kevin baughen's blog

Just to get it out of the way, tweetups started out as a meeting of people who would normally connect via twitter. In less than two years, whilst that core principle has remained the same, their usage has become more widespread and the impacts far more powerful. If you want to hold a conversation with lots of people, in real-time, sharing experiences and learning and involving those in the room with you as well as others online a tweetup is a powerful tool.

I don't often openly rant in this blog as generally it's not helpful or useful.  I will therefore apologise in advance if what I'm about to say 'bends' my rule but please bear with me as there is a serious point for all marketing, communications and fundraising people here.

A bit of an online debate has developed this week, sparked by a Thirdsector blog from a Ms Felicity Donor.  She states that she genuinely isn't bothered about being thanked by a charity she chose to support.

I earn my living helping charities and small businesses get better returns from their marketing and communications ideas.  That means I spend a lot of time encouraging people to try and think and feel what their target audiences think and feel.  Put themselves in their audiences' shoes, if you will.  Sometimes we can do this intuitively or based on experience and sometimes we have to use research or some other means of gathering feedback.

Following the tweets from the Institute of Fundraising’s National Convention this week has reminded me just how fast the world of digital communications is moving.  There are still lots of sessions on using social media to support fundraising and campaigning as well as interest in specific areas like crowdfunding and using blogs and bloggers.

I've been involved in lots of productive and challenging online discussions recently about the importance of an organisation's actions underpinning its ability to improve the credibility of its brand. Without brand credibility, businesses have little right to ask a customer to buy once let alone be a repeat purchaser.  Similarly, a charity earns brand credibility when its actions back up its claims about making a difference.  Consequently all types of supporters will be more likely to engage.

In last week's blog I suggested that a good way to get your fundraising and campaigning messages across with greater impact was to let others tell your stories for you.  But when there are 24 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every 60 seconds how on earth can you ensure your video stories stand out?

Whether marketing tools are being used for commercial or non-profit aims, one of the 'given' rules of the last few years is that society (ie; our target audiences) is just too sophisticated to take anything we say at face value.

A recent Harvard Business Review article outlined 12 key beliefs that good bosses hold. The author, Professor Robert Sutton of Stanford University, added his own considerable experience to a variety of research to come up with his favoured dozen, but I think there are others to add specifically for charity bosses.

The team at BNET UK posted one of my favourite articles of 2010 so far, on this subject.  We all hear (and dare I say use) clichés and idioms every now and then and I'm sure most of us dismiss them as just that.  But how often do we think about the ramifications of some of these glib approaches in a real world context like work or volunteering?