The trend of fundraising through social media has been evident within the last couple of months, with ordinary people the world over sharing the fundraising message within thousands of networks on the online community. Of course, the most  impressive effort to-date was the ‘Helping Haiti’ response, but it seems to be  happening all over again with the likes of Sport Relief. Using the simple combination of Facebook applications, celebrity Tweets, throw in a few funny you-tube teasers videos and even the simplest of blogs and you’re well on your way to a winning formula for a fundraising campaign.

Using social media is helping to fundraise in ways that traditional media has previously  been less effective at doing, by skipping the ‘middle man’ and adopting a more engaging approach. Social media proves that anyone who is willing to – even a seven year old with a bike who raised £55k in three days - can campaign to raise funds on a level that hasn’t been possible before –without rattling a single bucket.

One thing’s for certain - it’s fast becoming clear that the importance of social media in 2010 could overtake traditional media within almost any successful campaign – and not just in times of fundraising. It’s changed the way we think so it’s now expected by many that there will be a social media source for all campaigns, and all brands for that matter.

Posted by Claire Pace

The Winter Olympics have quickly become the Social Media Games, with the media, sponsoring brands and even competitors themselves all sharing the experience online.

But athletes were warned by the IOC that their uploads must avoid damaging the privacy of others, carrying commercial messaging, publishing interviews with fellow athletes or Olympic staff or publishing any audio or video footage of Olympic events. 

Basically, athletes can only broadcast about their own personal (i.e. first person) Olympic experience and must not mention their sponsors unless they are also Olympic sponsors.

Of course, the principle income streams for the IOC are selling media rights and sponsorship, so it’s understandable that they would want to ensure exclusivity for their media and corporate partners.  But they appear to have been a bit heavy handed and have, in essence, throttled the athletes’ own buzz machines for the duration.

posted by gemmaT

As reported in the Times Online, a Harvard law student is not only suing Google for breaching email privacy with its social network, Buzz, but is effectively damaging the online giant’s reputation in the process. Uh-oh Google!

Annoyed users of the email service have been posting (and ranting) on Google’s forum, so much so that Google employees are having to intervene, one of which stated ‘we welcome your feedback, but the tone of this thread has gotten completely out of line’ with angry threads popping up frequently, such as ‘Breach of trust and privacy. Get rid of it Google’.

I can imagine it’s been a tough call for Google on how to react to this – on one hand they can’t really boot people off for being annoyed about this issue when it was their fault in the first place. Looks like a bit of a catch 22 for them on how to respond and social media bloggers around the world (including me!) are keen to see how Google will bounce back from this.

However, it does seem that Google have moved quickly to rectify the problem with an apologetic blog post appearing by the product manager, Todd Jackson, for Gmail and Google Buzz, along with a promise to change one of the social network’s features. He said “We’re very sorry for the concern we’ve caused and have been working hard ever since to improve things based on your feedback.” Good approach in my opinion. But, is this enough to restore our faith in Google once more? Time will tell.

Posted by Charlotte Brophy

Brands need to be monitored, protected and represented online.  Even if your business isn’t very good at the monitoring and representing bit yet, you at least need to get the protection right.

Would you allow a shop to open bearing your brand name and imagery, but selling p0rn?  Or tolerate someone ringing up your customers pretending to be from your brand, while criticising your products?  I thought not.

You need to protect your brand and your trademarks online.  And the best way to do this is to own the relevant online real estate.  Its not just about owning the domain name mybrand.com.  You also need to consider social media sites so you’ll need to own facebook.com/mybrand, twitter.com/mybrand, linkedin.com/companies/mybrand and so on.

The only cost involved is the time it takes to sign up for a free account.  But you’d better get a move on.  Social media sites allocate names on a first come, first served basis and cybersquatters are on the rise.  Someone even beat Heinz to their twitter handle (albeit as an exercise to see how long it took them to notice!).

posted by gemmaT

Social Media Week (#smw) is in full swing and some interesting and insightful blog posts have appeared on its site. One of these is by Dani Klein (@YeahThatsKosher) – a guest blogger who has taken snippets of information and video content from PR professionals in order to understand their role within social media, all of which is aggregated under the #SMPR tag (for those who want to follow the thread).

We all know that the opportunities for PR are wide reaching and the emergence of digital/online PR has made it even more so. It’s a very exciting time yet one quote particularly stood out for me from Keith Trivit, an AE at a NY PR agency who said “Social Media takes time, work, and effort to implement; Clients want to jump right into Social Media … important to slow things down”. I couldn’t agree more – you need to take a step back from the fast-paced nature of Social Media (initially!) and go back to the brand/campaign objectives.

The CIPR defines Social Media as ‘an evolving area of PR practice and its profile continues to grow’, which is very exciting and will mean that brands are interested in dipping their toe in Social Media – fantastic, but take it slow to start off with. It’s very much in a PR’s nature to approach things with caution, to always be one step ahead and thinking about how actions (posts, responses, tweets) can and will be perceived. This is something that’s drilled into us from day one, so although Social Media is very exciting, it’s worth getting a PR viewpoint before jumping head first into it. That way you can find out what we think is achievable, how it should be approached, and how to prepare for two-way engagement….then you can start. Need I remind you about what happened to Habitat or Neal’s Yard Remedies? I think you get the picture J.

Posted by Charlotte Brophy

Social Media Starfish. Image courtesy of DBarefoot (Robert Scoble)

The Manchester Evening News reports that players for Manchester United and City have been advised against using Twitter, on the basis that 1) content posted by players could be taken out of context by the media and 2) since there are so many fake twitter profiles around, if none of the players are allowed to tweet, fans be certain that any player they come across on twitter is bogus.

The risk of staff twittering off brand is obviously an issue for employers, whatever their business may be.  If you happen to earn your living as an actor in a high profile film franchise for example, there isn’t much in your working life you’ll be allowed to tweet about.  Tom Felton, who plays Malfoy in the Harry Potter franchise is limited to tweeting the Potter related news that he’s getting his hair dyed blonde (again) and talking about crisps and the weather in case he gives away a Top Secret plot development.

If you’re not sure what your own company’s approach to staff members disclosing information on social networking sites, tweeting or blogging should be, then the BBC’s own editorial guidelines on personal use of Social Networking and other third party websites  and IBM’s Social Computing Guidelines are good places to start. (both links via Roo Reynolds)

posted by gemmaT

I read a really interesting post last week in SmartBlog on Lego’s transformation from a company to consumer centric culture.

Lego now embraces its adult enthusiasts.  Pic courtesy of MasterChief1.

It makes a great case study for a number of reasons:

1.  It demonstrates that shifting the way you view your products can positively affect sales

2. It shows that truly understanding your customers can open up new possibilities for business growth

3. It acknowledges that embracing social media in an organisation can often take time and patience

Jake McKee,  Global Community Relations Specialist at the Lego Group explains the steps they had to take:

• There was not much boardroom activity.
• The company Jake and his team learned slowly, achieving “success by 1000 papercuts.” They did the smallest things they could get away with, then turned those results into a case study, and those case studies grew over time.
• Tenacity was essential.

Which goes to show even an organisation as celebrated in social media circles as Lego had to take it’s time.  I constantly see companies being criticised for not ‘doing’ social media right and there seems to be nothing more the Twitterati and social media experts (there are over 15,000 on Twitter) love to do than hunt down social media ‘FAILS’.  All well and good but sometimes I get a sense that there is little appreciation for how large organisations operate.  The fact is embracing social media doesn’t (and shouldn’t) happen overnight.  Everything has to be tested and clearly thought through, business cases have to be developed and compliance has to be considered.  Social media is a journey, not a race.  Like Lego, take your time to get it right.

Posted by Deborah Copeland.

@DeborahCopeland

Last week Gordon Brown was under fire again, but this time being mocked for his most recent, and slightly uncomfortable post on YouTube.

His direct addresses on the Number 10 channel answer current public concerns and questions put to him from YouTube users. This provides a great opportunity for him to show a more human side, and is an excellent tactic for communicating with hard-to-reach groups such as young, up-and-coming voters.

Social media use in politics has recently become a major success story for Obama’s online campaign for the US presidency. His online presence was everywhere – YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook. Social media enabled Obama to have direct engagement with the American public, and was a channel for him to present himself as an ‘ordinary’ person; having dinner with people in the community who have sponsored his campaign.

His use of social media encouraged the public to sign up to receive live election news, through their social media profiles and mobile phones - a clever promise to engage with voters on a personal level.

And hats off to Number 10 for also embracing social media as an instant portal to the British public, but some considerations do need to be made when using it.

After negative public comments on the Number 10 YouTube channel, the option to comment on posts was disabled. Taking a few tactics from Obama’s book, such as better message delivery by Gordon Brown and welcoming comment and debates, could be more successful in encouraging wider public engagement.

With social media, YouTube especially, being used mainly for entertainment purposes, it’s inevitable that the number of unfavourable videos of Gordon; picking his nose and ‘running like a big girl’, will outnumber those posted by Number 10, and will receive thousands more views.

With the rise in social media interest from British politics and such a growing political online forum, could Obama’s winning online campaign be a taste of what’s to come in the next general election? Here’s hoping.

Posted by Sally Barr

If a few people discuss your brand’s latest campaign around the office watercooler, perhaps someone two desks down might overhear the conversation.

But the same number of people posting their views on the net (via blogs, forums and uploads) can in theory be ‘overheard’ by everyone with web access worldwide. Not only that, but their views will remain visible online indefinitely.  

Even if your brand’s marketing activity takes place entirely offline, it’s still likely that it will be discussed online.  And the online environment is about as easy to control as a swarm of bees.

Which means that any marketing activity, however routed in traditional media channels it may be, needs to keep a watchful eye on how it is being received by the online community.  Because not all online buzz is positive.

posted by GemmaT

Facebookers are perhaps unaware that when they upload to the site, according to new terms of service technically they transfer all rights to their content over to facebook.

Facebook made it clear that they had never claimed ownership of material that users upload and the terms were intended to protect content on other users pages should a user delete their own, e.g. in wall to wall conversations.

However this does raise a real question about the ownership of material uploaded to the internet.  Creative Commons licences only go so far in protecting the copyright of uploaders such as bloggers or facebookers and the terms of use of many social networking sites may override any efforts to protect ownership of content. 

In addition, it turns out that the whole thing can still be subject to Human Error as Sweetney found out when a ‘low level production assistant’ at Fox TV, ‘borrowed’ a photo of her dog Truman from her blog and used it in their NFL holiday broadcasts.

Even brands and businesses who chose to upload content to sites such as flickr and facebook need to be aware that they may be technically relinquishing their ownership of this content. 

More importantly, lack of understanding, misinterpretation, ignorance or blatant disregard of licensing by internet users will inevitably result in branded content turning up in entirely unexpected ways and places…

posted by gemmaT

Update, 20/02/09: 

Following a lot of fuss and upset across both online and offline media (including a facebook protest group that gained 121,000 members in just a few days), facebook have returned to their old terms of use.

So (at least for now), the company’s right to your original content expires when you delete your account.