Last week was Social Media Week so the team and I tried to cram in as many events in as possible to maximise the free learning opportunity. Here’s a few of the key things I thought interesting to share:

Crowd-funding (from event by good innovation)

• It’s community fundraising by another name.
• Funders are often motivated by return incentives (think kickstarter perks) and/or that beneficiaries know more directly who provided the funding.
• The best results come when the community is already interested and networked.
• Cancer Research UK ‘My Projects’ raises a higher average total per page than they do on event sponsorship pages.
• Action for Children ‘My Action for Children’ bridges the divide between local service managers and volunteers doing fundraising and the work of the fundraising team.

Social media engagement (mostly from events by @wearelikeminds & @barcampnfp)

• If you cover lots of topics as a brand, fragmenting your social profile might help you increase engagement if the sub-group sizes justify the separate effort needed. More focused streams can allow you to focus the tone and content more.
• Images drive higher levels of engagement. Hopeful images particularly. But if you heavily copyright you are restricting sharing potential, look at creative commons.
• Influence is about driving an outcome, not just the conversation. Sometimes the most effective influencers are sometimes the least expected who suddenly have a reason to comment on your brand.
• Social media can help organisations blur the divide between staff and supporters. But you need to invest in educating the whole organisation in digital.

Data (from all over the place)

• Lots of people lie on registration / data capture forms, and thats the ones that don’t just click away. Social logins reduce both bounce and ‘dirty data’.
• People update their personal details on their social profiles before they update it anywhere else.
• Some employers are using Klout / Kred scores within their recruitment processes (yes – I’m very dubious too!).

Innovation (event by @nfptweetup)

• Innovation is not just about the ‘shiny stuff’, everyday innovation is too often overlooked and focus on purpose why you’re trying to innovate is needed.
• If you innovate in the hardest places, it should be easy to translate and scale the successes in the easier contexts.
• Innovation is about knocking down doors, painting yourself in creosote or couscous (you had to be there), but mostly attitude and persistence.
• Finally… UNICEF is hugely inspiring, I am constantly in awe – see innovation preso

Finally, finally … my week was brilliantly rounded off with drinks to celebrate UNICEF UK’s top spot in the Social Charity Index. More on that another time.