Category Archives: social media

facebook, friends, politics, social media, social networking, twitter, What I think

FB – Fluid Boundaries, Fixed Behaviours, Friends Behavingbadly

August 19, 2007 Lloyd Davis 6 Comments

Charles Frith (one of my fave twitter buddies btw) writes about two types of people Cold War survivors who see the world as black and white, good and evil and behave guardedly online with spy-like pseudonyms and ‘Post-Coldies” who are more comfortable with a zillion shades of grey and who let it all hang out.

It’s a difference that Helen also touched on in her thoughtful post on social media

Charles also points out that post-coldies don’t mind their friends meeting up, whereas the others will do anything to keep “different” areas of their life separate, even to the extent of lying to their “friends”. No wonder there’s such drama at weddings & funerals.

You won’t be surprised to hear that I feel very much at the post-coldie end of the spectrum but I’m not sure that the Cold War hostilities are the source of this separation, more that these are another manifestation of the same thing – the ancient tussle between what it means to be an individual and what it means to be part of a group, whether that group is at the level of 1:1 relationships, household, village, city, nation or continent (not to mention, planet, which is a whole other metaphysical adventure in itself).

I think another way of putting it is to say that some people are most comfortable getting their rules or boundary conditions from the group and others who are most comfortable setting their boundary conditions themselves. To each of these, the other’s behaviour can seem threatening and dangerous. I would argue that the former lead to more rigid behaviours while the latter lead to more flexible opportunities, but I’m aware that I may have a blind spot around this… and of course we’re talking about preferences, not necessarily hard-wired characteristics.

Ha ha, an example has just sprung to mind. This post is going to be a bit rambly. There are people who will tell you that a post needs a beginning middle and an end, a meaningful title, a relevant illustration and well-constructed tags. Tough shit – this is my blog and I make the rules.

In this context, I’m also thinking a lot about my facebook friending. Whenever there’s a conversation about social networking, sooner or later, Dunbar’s number is quoted – usually people describe it as “the limit to the number of real relationships one person can have” or something equally vague. It’s 150 and it’s more complicated than that description, but I’m thinking, OK, I have more than 150 friends on facebook, what does that mean in the context of Dunbar’s number? Specifically there seemed to be a paradox that although I was over the “limit” there are still a whole bunch of my friends and people with whom I have fairly intimate business and personal relationships who aren’t even on Facebook, let alone “friended” by me.

What I’m thinking at the moment is that I have, until now, (and in common with the cold war survivors) tried to manage groups of up to 150 people in my head – that’s why it feels so difficult! Of course 150 isn’t a limit on the number of people you can know, it’s really a limit on the number of people you can have meaningful relationships with without resorting to further rules and socially agreed boundaries.

So compartmentalising isn’t in itself “a Cold-War thing” or even “a bad thing” it’s a way of keeping our groups of relationships manageable. What online social networking does is to highlight that compartmentalising goes on, that people compartmentalise in different ways and allows for an external representation of a much larger number of my relationships than before which allows you to understand or infer (perhaps correctly, perhaps not) what my rules and boundaries are.

Of course this is probably all covered in Anthropology 101 but I much prefer learning from experience.

announcements, events, facebook, open coffee, social media, social media café, social media tart, socialmediaclub, training

Social Media Café

August 8, 2007 Lloyd Davis 21 Comments

I just want first to distinguish this from the events that Chris has facilitated through Social Media Club. I am involved with Social Media Club in London, and what I’m talking about might well be a place to host Social Media Club (or even Social Media Cafés!) and I love both concepts – but neither are what I want to talk about here – I’m talking about a place, not an event.

Phew! Perhaps I’d better start again…

This comes from a number of conversations I’ve had with people in London about having a place to meet, hook up, get groups together, socialise, train people, co-work etc. I blogged about something in a slightly different context about 3 years ago and the idea has been frothing in my head for a long time. I’m thinking of a confluence of the creative, tech and entrepreneurial tribes who are currently gathering around social media and online social networking. I’m talking about the kinds of people who are regulars at Coffee Mornings, Open Coffee, Social Media Club, Chinwag Live.

So far it’s as concrete and as fluid as this:

We (whoever we are – the united socialmediatistas of hereabouts) acquire a space that we can use for the above-mentioned types of activities. It might be laid out as follows (though do not get hung up about physical orientation, upstairs/downstairs front/back doesn’t matter as much as the ideas of separate spaces for different activities).

Ground floor is open to the public, a café style space with good coffee, tea, snacks, fussball, space invaders and the like – maybe the odd plate of eggs bacon chips and beans. Plasma screen shows a rolling twitter timeline from all our mates. An alternative to constantly having to find somewhere to meet up and have coffee and a place where people love you using the wifi.

First floor (don’t get hung up on the physical orientation, just a separate space) is for members & guests. Not a posh exclusive (male) type of private members club (you know where I mean), but something softer, gentler, more suited to creative & geeky types than just to the thrusting entrepreneur. Facilities are flexible meeting rooms, desks and co-working spaces and more exclusive lounging, chatting space with coffee & tea. It’s a bit quieter up here.

Second floor (again really just another separate space) is for media production – podcasting & video-blogging equipment for hire – soundproofed studios, maybe some helpful techies to guide the uninitiated.

Questions:

Why? Why not take an existing institution and warp it into what we want? Now that we are, just, starting to see that there’s a group of us interested in the same things, I think it would be good to have a place of our own.

When? I may be biased by the number of people I mix with who don’t keep normal office hours but I think this is an all-day & evening thing, though possibly not at weekends?

Where? London, I’m pretty certain, but where is our spiritual home? Soho, Shoreditch, South Bank? Somewhere that doesn’t start with ‘S’?

Who? Who will come, who will be members, who will use which facilities? I’m starting a group in Facebook to guage interest and carry the conversation forward. Also what kinds of people do we need to make it happen – property development, deal-makers, investors, staff as well as potential members and customers.

What? Salons, open spaces, meeting (verb), meetings (noun), training, improvising, podcasting, eating, talking, working, collaborating, farting about, other activities with no predefined or explicit purpose, interesting pursuits. What else?

How? Yes.

More questions please – and answers if you have them.

[UPDATE: If you want to help, there’s now a wiki for you to scribble on and a Facebook group to join.]

charidee, events, fundraising, marketing, nfp, social media

Enhancing voice fundraising through new media

June 7, 2007 Lloyd Davis 2 Comments

David Dixon is founder of The Phone Room, a call and contact centre specialising in telephone fundraising for not-for-profits and ticketing for arts organisations. I’ve been talking to David for a while about blogging and social media in this context and he invited me along to help record a “Skill Share” day last week where he and his colleagues were meeting with people from sister companies in the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Germany to talk about their common experiences and how to improve their effectiveness.

The day kicked off with presentations from David and Daryl Upsall who heads up the Fundraising Company in Spain. Here are my lightly edited notes from these presentations.

David Dixon – How do we enhance voice fundraising in the age of new media

Note this is “voice fundraising” not just about telephones or whatever device you might happen to be using to convey your voice such as: web, e-mail, mobile voice, mobile web & wap, sms, vismail, affiliate marketing, VOIP (and associated services), social networking, user generated content, MMORPGS such as Second Life.

There’s just been a conference about charities using Second Life – one of the main speakers is from Oxford University which has bought an island in the space. There’s also been a sponsored walk in aid of the American Cancer Society – it’s like temporary emigration – they are very real and people spend money on them, lots of big companies are setting themselves up there.

So we face a big threat – not so much in Spain, but further north. If you listen to calls you see that nearly everyone is very old – over 65 probably – the reason for this is that they were recruited by direct mail. Most of the donors in britain are acquired through direct mail. This is changing, but not that quickly. The effect of mass direct mail is under threat from both generational (older people dying, younger people not responding to direct mail) and technological change (the move to online) and the marginal rate of return is reducing all the time.

When direct mail started, you had to be very stupid not to get a good response, but as time goes by the quality of your communication has to go up in order to maintain profitability as the marginal rate will always move towards break even. So a small change in marginal response rates means that a whole bunch of mail becomes uneconomic, meaning that the volume of direct mail will have to reduce. At the moment it’s still increasing as the only way to increase profitability but that doesn’t mean that it’s going to continue like this forever.

We don’t know when it’s going to happen, but I believe it will be sometime in next 10 years. So we have a problem coming and I want to be on top of it beforehand. So now we’re investigating new media, we don’t have to but i’d like to be thinking about it now to get a strategic solution in place before it’s needed.

We’re focusing on learning how to integrate voice with new media. Our new kit allows us to work with sms email and web alongside voice, so we can position ourselves as an integrated contact centre. We don’t quite understand how to do it best yet, but we could get started right now.

The problems that charities face are: How to migrate from ‘here’ to ‘there’. How to restructure organisationally. How to monetise new media and how to grow expertise.

We are developing expertise so we can sell more voice fundraising, involving TPR directly with clients’ strategic planning. Historically, we haven’t been part of that planning, but we’d like to be in future.

An example of the experiments we’re doing is Donor Connect – it’s affiliate marketing – an awful lot of people want to give but don’t know who they want to give money to. Increasingly people go looking for ideas on the internet. In the commercial world for any search on a generic term you’ll see a mix of direct producers and affiliates who guide searchers towards the producers, with the affiliates getting a small cut.

If you were to type in ‘help darfur’ you’d get such a mix. Opinions vary on it – some people think that they are squatting and stealing traffic – others think its good because they are doing the suppliers job for them without getting paid until they get a result.

So we’re working with a network of affiliates – 1-2,000 from Affiliate Future – they do the dissemination for us. It captures people with a general interest – so if they know they want to help the people of darfur, they will get a way of finding it. and then we will get the calls.

We’re piloting it at the moment – pay per registration with a 10-day cooling off period – basic identity data – one phone number. We want to see if and how the model works so everything is being tested. In any sample we find a number of non-contacts, qualified prospects and sometimes single gifts with qualification information, but the main aim is new monthly donors which is what the charities pay for. Charities love this – they get to only pay for the people who actually pay them.

The thing that isn’t happening is the call back – assumption that people who’ve registered online will only respond to e-mail. So there’s a great opportunity – because voice is still the best way to talk to people.

So far we’re not getting huge numbers – given how much we’ve spent, we’re still pleased, but of itself it’s not great. We feel we’ve proved the basic concept but we want to show that we can do volume.

The ROI was 1.06:1 with a highest donation of a £100 Paperless Direct Debit. TPR income per contact was over 60% more than usual.

So good for us and good for the charity. The average donation levels are higher by web than we get by mail or face to face on the street. We think that attrition will be low as we’re creating a relationship. If we can prove it works we’ll do more – and go to all our clients and say give us your data and we’ll do the rest of the work.

Daryl Upsall – Integrating fundraising & communication- how to stand out

Daryl explained how there is so much going on as the web grows up and content (pictures, stories, videos) is going to be generated much more by individuals rather than charities. Here are the examples Daryl used.

Big shift from billboards to online. Google sells more advertising in the UK than Channel 4 in 2006

In UK 10% of young people get news from internet – even Murdoch is in on the act buying myspace – he knows that the traditional newspaper is dying. Where are the charities on myspace? In individual people’s pages. Lots of people setting up microcharities.

youtube is the perfect place to recycle content – very few charities have their own blog – does anyone do podcasting for charities? how about videoblogging?

First aid – St John’s Ambulance have put all of their courses on podcasts through iTunes.

SMS – Italians donated 18m euros in 24 hours for tsunami. but nobody’s capturing the phone number data by call back.

Vodaphone campaign in Spain – supporting various charities with shortcodes for each one. again no data capture even for feedback.

Unicef at Berlin New Years Eve party. 130,000 donated 350,000 euros
26m people sent a message for Live 8 – nobody got back to them.
e-mail campaigns work less but still effective getting 150,000 people to sign a petition – 95,000 new names – 225kUSD

Amnesty has probably the biggest database of e-mail addresses – amina libre – stoning women campaign 140 e-mails –> 9m people who can now be telephoned.

Keep your eyes open for anyone who’s doing something snowballing.

Amnesty’s base is getting older too. so they’re saying let’s build some lists of younger people – pencil in envelope not working. downloading music (john lennon)

Ticketing – fastest growing area is sms – latest is sending barcodes. How do you ticket your charity events – and what’s happening to the phone numbers generated…?

The mobile phone newsletter – via qr-code in Japan – building response mechanisms into advertising.

El Pais – unique numbers on paper is an entry to daily lottery – with immediate textback collecting permissions.

Online auctions – ebay for charity – you can sell anything and again generating leads.

Everyclick – every time you use the search engine, charities make money – some corporates force their people to use it.

Integrating f2f & mobile – Greenpeace India – bought a whole bunch of numbers in Bangalore – sent them a message (some would say spammed them) and if they replied positively they said “we’ll bring you a tree to plant in your garden”. They bought 39,000 numbers and got 2.3% conversion – the person bringing the tree was a fundraiser ready to sign them up to donate. Lead to supporter conversion 16% planning now to recruit 22k new supporters this way.

It’s about developing relationships – John Aspinall Foundation – get info via shortcodes about animals with click through to sponsor immediately. totallywild.net including ringtones of their sound or a related music download.