the expensive human time spent on trawling through thousands of messages, using automated technology to pull together a disparate pool of social media information additionally creates consistency. For charities which want to be slick operators, consistency is a key advantage in making sure a central message is dependably communicated.
What’s more, for those bigger charities which can’t always control what’s being said by their workers on the ground, a content curation system can double up a monitoring tool. This ensures that all external communications remain on message – a huge bonus when operating in such a digitally-led hyper transparent world.
Effective information resource
It’s understandably hard for charities to justify channeling some of their hard-won funds into technology investments such as content curation systems. But when one such investment reduces the need (and cost) of human labour whilst creating a powerful body of real time information that’s consistent and on-message with a multitude of purposes (from marketing to comms and lobbying), it’s an investment that very quickly pays for itself.
Perhaps most saliently, though, properly curated social content will help tell the world about the news as it happens – giving charity workers a chance to play a part in the powerful and democratic new role of citizen journalism. After all, what are charities for if not to help the people with little voice in this world?
