|
Last year was a tough year for the charity sector with charitable giving down by 11% in the aftermath of the economic crisis from the previous year. The number of people giving has also declined by 2%. So although the wider economy is expected to improve during for 2010, is definitely a time to find new ways to do more with less. In this newsletter we aim to bring you a few new ways to raise awareness, money and bring your message to the public.
The first thing well worth looking at is using social media to harness the wider community. Consider for example how even before the Haiti disaster, Oxfam was using Twitter and Flickr to provide information and publicise the situation in Darfur and the Congo
and as part of the Hope for Haiti campaign, live broadcasts reached 5.8 million people live with a total of 20 million streams. Instead of relying on the media to get the message out, Oxfam could use its channels to reach millions with its message – unmediated. The Disaster Emergency Committee used social media to raise £3 million for the relief of last year's tsunami in South East Asia. It's not just for big events or big charities either. Many charities have content they can use in this way and it's simpler than you think to make this right for the web. See the box for how one of Vexed's charity clients are harnessing social media.
Passing content through the web has become a lot easier in the last few years. With 1.5 million pieces of content being shared daily on Facebook (not to mention the influence of Twitter and a million other social start-ups as well), the opportunity to reach a very big audience has become easier than ever. Creating content that is fun and engaging – social currency to use a piece of web jargon is key. A great example is the game created to challenge the negative perception of migrants in Australia. Both fun and thought provoking,
Kick A Migrant
reached a global audience and was featured on hundreds of sites, reaching a huge audience in the process – 1.6 million game plays in the first year.
Finally the world of mashups – combining data from several sources provides an informative way of educating the public about your messages. The Urban Eco Map
looks at how green Amsterdam and San Francisco are by overlaying information on Transportation, Energy and Waste over geographical maps and encourage San Franciscans to see locally how much energy they use and reduce it to match the much lower carbon producing European city. More immediately, Map Action was able combine different data sources to help provide relief for Haiti, giving those on the ground a full picture of what was going on.
Contact Xanthe (xanthe@vexeddigital.com)
or Richard (richard@vexeddigital.com) to find
out more about how we can help you.
Vexed
|
Doing more with less – Flickr and Maggies Cancer Centres
Last year, Maggie's Cancer Centres – which aim to provide support to those with the disease, was able to attract countless visitors by setting up on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. Vexed helped set up and design these for the charity and the three social media sites together help publicise its activity directly with carers and charity fundraisers. They now represent the third biggest source of traffic to the site.
|
|
