Emily Subden, Digital Producer and Social Media Manager at Oxfam and one of the speakers at the Social Media World Forum in London on 29 – 30 March, tells Figaro Digital how charities are using social media to raise engagement, report on disasters and kickstart conversation
Just as brands and agencies are investigating social media's potential as a marketing tool, so charities and fundraisers are reaching out to engage us as we tweet and share our way through the social sphere. The limitless new digital landscape has serious implications for the way campaigners campaign, how fundraisers raise funds and the ways in which charities respond to crises. For organisations such as Oxfam social media has become central to policy - eliciting donations, raising awareness and opening a window onto those parts of the world which traditional media can't reach.
"Social media has become an integral tool," says Emily Subden, Digital Producer and Social Media Manager at Oxfam. "You wouldn't write a comms strategy now without it, whether you're in marketing or campaigning. The audience is so large and it's where people are at."
We've understood the social significance of social media for while: what Twitter and Facebook provide is an endlessly refreshed picture of the present. But hard evidence of its power as a political tool came earlier this year. At the height of the upheaval in Egypt the authorities closed down the internet, robbing protestors of a central communication channel, at which point Google stepped in and enabled users to tweet through their mobile phones. "There's a real impact in connecting on and offline issues through social media," says Subden. "And look how much coverage there was off the back of that."
Oxfam themselves have been quick to embrace the speed, agility and responsiveness of social media. "One of the things it's really good for," says Subden, "is reporting in emergencies. When a crisis first hits it can be difficult to get enough information out of a region to even write a quick press release, let alone make a formal statement. Twitter is brilliant because you can post quick snippets of information and keep people updated. At major political events, organisations like Oxfam may have access which the public doesn't. We can be behind the scenes tweeting, telling people exactly what's happening. Users can interact, hear what other followers are saying and if they've got questions they want us to put to people we have access to, we can do that. For Oxfam, a lot of what we talk about is based in current events, so it's a perfect space for us to get our message into. It's an important two-way tool."
For Subden the Haitian Earthquake offered a powerful example of how social media can be harnessed – not merely as a fundraising tool in the aftermath of the disaster, but as a method of reporting events while the crisis was still unfolding.
"We made a YouTube video very quickly," she says. "The day after the earthquake hit we had someone from our media unit, talking to camera, explaining what the situation was and asking for donations. This was before there was any other content up other than tweets. The video got picked up, put on YouTube's homepage where it got nearly 700,000 views, and generated a trackable £30,000. And probably quite a lot more that we didn't manage to track. It was a very quick and powerful way of getting to a big audience."
And it wasn't only Oxfam using social media to raise awareness of the disaster in Haiti and generate donations. The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) raised eight million pounds before they'd done any TV advertising. The Red Cross in America raised another eight million dollars through text donations alone, most of which were prompted by social media. It was, notes Subden, one of the first instances of disaster support being mobilised through social media, and one of the first times text was used to elicit donations. "People access the internet on phones, so there was a tweet with the number to donate and users didn't have to do anything else," she says. "But without social media that text number wouldn't have got out so fast and so far."
As with brands operating in the commercial sphere, part of the job of any charitable organisation is coming up with effective ways to raise engagement though social media. So how do organisations like Oxfam rack up the 'likes' on Facebook, and can online activity – sometimes called 'slacktivism' because it enables us to register our concerns with rising too far out of the recliner - be translated into genuine change?
"It can be difficult to measure the impact social media has," says Subden. "If you've got two million fans of a page, that doesn't necessarily mean that whatever that page is asking for is going to happen." But, she says, traction in social media will often lead to traditional broadcast channels picking up on a story. "Journalists now use social media to track where a story's breaking and they can see that if it's getting some interest, it's going to be worth running. Because social media happens so quickly it tells you instantly what people are thinking about; it's a news source in its own right and enables organisations like Oxfam to be part of that news-stream."
But responding to specific crises like the one in Haiti is only one aspect of most campaigning organisations' jobs. Just as important is generating awareness of ongoing projects and plans – long-term issues that require long-term thinking. Here's where the approach of charities, campaigners, brands and agencies intersects most clearly, as each seeks innovative ways of implanting their message and influencing behaviour.
Subden points to some of Oxfam's own successes in the hard-to-get-right field of viral video. "We did some work around the World Cup last year, raising awareness of health care. Knowing your audience and making sure the content is relevant is vital with social media. 'Don't Drop The Ball on Aid' was a campaign to keep pressure on governments to keep up their aid commitments. The World Cup made it topical and it meant we could target audiences we wouldn't usually target." The video itself featured some highly impressive keepy-uppy action. "It was something that even if people weren't at all interested in Oxfam, they might think 'that's a really cool video. I'll share that.' The whole point of social media is giving people the space to have a conversation with you. "
Even more effective was a campaign launched in 2008 but still racking up the views on YouTube. 'Grooveyourbump' was a breakdancing flashmob video shot on London's Southbank in which some happily expectant ladies – along with some serious dancers who weren't pregnant – executed a catalogue of hand-dives, floats and rollback pikes. "If you think this is dangerous," ran the tagline, highlighting the fact that every day 1,400 women around the world die in childbirth, "try giving birth in poor countries without a midwife, hospital or medicine." It's had over a million views, so what does Subden think is the key to charities' effective use of social media?
"The obvious things," she says. "Don't spam people, tailor your messaging, not being over-cautious in moderation. It's really about letting yourself go a bit and letting supporters - and also the people who don't agree with what you - have their chance to speak. We would never delete a comment just because it was negative towards what we're doing. In fact, if someone posts something negatively it usually prompts other supporters to come back and say 'no, you’re wrong' and defend us. And what better ambassador could there be than you're own supporter speaking for you?"
Figaro Digital are media partners at the Social Media World Forum, 29 - 30 March at Olympia, London
www.oxfam.org.uk
twitter.com/oxfamgb
Article by Jon Fortgang