Facebook

Sometimes doing less of something or nothing at all can be a good approach. An international coalition of autism charities did that yesterday, or rather they encouraged their supporters to do that.

I’m just catching-up on a bit of an email backlog after spending a few days over in Holland at last week’s 30th Annual International Fundraising Congress, and a headline in one email news bulletin happened to catch my eye… “FACEBOOK IS NOT FOR FUNDRAISING, SAYS FACEBOOK EXEC”

That’s pretty eyecatching – so, naturally, I read on.

In short the article was a summary of the Convention session given by Elmer Sotto, Facebook Canada’s ‘Head of Growth’ – which happens to be one of the sessions I attended. However, I certainly didn’t come away from Elmer's presentation with the message that “Facebook is not for fundraising”.

So why did the author think this was the key take-out? I suspect it has to do with a lack of understanding as to the power of Facebook as a Consideration Building Mechanism as well as the need for fundraisers to think afresh about the actual Giving Mechanisms that we offer Facebookers who come across our cause on the site...

Click here to read on at givinginadigitalworld.org

Applications using the ability of smartphones and other mobile devices to pinpoint your precise location at any time have been a key topic for discussion amongst digital marketers over the last year or so, and were also something I covered in my Digital Fundraising Hot Topics Session at this summer’s Institute of Fundraising National Convention here in London last month.

Up to now, a lot of the location-based application chatter has focused on the new breed of specifically designed location-based social networks like Foursquare and Gowalla. However, it was only a matter of time before the global market leader in social networking responded. Hence, last week we saw the launch of Facebook Places – an extension to existing Facebook functionality that will enable smartphone wielding Facebookers to share their location with their Friends, be alerted when Friends are close by, check-in to specific locations, and share details of good places with others in their social network. Click here to read more on givinginadigitalworld.org

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.

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?

It seems that everyone is now firmly on the social media bandwagon.

I will never stop believing, or probably saying that, whichever audience(s) we serve as organisations, their needs should underpin our thinking and actions.  That's not to say that we shouldn't seek to achieve our own objectives - of course we should.  The customer / supporter / volunteer is not always right and we have our own targets to meet.