A lot has happened in the last few weeks since I last wrote, and a lot has been written across the media in various forms.
But put aside those stories and go to UNICEF’s website and donate some money towards their emergency famine appeal. A child is dying every six minutes and you can help.
www.unicef.org.uk/UNICEFs-Work/Emergencies/east-africa-childrens-crisis-horn-africa/
It’s as simple as that.
Companies are always looking for new ways to raise their profile and market themselves on twitter, but sometimes its the charity and even public sector that lead on innovative ways to raise awareness, forced to try news ways on limited budgets and powered by enthusiasm to make a difference.
One example of this is the 24 hour twitter experiment which gets a new look today. This has been tried a few times before with varying success:
- Manchester police - kick-starting the idea was Manchester tweeting every incident over a 24 hour period to show the breadth and depth of their daily workload. The BBC wrote up the experiment: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-11537806
- Walsall Council – following Manchester’s lead, Walsall also spent a day tweeting what their staff got up to over 24 hours. This got a rather mixed response as the comments on the Guardian website illustrate: www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/mar/03/local-government-twitter-walsall-24
- Today: WaterAid – the international NGO is tweeting it’s activities from across the globe, taking the idea to the next level and really showing the world wide communication opportunities that are available.
Best of luck to WaterAid.
A good piece about difficulties and successes of using social media, with real examples – not just opinions! “A Positive Response to a ‘Negative’ Tweet“. How refreshing.
About a month ago I had this same conversation with my friend Shira Lazar and she said something interesting. The topic was on trying to get someone to stop saying something on social media. Shira said something like, “people are going to think bad thoughts. They are going to talk about it with their friends. They will be sharing. At least on social media you know what they are and you can address them” – BINGO!
Thanks to Sue Fiddler for finding it, you can read the full article at hardlynormal.com/blog/2011/02/05/a-positive-response-to-a-negative-tweet/
The latest site I’ve been working on is for the British Heart Foundation to promote their campaign for a new government strategy for heart and circulatory disease.
The site is flash based and features a crowd of origami people campaigning for BHF, and by signing the petition another person is created on screen who joins the campaign.
The campaign and petition also features in their shops and will be delivered personally to Number 10. Visit the site - www.newheartplan.org.uk - sign the petition and add your origami person to the campaign.
Charities have been running online shops for some time, and beyond the basic sales of fundraising items in recent years they have moved to offering real life solutions (or ethical giving) to their cause – buy a goat for an african village, teach a classroom with a supply of textbooks.
Oxfam have expanded their store even further by linking into their highstreet stores and posting second hand items on their site. Instead of browsing through rack of cloths and shelves of book you can now search online for unwanted gems. It’s good to see charities join in the full service experience blending their offline and online services together. Considering the complications of running second hand shops where you never know what might be on the shelves one day from the next I think this is an especially impressive move forward from Oxfam.
And I notice Oxfam use twitter in their media centre. Good to see these services getting picked up more and more.
Yes, posts have been pretty scarce recently, and like 90% of bloggers this is not intended and I plan to get back on the blogging roll as soon as possible. Honest. Really.
But my writing hasn’t just faded for no worthwhile reason, I have just been working on a new site which launched this week: the RNID Impact Report – www.rnidimpact.org.uk. I’m very pleased with the site, it gives RNID a good voice to show the work it does with real people telling their own stories. Take a few minutes to look around the site and watch some of the videos.
A friend of mine who also works in web has launched a similarly themed site for The British Heart Foundation – www.bhf.org.uk/annualreview2008/. It’s a very different site but I like the way the content flows from one area to another, whilst showing clearly what you’ve already seen and what you can look at next. Very nice.
My writing should pick up speed again soon, there’s a great story about a Bulk Film Loader which I want to share as well as a great new do-it-yourself B&B site which I hope will catch on. Check back here soon…
