Here in 2013, most charities use social media either directly or indirectly to attract donations. From the initial innovators to eventual bandwagon-jumpers, not many charities would feel like they were operating properly in the digital age without a Facebook page and Twitter feed. But social media discussions in both the biggest and smallest organisations are shifting. Far from just being concerned with keeping up appearances and posting as a matter of course, many charities are starting to feel that social media needs to prove its ROI and pay its way - or at the very least, they are feeling that they might not be making the most of it. When every donation to Just Giving that is shared to Facebook is reported to generate and extra £4.50, the prize is big for getting it right.

For example, marketers at charities (and every kind of company in fact) will be familiar with the phrase, "put something on one of the free channels, like Twitter". This fallacy ignores (a) the wages spent on the person responsible for maintaining these channels and (b) the opportunity cost for them in managing a particular post. Even if the platform itself is free to use, each extra post has a clear marginal cost.

On the flip side of the discussion, the true power of social media for charities can be unleashed by using social as the amplifier for broader "social" experiences. Social Giving is not simply about asking for donations via Facebook and Twitter. It's about socialising the giving process and thereby creating stories, content and in the widest sense, meaning for supporters, to energise and reward them for their donations. And it just so happens that social media tools are currently the best tools for the job.

Social Giving involves harnessing the power of three key factors: the psychology of motivation and influence, the flux of trends in social media usage, and the changing technological possibilities involved.

Motivation and influence
By understanding the motivations that drive people to share and behave in a social way online, charities can create campaigns that are more conducive to giving. Staying aware of the zeitgeist, and the power of crowd behaviour on individuals, needs to be balanced with the fundamental power of personal, one-to-one (or -many) recommendation. Both these factors can play alongside each other. Then, by creating common goals and shared moments, charities can turn what once were solitary experiences (putting a pound in a collection jar for example) into social experiences, generating the motivating factors already described. In turn this can encourage increased value of each donation and also help non-donors to the tipping point where they decide to give at all.

Trends
Staying on top of trends in social media usage and behaviour is essential due to the sheer pace of change in functionality and attitudes towards these platforms. Aspects of social media usage that were once innovative are now expected and even the "minimum viable" - for example, social tools are now built into everything from music services to grocery retailers.

For example, in 2014 we expect to see a further blending of people's online and offline lives in a phenomenon we call hyper-reality, driven by an ever-increasing seamlessness between the world and the web, through technologies such as NFC and iBeacon. Other key trends include The Quantifiable Self (crunching our lives into sharable and usable visual data), Humour and Humanity (brands finally understanding the difference between a corporate press release and a social conversation) and Ready-to-Share (simple content prepared by brands to ease the viral process).

Technology
Finally, it is crucial to have a proper understanding of the technical factors that impact the success of social media campaigns. Choosing the right platform and understanding the subtleties of each of them is fundamental, as is carefully planning to maximise reach and conversion by implementing digital marketing best practice. Furthermore different devices call for different strategies, and without the right technical knowledge, charities can miss out on large parts of their audience.

By planning campaigns with these factors in mind, charities can move towards creating the kind of socialised environment that makes their supporters more energised, more likely to share and inspire others, and more likely to donate. By ignoring these factors, charities can easily end up with an existential dilemma for their social media channels. Brand awareness is important, but when everything else a charity does is judged on whether it makes money or not, why should social media be any different?

 

By Pete Gomori, Senior Brand Manager and Tom Allwood, Head of Digital at Futureproof. 

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