What I’ve been reading: WhatsApp channels the new distribution battle ground and when New York ordered agencies to spend local

I’m on a period of leave at the moment, one of the benefits of this is having some time to read around and there’s interesting links below that I’ve stumbled upon. If you’re in the digital media, digital journalism, social media, digital comms space then I hope these are a good reading list. I’ll try and post these as frequently as I get chance, and if you find them useful let me know. And if you spot something I should include, or you’ve written something that you think should be shared then drop it over. I’m on edward_walker86 AT hotmail.co.uk

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WhatsApp says Channels will be available for everyone imminently – AndroidPolice – the big focus this week is on the launch of WhatsApp channels, a new feature that’s now rolling out globally and Zuckerberg gave us the nudge last week. In my view WhatsApp is the latest battleground for news publishers in the quest for scale and engagement. My personal use of WhatsApp tells me it’s become the unifying social app, at least in the UK, from updates about family life, to parenting pick-up chatter, to business/getting stuff done updates, it’s a space where people spend an increasing amount of time. Will they accept news publishers into this space? (the initial indications from the award-winning work my previous employer Reach has been doing is a yes). Looking through my channel suggestions it’s interesting how established and well-followed football clubs already are within the platform and they also feature in Tim’s summary below.

There’s some useful reads on WhatsApp, not just in the publishing space either, the basics here from SinchEngage on how to create a WhatsApp channel (they key is getting the channel attached to a phone number that isn’t yours, unless you want to suddenly have all WhatsApp responsibilities of an organisation attached to your personal phone number!).

Tim Gatt takes a look through how some publishers in the national space are already utilising WhatsApp channels – and as with most social platforms, the key is providing a mix and variety of post types (not just banging out link posts).

While Dan Slee looks at it through a public sector/comms lens, as concerns grow around the effectiveness/usefulness of X as a comms channel especially for public-sector organisations who need to get information out directly to the public, especially during an emergency.

The rise of WhatsApp channels, Insta channels, TikTok and more points to how media consumption is – on the whole – becoming a much more private thing or when shared, is shared with a focused and relevant (or sometimes trusted) group of people. This Insider piece explores how social media is becoming ‘less social’ on the whole compared to back in the 2000s and early 2010s.

City agencies in New York ordered to spend with community media – The Center for Community Journalism – my former coursemate Rhiannon Davies is on an interesting fact-finding mission in the States right now all about community media and the state of play there. She shared this piece as part of her learnings (worth seeing her LinkedIn summaries) about what happened in NYC when the Mayor (they have more power over there!) doubled-down on getting government agencies to focus their spending on advertising with community media. A big impact. The full report is here.

Thinking about how big anchor organisations and institutions within a city or region could focus their spend on media which is based, focused and providing impact within that geography and doing that spend directly (rather than through an agency or via a digital platform) feels like it could have a big impact for community and local media. You only need to think back to the pandemic and the industry-wide direct spend the government undertook with local media outlets for the uptick this had. The key is making it easy to do and delivering strong and tangible results – and both of those things aren’t easy!

Introducing LION’s Stages of Sustainability – LION publishers – another piece from over in the States, but the LION network of independent publishers have mapped and looked in detail at the path to sustainability for independent and community media. As someone who set up an independent media site in 2009 – Blog Preston – then I recognised many of the stages in this and it’s definitely far from being any kind of nirvana when it comes to hyperlocal or community publishing. A really interesting report and study.

The Happy Journalist – Jacqui Merrington – a smart cookie, Jacqui’s going to be writing weekly at the cross-section of AI and climate journalism. Two things I know she’s very passionate and interested in. She’s set up on Substack and I recommend giving her a follow and subscribing.

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Why email is a force not to be ignored for regional news publishers

Gotta stay relevant. Right? In these times of mounting audiences, mobile consumption and a young savvy internet audience really finding their groove – how do you ensure you can still reach these audiences and get them coming back to your content time and time again?

I am speaking on Wednesday at the Technology for Marketers and Advertisers (sounds terrifying doesn’t it, will they brainwash me? Is the future of advertising some kind of microchip inside your shoe telling Tesco what your little toe is thinking about buying next…) event about what Trinity Mirror Regionals have been doing (that is who I work for in case you are wondering) with email newsletters. EMAIL!? But Ed, I hear you cry, email is about as sexy as, well, it isn’t very sexy.

Let me remind you of something. What do you need to be able to have an account on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+? That’s right, an email address. Email is a shockingly bad form of my communication, just ask anyone who works for or with me when they try and second guess what I mean by a one word response of Yes to an email at 11.45pm on a Friday. BUT, one thing I have learned since Spring 2012 when we started on an email newsletter sort them out journey is that a heck of a lot of people still use it, like using it and it isn’t going anywhere quickly.

Video: Appearance on the Power of Modern Community

My fellow Connected authors (Hannah, Marc) and I took part in a Google Hangout this morning as part of Community Manager Appreciation Day.

It was a discussion about how a combination of online/offline can be used to connect communities – with plenty of examples and chunks from the e-book we wrote on the topic.

It’s a surreal experience chatting to people from the East Coast of the States and South Africa from your living room, but then again that’s the power of technology.

Mark Kelleher's keynote speech about CRM at Technology for Marketing & Advertising Conference

Attended a keynote speech from Mark Kelleher, the BBC’s Head of CRM and Head of Marketing Technology at the Technology for Marketing and Advertising Conference (TFMA) at Earls Court.

He gave an insight into how the BBC is beginning to use CRM and how it is changing the way the organisation works in the digital age.

Kelleher started by saying that using CRM in a non-commercial organisation is more difficult than for commercial ones, as CRM systems are traditionally based around converting leads into sales and building a relationship with the customer.

The BBC in the analogue age had a policy of not using direct marketing, after all they didn’t need to as there were only up to five channels and limited radio stations, 30 odd million used to watch the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special.

However, recognising that the corporation has moved into the digital age they set up about working out how CRM could be used to target and deliver to an audience that was fragmenting, changing its behaviours, becoming less loyal and changing their methods of consumption.

He then showed a rather wacky diagram with all the ‘social media’ and other tools that could be put into the direct marketing mix and asked ‘how much of this stuff is going to add value?’. That is the question that all organisations need to be asking themselves.

To respond to the changes in audience then the BBC is adopting some principles for how to engage with the audience:

– Personalise. Make content relevant to the person.
– Customer insight. Use data to understand what the audience likes
– Self-help. Provide resources for the audience to get help there and then, not wait to speak to a person
– Accountability. New media tools can be used to show transparency and explain why decisions are made
– Online channels. Explore new ways of delivering content to the audience.
– Brand experience. Ensuring that through a distributed strategy the brand is not diluted and the BBC is still respected as an institution
– Data drive decision making. Data will be available at all levels of the organisation to inform decision makers, rather than relying on assumptions about the audience.

Kelleher then made an interesting point about CRM. The systems will produce endless amounts of data and reports but it’s knowing how to interpret these reports – you can produce reports until you’re blue in the face but if your non-data geek decision makers can’t understand them or are overwhelmed then this defeats the whole purpose of having the system.

In the new digital world it’s all about relevancy. The content needs to be tailored to fit the audience member, not the audience, the audience member. Mr Smith likes very different things to Mrs Jones, even though they might be the same age, live next door to each other and work in the same industry. The digital world should offer personalised interactions wherever possible for the audience and give users the chance to set preferences, more of what they want more of the time.

We were shown an example of an SMS pilot that the BBC had run using Radio 1. They had been unsure of how to use SMS as a marketing tool and they decided to pilot it with the Scott Mills show on Radio 1. This was because a lot of the listenership are under-25 and SMS is embedded in their lifestyle. They tried various different styles and tones for the texts and found that the more informal texts that matched the celebrity (Scott Mills) were most popular and prompted the best response rate.

However, it’s easy to get carried away with SMS marketing and bombard your audience – instead organisations should focus on adding value for the audience wherever possible.

Kelleher then briefly touched on the iPlayer – a huge success for the corporation – and how direct marketing was being used there. There was a subtle recruitment button in the bottom corner of the iPlayer frontpage (can’t say I’d ever noticed) that pushed users to a simple sign-up form. From this customised updates were produced to inform them of new content that they would be interested in.

The BBC is in the process of refining it’s data collection touchpoints as they have hundreds, if not thousands, of them. They send out 110 different email newsletters and 30 million are sent every month. The most popular is the BBC Food email newsletter.

Kelleher briefly touched on a new project that the BBC is running around its Darwin campaign. This is TV, radio, online and offline events all related to the theme of Charles Darwin. The website features a very simple ‘Sign up’ plug and all the user has to do is enter their email address – nothing else. This is then cross-referenced with the main CRM database and added to a list of ‘They like Darwin’. A personalised email with call to actions are then sent out related to Darwin content on different media. The open rate for the emails is a phenomenal 80% and the click through rate was 20-25%. Not bad for a campaign I’d never heard of.

Ultimately thought content is king, and I agree completely with Kelleher on this. He used the analogy of a first date. You meet a girl and you find out she likes guinea pigs, France and red wine. After two years worth of dates you’re still discussing guinea pigs, France and red wine. You never learn more. You are eventually going to get bored of discussing the same things and go off and find something new. This works with direct marketing and CRM, you need to be constantly offering up something new, something different and something that makes people say ‘Yes! I’d like to know more about that!’. You can’t afford to be static, because it’s easier now than ever before for someone to disappear off and find new and fresh content with the touch of a button.

Finally, Kelleher finished with the new rules for CRM and direct marketing in the digital age:

1. Research the audience’s propensity. Ensure you’re using the right approach and technology for the audience you’re targeting
2. Go where the audience are. If the audience all use Facebook, you need to use Facebook to get to them.
3. Make the user’s recruitment journey easy. Simple sign up forms.
4. Make interaction relevant. Don’t ask for data about whether they have a pet, and then never use it. The user will be expecting something related to guinea pigs they’ve put in that they have guinea pigs.
5. Make the interaction timely. If an event has just happened, hit the user with some content about what happened. If an event is upcoming, allow enough time for them to register and attend.
6. Provide value. This is key, you need to make your content stand out from everyone else.
7. Be clear about what you want the audience to do. Is it a call to action? Are you asking them for money? Do you want them to watch a video?

Overall it was a great keynote from Kelleher and gave a real insight into what the BBC are up to and his new rules for CRM and direct marketing in the digital age will no doubt be banded around the industry for a few months to come until someone events the newer new rules.

What do you think, are the BBC using CRM well? Could they be using it better? What do you think of the new rules for CRM and direct marketing in the digital age?

My thoughts on the web, email and social media conference held by #iofnorth

After a 5.30 AM start I arrived in York a little bit fuggy but ready for an interesting and thought-provoking day. I wasn’t disappointed. In the surroundings of the National Railway Museum (ace place for a conference, big trains!) I mingled with fellow third sector professionals to discuss the impact that the web, email and social media was having on fundraising and charities in general.

Speaker 1: The story so far: Charity websites & the email – the good, the bad and just don’t go there!

The day kicked off with Howard Lake from UK Fundraising taking a look at where the third sector currently stood in relation to using the web. Howard was a great speaker, opening up the subject and explaining the basics of things such as RSS, web design, where to place your donate button.

The story so far: charity websites and email

View more presentations from HowardLake. (tags: charity fundraising)

From a Union perspective it was great that we are already doing a lot of what he talked about, but it was great to be refreshed about the basics and to remember what we should be doing on a web 1.0 level before trying to run on the web 2.0 level.

There’s a few things I’m going to put into practice on our site. The first is to instead of having a ‘donate now’ button on every page to re-focus the site to have a ‘get involved’ button on every page that allows students to quickly find out how they can get involved in the Union.

Speaker 2: Developing your online fundraising – the opportunities to be used

There was a shuffle around to the programme as Jonathan Waddingham took to the stage from Justgiving. Unfortunately Nick from Mission Fish hadn’t tuned up for this slot (or as we learned later, he wasn’t actually due until the afternoon) so Jon was bumped up the programme! He gave a great presentation that showed the huge increase in community fundraising seen on Justgiving over the past 12 months.

What charities really think of online giving, and how to make the most of it

View more presentations from Jonathan Waddingham. (tags: research online fundraising)

Jon also spoke about the success of their Facebook application that allows users to plug it into their profile and use it to help reach their total. This was a really clever idea, allowing features such as a little bar that sits on your profile and shows how much of the total has been raised so far and most important how your friends can help YOU reach the total.

From a Union perspective I think there’s a lot more that the organisation can do to support students in their personal fundraising exploits. We could point them in the direction of great tools such as the Justgiving facebook application, show them how to use the web to fundraise and explain about using secure tools such as Justgiving and Bmycharity.

You can watch Jon’s presentation here:

Justgiving’s Jonathan Waddingham talking in York! from Justgiving on Vimeo.

Speaker 3 – Web 2.0 – where are we heading? An introduction to social media

I consider myself to know a fair bit about social media (blogs, twitter, facebook etc) but it’s always good to be reminded of their power and what they can achieve. Steve Bridger took to the stage and with a very flashy presentation (he uses a mac, so no powerpoint here!) he really opened everyone’s eyes to what social media can achieve for nonprofit organisations.

Steve opened by re-telling his days as a campaigner for Oxfam and as a student. He pulled out his ‘telephone tree’, now I’m far too young to remember one of these but apparently they were all the rage during the 80s for student activists. Remarkably though they are very similar to Facebook, you have a number of connections that you ‘touch base’ with regularly. Just with Facebook it’s easier, quicker, cheaper and the number of connections can be much larger. This demonstrated the reach that social media can give charities.

An Introduction to Social Media for Charities

View more presentations from mexicanwave. (tags: web 2.0)

We were then shown how a blog can be a powerful, and fast-moving, vehicle for change. Steve showed us After Wilma, a blog he setup to help cover the devestating of Hurricane Wilma in Mexico. The tourism board didn’t want people to see what was happening, it was ‘business as usual’ according to the tourism board. The blog combined user generated content, images, blogs, videos and reports to showcase what was happening.

Flickr and Twitter were shown to the audience next and Flickr in particular was a very effective way of showing what the charity can do. Steve was really hammering home that charities can use social media to tell their stories. Flickr in particular is a great way to tell stories, as images are far more powerful than reams of text.

The key point that I picked out from Steve’s presentation was when he said “social media is messy, that’s just the way it is”. This is really true. You can plan and create strategy after strategy for social media but the best way is to just do it! And it will be messy, difficult, tricky but also brilliant, engaging and connecting.

Speaker 4 – The power of social networks for online fundraising

We were joined live via web link by Beth Kanter from San Francisco. The connection wasn’t brilliant so I couldn’t hear some of what Beth said but she gave an overview of how she’d used social media to raise money.

She’d used blogs and twitter mainly to raise money and awareness for various causes. I think the figure was something like $210,000 from just online fundraising. Imagine how cheap it must have been to do, not in terms of time, but in terms of overheads, no print/paper costs. I think Beth’s brief web chat showed how social media can be used to make a real tangible difference.

Speaker 5 – A case study – Dogs Trust

The next session was a real eye-opener. Dogs Trust took to the stage and after all the theory we’d heard and examples, they showed us how they had used social media to create a community and also achieve their goal – to re-home dogs.

Dogs Trust And Social Networking

View more presentations from Graham Richards.

They’d used Facebook to create a network where they had 35,000 fans (that’s the equivalent of the Union’s membership) and this gives them a base to push out messages to those fans and get them involved. Not content with being on Facebook the Dogs Trust showed off DoggySnaps – summed up as Facebook for dogs. This is a brilliant idea and they’ve created a network for dog owners to show off their pets, connect with each other and the Dogs Trust sell advertising off the back of it to fund it.

Their use of twitter was also eye-opening. They had a full-time staff presence who looked after their social media presences and being on twitter was an important part of it. They gave an example of how they’d managed to re-home a dog through twitter, and just being there to respond to people was important.

This got me thinking about how the Union can use twitter. We have an account but don’t actively use it to engage with our membership (don’t know how many of our membership are active on it, but students tend to be early-adopters!). The key for using twitter seems to be to engage people by asking questions and be a ‘real person’ where possible on twitter – not just an automated post/response drone.

Speaker 6 – eBay for charity: buzz-building, special auctions and social networks

Nick Aldridge from MissionFish had arrived after the programme cock-up took to the stage to explain how eBay and MissionFish could be an excellent way for charities to raise money.

Nick Aldridge For York Io F Feb 09 Slideshare

View more presentations from Graham Richards.

He also appeared to sound a note of caution about social media and the web, and rightly so. While the numbers with social media appear big and impressive, they are still a small % of a charities audience and potential donors. It’s easy to get carried away with new media and forget that 3 million odd people still read The Sun every day! However, something that starts online/social media can often help lead to ‘old media’ coverage because the old guard like anything that is new – hence why Twestival got very good coverage.

Nick also went through five key trends about online fundraising that he’d picked out during a joint research exercise with the Institute of Fundraising:

1. Stories, not annual reports
2. Engage and explain, then fundraise
3. From walled garden to public park, beyond your own website
4. Integrate the online work to fit your overall message
5. Use partners to reach new audiences

Speaker 7 – To blog or not to blog? That is the question

Chris Garrett rounded off the day with a top session about blogging. He got a little sidetracked when speaking about twitter, but it was great that he put his twitter screen up and talked everyone through what it actually was and what it could do.

He had a great little summary of why charities should blog:

attract, inform, interact, retain, energise, recruit

Chris Garrett Non Profit Presentation

View more presentations from Graham Richards.

That hit the nail on the head. Great stuff. He also spoke a little about SEO and explained how using a content management system such as wordpress, or anything with tags, makes your web presences infinitely more findable by Google and other search engines.

Summing up

Overall it was a great day and while some of it was stuff I already knew, there were some fantastic examples of how social media and the web can be used. The main idea I came away with was that the Union can use the web to engage students a lot more and connect them with opportunities and ideas that they want to be involved with.

Credit has to go to Graham Richards from the Institute of Fundraising North for his excellent organisation of the event and for being adventurous with twitter to find speakers!

Becoming a trustee of Mencap Liverpool

Just a quick note to say that I was successfully co-opted onto the board of trustees for Mencap Liverpool this evening (would link to their website but it’s currently down). This is a regional branch of national Mencap. At 22 I’ve lowered the age of their board significantly.

I’m really looking forward to working with them and my first task is redeveloping their website and then revamping their communications. It’s going to be a challenge but a good one. I’ll try and blog to provide an insight of what it’s like being a trustee for such a well known charity and also what it’s like being a trustee so young.

"It's not about having your face on the frontpage" – UCLan SU's adventures in web land

Gave a presentation to AMSU (Association of Managers in Students’ Union) North-West meeting this afternoon about what’s nearly been a year journey for our development of the web presences at UCLan Students’ Union.

It was a great chance to reflect on how far we’ve come, particularly in the last six months, and to take stock of some of the big changes that have happened as a result of our new website and approach to the web and social media.

Uclansu Adventures In Web Land Amsu011208

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: uclan uclanstudentsunion)

The presentation was only a few slides long but there was plenty of discussion about how Union’s can use the web, and in particular how they can engage the membership through the web. Hence some discussions about online voting, the use of Ning as an issue based social network and the collection of members data to communicate messages properly.

It was useful to show what we’d been doing and hear that others wanted to follow suit, but needed to have a real think through what they wanted to do with their web presences. We also talked about what we’d got planned for the next six months and it looks promising.

How do Students' Union's respond to a recession?

Image from flickr: Felice de Sena Micheli

‘Are Students’ Union recession proof?’ that was muttered by our chief executive during a meeting the other day. He’s not the only one wondering. We’ve kicked off a discussion over on The Charity Place about how Students’ Union’s can respond to the challenges that are potentially ahead. So here’s my key points about how Union’s can respond to the threat of a recession, some are specific to UCLan but some could go for the sector as a whole.

1. Make sure no one can question our legitimacy. This means showing what we do, how we do it and why we’re important. This makes it harder for people to take things away if we are shown to be doing an excellent job. Also, as Union’s officially become charities it’ll be important to consider our impacts as an organisation and be able to measure them. The days of just giving money to said club and society and saying ‘that’s involvement’ is going to be harder to justify, or running said campaign because someone sitting in an office thinks ‘it’d look good wouldn’t it?’ are dead.

2. Get smart with technology. We’re looking at investing in technologies which will allow us to use students data to increase loyalty to student services, get smarter with how we communicate with students and ensure that destination events are promoted effectively. Poster/flyer blindness is rife and especially for us being a city campus we’ve got to compete for every single penny to ensure we are still the ‘gatekeepers’ of the student market and student pound.

3. Customer service. Ensure that commercial outlets are 100% switched on and ready to please every single customer who comes through the door. Students are going to be thinking twice about spending, and we need to make sure that when they do spend that tenner they are very happy with what they’ve got – not just the product but everything that comes with it.

4. Don’t rush into things. Just because there is a recession looming (or already here) doesn’t mean we should just retreat into the trenches. There are umpteen opportunities for Students’ Union’s to partner up with loads of different organisations and work with them to deliver services, create a market, deliver information and much more. This is especially relevant if there is going to be a big government splurge in spending, as some of that might be up for grabs for new projects or promotions.

5. Innovate. Be a leader, take the odd risk or two but make sure you’ve backed it up with resources. Not easy in a recession, but if you spot an opportunity to expand then make sure you’ve got the support behind it and do it properly.

6. Engage the membership. They after all are in charge, go out to the membership and ask them how they think things can be improved, get them onboard, get them working with you, for you, feeding back to you and most of all being loyal to you.

7. Develop niches. Ensure that while you’re appealing to the 18-22 student pound market that you’re developing niche products/services/communications that satisfy a particular demographic of the student body. We know that the demographics of students are changing to include international, mature, part-time, commuting and a whole host of other ‘groups’ – identify them and develop strands to appeal to them and bring them into the mix.

What do you think? Are Students’ Union’s actually recession proof? Or is that bullshit? Will some go out of business? How can they survive?

NUSSL (and NUS) needs to offer business solutions to Students' Union's

I spent a few hours on Monday at an NUS Services Ltd event in Birmingham about local business income generation. Well, it was supposed to be about that but the general idea seemed to be whether NUSSL could move into the student media agency area which is dominated by the likes of BAM, OnCampus, Student Media Group etc.

The overwhelming mood in the room was ‘No, you missed the boat about 5 years ago’. But, there is a huge area where NUSSL could provide something very useful to Students’ Union’s. Business solutions and in particular web based ones.

If I was in NUSSL and looking for ways to diversify I’d be considering:

– Taking an open source CRM solution and modifying it for Students’ Union’s

– Providing membership solutions in terms of clubs and societies

– Working on data solutions for Union’s to offer loyalty products such as swipe cards etc

– Offering training to Union’s on how to use social media, web technologies and how to generate income from the web

– Working on ideas for how to generate new revenue streams from mature, international, part-time and postgraduate students, because the student movement is not getting any younger

Unfortunately the event didn’t allow for much exploration of these ideas because it was dominated by lots of ‘no, no, no’ rather than ‘what about, maybe, could we’. NUSSL needs a culture change and to figure out what Students’ Union’s need in the 21st century to connect with their memberships and remains as the gatekeepers of getting messages to the student body.

Round-up: What the US election means for charities/marketing/nonprofits

Seemed to be a trend over the last few days as some great posts popped up about what the US election and in particular the Obama campaign means for marketing professionals, charities and nonprofit organisations. Here’s the best:

Seth Godin kicks off with a great take on what the elections meant for marketing professionals. He definitely believes that online is the place to be for campaigning.

Kivi was quick off the mark with what nonprofit organisations can learn marketing wise from the election. She focuses on the ability of the Obama to fundraise from a whole spectrum of people, small amounts building to one huge total. She also links through to the Getting Attention blog which has a good piece about what the election taught us about email marketing.

The Charity Place has a piece about what nonprofits can learn from the Obama campaign, and it’s more of the same. Engagement, make friends first and then ask for money – not the other way round. I think that’s an important one, build a connection and then ask for the money.