Social Media 4 Good » Strategy

Would you let your logisticians manage your Twitter account?

Timo — Wed, 16 May 2012 10:15:26 +0000

Photo: Greenpeace UK (CC BY-NC-SA)

Most organizations are rather protective of their official voices on social media channels.For good reasons: they don’t want to risk being misunderstood, being kicked out of countries because of ill-phrased retweets or creating policy by accident. The downside of this is, that the official Facebook pages and Twitter feeds of many NGOs and UN agencies are rather dry and boring and had all life sucked out of them.

Turning Twitter into an “all-staff” channel

For the next six weeks, Greenpeace UK will try a different approach: anyone in the organization who has a personal Twitter account and has signed up for the experiment, can push their tweets to the main Twitter account by adding the hashtag #gp to their tweets. As their “slightly nervous” web team says: “What could possibly go wrong?”

Diversity of individuals

While this approach would make me a little nervous as well, I like it more and more, the more I think about it. Rather then being the voice of the institution, the Twitter channel becomes a mirror of what the staff members have on their minds. The result will almost certainly be more interesting and engaging than the usual dry press releases. I can see how this could lead to a very interesting dialogue between Greenpeace staff members and their supports over all kinds of topics.

A question of training and trust

Granted, for Greenpeace it’s slightly easier to do that than for the ICRC, MSF, UNHCR or other organizations who work in highly politicized conflict regions where a critical tweet about a government could mean the end of an aid-programme. But in my experience most people are very responsible and only very few are stupid enough to endanger their own jobs by ill-considered messages on public accounts.

It all comes down to training and guidance: have you explained to your staff what social media is and what kind of messages are and aren’t acceptable? Then you should be able to trust them. And if you can’t trust them, then you haven’t trained them properly.

What do you think? Would you open your Twitter account to all staff members? Leave a comment below.

Photographer sues AFP for 120 million over Twitter-photos

Timo — Mon, 14 May 2012 07:10:29 +0000

(Photo by GreenLight Designs)

A photographer is suing AFP and Getty Images for 120 million US Dollars over photos that he had taken in Haiti after the earthquake and which he had shared on Twitter.

I find it remarkable that this story doesn’t get more attention because it shows just how much trouble you can get into if you take photos from social media platforms without making sure that you have the necessary rights.

Downloaded from Twitpic

In a nutshell here is what happened (check out the British Journal of Photography if you want more details):

Daniel Morel is a professional photographer and was in Port-au-Prince when the earthquake happened. He immediately started taking photos and made some of them available in high resolution through Twitter/Twitpic. The photos were retweeted and an AFP editor downloaded them and shared them with AFPs own subscribers as well with Getty Images who resold the photos as well. In total 820 copies of Morel’s photos were sold.

The question, which is now being discussed before a New York court, is whether what AFP did was legal or not. AFP argues that Twitters Terms of Service grant third parties the right to rebroadcast content. In addition they argue that Morel de facto consented to the photos being reused in a commercial fashion by making them available through a social network in high resolution.

Morel naturally sees things differently and sues AFP/Getty for the maximum amount of 150,000 US Dollars per alleged copyright infringement.

The rules apply to everyone

This is a really interesting case because AFP essentially argues that it was ok to take the photos and even profit from them financially, simply because they were on the internet. However, at the same time AFP and Getty are pursuing bloggers who take their photos without permission. Surely you can’t have it both ways.

Besides, I would argue that companies, whose sole business model is acquiring and reselling rights should really know better and be held to a higher standard.

I doubt and I don’t think that Morel should get 120 million from AFP. But whatever amount he gets in the end, it should be a warning to all NGOs and humanitarian organizations who are lax about acquiring rights for photos and videos. Having written permission to use photos is absolutely essential!

Sharing photos online – a decision matrix for non-profit organizations

Social Media as a Tool for Humanitarian Protection

Timo — Fri, 11 May 2012 12:26:07 +0000

Back from my vacation I had the opportunity to listen to a live webcast on “Social Media as a Tool for Humanitarian Protection” that was organized by the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research (HPCR).

The panelist for the 90 minutes discussion were: Jason Cone (Director of Communications, MSF USA), Melissa Fleming (Head of Communications, UNHCR) Claudia Gonzalez (Head of Marketing,The Global Fund) and Daniel Stauffacher (ICT4Peace).

If you have the time, watch the discussion – links are at the bottom of the page. For me, the main points were:

An HPCR survey showed that a substantial number of aid workers are also active social media users.

For me that shows once more that humanitarian organizations urgently need to assist their staff in using social media responsibly. While NGOs should want their staff to talk about their work, the organizations also have to make sure that their staff knows what is appropriate and what isn’t.

Traditional media has less and fewer resources to cover foreign news but there is an audience for in-depth foreign news reporting. Humanitarian organizations are increasingly becoming full service news providers, similar to stringers and have to deliver complete packages of text, audio and video to mainstream media. This also means that communicators in the field are expected to deliver to professional standards equal to CNN or the BBC.
It is much more difficult to emphasize with the fate of a large group of people, than that of an individual. Social media gives NGOs the opportunity to focus on individual stories.
Humanitarian organizations continue to fail to communicate with beneficiaries. Social media can be a channel through which beneficiaries can talk back.

While this is certainly a possible channel, I personally think that social media cannot be the answer to this issue. We have been talking about this for years and I don’t think that this is a technical problem, it is a cultural problem. Organizations are (for many reasons) simply not focusing on talking to beneficiaries.

Social media can help humanitarian organizations to get a better picture of the situation on the ground via crowdsourcing and can help the affected people to organize itself.
Social media is just one tool in a very big toolkit and is frequently not the most appropriate tool (I cannot repeat this often enough).

A recording of the discussion can be downloaded on iTunes or watched as recorded livestream.

Non-profits and social media: how to leave the competition behind

Timo — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 16:27:51 +0000

I’m a firm believer that you get what you pay for and in that respect I find little encouragement in the “2012 Nonprofit Social Networking Report“. According to the report, non-profits and NGOs are still very reluctant to allocate resources to their social media activities. However, this is also a chance for those who are willing to make the investment.

If you haven’t done so yet, please take a look at this infographic which sums up the key findings of the report nicely.

Time is more valuable than money

It is good to see that around 45 per cent of NGOs say that they have a budget for social media. However, money is not the main resource you need to build a successful social media presence – it is time: time to listen to your followers and to engage them.

Full-time employees working on social media (Source: 2012 Nonprofit Social Networking Benchmark Report)

Unfortunately 67 per cent of all respondents said that they only have one quarter or less of an employees dedicated to social media. To me that sounds like someone simply added “social media” to the job description of a person in the communications or marketing department and decided that that was enough. Well, it is not.

Their reluctance is your chance

The good news is, that this also means that it is comparatively easy to zip past the competition.

Think about it: by dedicating a single full time staff member (and no, I’m not talking about interns) to social media, you have more resources at your disposal than 80 per cent of all non-profits! Considering that the report also says that each Facebook follower can be valued at around 214 USD, this should be a no-brainer.

Granted, small non-profits might not need someone to work eight hours per day on Facebook and Twitter; maybe someone who works 50 per cent really is enough for them. However, even then I would argue for a dedicated social media person, rather than someone who has this as part of their portfolio – and anything less than 50 per cent is simply not serious.

What is your opinion? What is the minimum number of resources a non-profit should invest in social media?

Sharing photos online – a decision matrix for non-profit organizations

Timo — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:17:23 +0000

Many non-profits, NGOs and International Organizations are of two minds when it comes to sharing photos on the internet. On the one hand, they want their material to be shared as widely as possible, on the other hand they want to have total control. The decision matrix below will help you decide which photos to share and how.

Generally speaking, your photos are more likely to be widely used if you give people the explicit permission to use the pictures. The best and easiest way to do this is by publishing them under a so called “Creative Commons License”. These are legally binding terms of use that give you more flexibility than “© all rights reserved”. Photo websites like Flickr allow you to choose a license for each photo so that you can decide exactly what you want to share under which conditions.

You can for example give everyone the right to copy, distribute and transmit your photos but not to alter it or use it for commercial purposes. This license has the technical designation “CC by-nc-nd” (stands for: Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivative Works) and is the recommended license for most non-profit photos.

Decision matrix - click image to see a larger version.

The basic idea of this matrix is that photos that contain branding should be shared more widely under CC than photos that do not contain branding. The reason for this is that I have personally seen photos being taken from one NGO and reused on another NGOs website, which is something you don’t want to happen and is less likely if the photo contains branding.

Control distribution by controlling resolution

Of course people might still take your photos without permission, even when you have protected them with “all rights reserved”. That is why I recommend that you upload photos which you don’t want to share through CC with a comparatively low resolution such as 1024 x 786. At the same time, you should always include a sentence beneath each photo saying that higher resolution versions can be requested by email.

Make absolutely sure you have all rights

A word on rights: Images shot by staff or by consultants working for an NGO are normally the property of the organization, so you can do what you want with them – check this with your photo department or media unit. However, if you buy or accept photos for free from anyone who does not work for you, make sure that he gives you explicit permission to use the photos and distribute them under creative commons license in writing. I know of an organization that received photos for free after the Tsunami, shared them with the media (not even under creative commons license) and was later sued for royalties.

My new project: “How to choose a content management system – the non-profit guide”

Timo — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 10:59:42 +0000

The perfect wine to drink while looking for a new CMS (Photo: quinn.anya)

Over the last few years I’ve had the opportunity to be involved in major web relaunch and content management (CMS) projects. In addition, I spent a lot of time listening to the woes of colleagues in other organizations, exchanging experiences and discussing ideas how to select the best CMS.

Over the next couple of months I’m planning to write a document (maybe just a PDF, maybe an e-book) that could help NGOs, non-profits and international organizations to select web content management systems as part of a web relaunch.

The document will not focus on individual systems, but rather on a method how to define your needs and then select a system, as well as the most common pitfalls, such as the perils of content migration or integrating your CMS with you design.

If you have experience with CMS selection/implementation and are interested in contributing to the guide, I would love to hear from you.

Please use the comment section below or the contact form to get in touch with me.