William Buist

In the spring 2008 edition of Charities Management I discussed how to tap into the resources contained in social networks. I talked about creating a shared passion, about collaborative working, and about the conversations taking place between those that support charities and those that need the output from them.

If charities are to really engage the social networking revolution is taking place online in order to engage in conversations with those that seek to support them (and those benefiting from that support) then the skills required to create a following will be essential.

Creating a following.

Moving activity online creates an opportunity to reach a much larger audience than can be reached through face-to-face, local, or off paper advertising and promotion. Reaching a much larger audience, however, is not sufficient to create any significant change in the engagement with the charity. Engagement comes from a shared interest, not just in the activity of the charity, but, also, in other interests discussed in the conversations seeded by being in the same ‘space’ within the same following group. As people they’ll talk about their interests, not yours. They are there because at least on interest, in the charity and what it is doing, is common to the group.

Followers take an active interest in the activity of those that they are with in the group. They are seeking information, knowledge, and, they seek that, across a wide range of interests.

Imagine for a moment that you found a website which truly engaged to in a conversation. You decide that the website is sufficiently interesting to encourage you to return the next day. However, when you get there a conversation is identical to the day before. You come back again the next day, and the conversation is again the same. Soon you will no longer return, where you were once following you are now indifferent. Yet, to the website owner you may still appear to be following, after all, why would you undertake the effort to leave, when the transactional cost of staying is zero.

Followers talk about you.

People who have run across your online presence, and engaged with you, become followers, and who enjoy the time that they spend on your site will talk to others about it. That will attract others to come and visit your site and form their own opinions, deciding whether to follow you.

Incidentally the places where this may happen, may not be your main website, but it could be true free sites such as twitter (www.twitter.com) which allows you to post short pieces of information and collect a following who “watch” what you are saying. These short snippets of information can be automated from digital feeds (called RSS) from your site(s), and thus require little maintenance effort once the original operation has been set up.

A significant user of twitter is the BBC who to provide news, sports and other items and links to their main site as “tweets”. Other sites offering similar functionality exist there are also a number of sites offering services to aggregate and collect common information.

If you provide valuable material that is multidimensional, rather than focusing solely on your one main area of interest, then those that follow will find the information useful, will talk to their friends and invite them to join the group.

Now you have them, what can you do?

Whilst a large following is nice to see, unless you can leverage the opportunities from that group then there is little point in undertaking the effort to build the group in the first place. However, engaging the group in conversations, as I discussed in my previous article, allows you to be much more proactive in providing the services and support when it is most needed, and much more successful at ensuring that others understand how the support they gave is being utilised effectively.

Engaging followers in conversations that draw on their experience and skills, building a deeper and stronger relationship with them will help to ensure that they remain loyal to you over the longer term. Some of the followers will always be just followers, but others will become advocates for the work that you are undertaking. The more that you engage with your followers in a manner that resonates with them the more likely they are to advocate, perhaps even eulogise, what you do.

Followers are waiting for you to take action. In general they will not be proactive, so you must be. In general there will not volunteer information, knowledge, skills and experience, so you must ask for it. They will expect you to recognize the help that you have been given, so don’t forget to thank and support followers at every opportunity. If you do this well, they will not just reach out to you when you reach out to them, but they will reach out to their networks and spread your message further and faster than you could achieve by other means.

Your web site.

Although I’ve talked about using other freely available sites to collect a following, the central hub of your operations, your face online, remains your primary website. Having created a following through your activity online it becomes possible to integrate elements, of what the followers are talking about, into your main website. Any such activity makes your website more relevant to other followers. Relevance encourages interaction.

Progressively tools to enable you to search the conversations that your followers are having on their websites, their pages, their blogs, their conversations, and so on. Searching and filtering that data can provide you with significantly valuable insight about how to interact more effectively, more relevantly, with them, in future. This information provides you with context, feedback, and the opportunity to identify shared and common purpose.

Groups bound by common purpose sharing a journey together, will be significantly more effective than groups that are simply bound by common interest.

Conclusion.

Most, if not all, charities already have a significant following. That following comes in the form of supporters, people seeking to help you to collect the funds, support, and assistance that is required to provide the things that they enable the charity to deliver. Much of that following is probably already interacting online. Charities can’t afford not to be a part of that interaction, or the attention of their followers will drift to those that do.

By building an online following you build an opportunity to engage in your followers conversation, and then to influence it, to learn from it, to develop it and to enhance it.

By building an online following that is as passionate about what you do, and what you say, as you are, will enable you to extend your reach further and faster than if you simply seek to build a following to traditional, offline, methods.

Much of what I talked about may appear to be both a labour intensive and technically tricky, neither need be true. Existing tools are available either free or low-cost, and integration into your existing websites should be straightforward.

Sharing the passions, beliefs, vision and Mission with your following, and ensuring they align behind it, will enable your message to reach many more people on a much deeper level than was ever possible before.

William Buist is director of Abelard Management Services, a company which specialises in building trust in teams and communities. For more information visit www.abelard-uk.com

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