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Whizz Kidz

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Civil Society IT

01 March 2010

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New mediawhizzI've been dabbling,well

'doing',socialmediaas part

of my charity'scomms

sincemid-2008- not an

excessivelylong time,but

adequateto havegained

enoughground to start

measuringits impact.I hear

mixedopinionabout thisIn the sector;from ardent

anti-strategists(incidentally,

LabourMPsseemto favourthis

tweet-and-gooption)to hardened

PRswho arguethat it's not worth doing

anythingunlesswe measure

its effecton audiencesand brand.

I believethat socialmedia(tweets,

Facebookupdates,etc) mustbe

authentic,non-corporateand

conversational.Soit's hard to a)

'plan' a strategyon how to talk

to people('deardiary,today I

endeavourto speakto seven

people,and laugh at four jokes')

and b) measurethe emotionalimpact

of peopleyou engagewith.

Butlo! ToolssuchasTwitalyzerand

Facebookanalytics- two free tools

in the legion of DIYmetricsout there

now tell me that I have5.1percent

velocity(ooh)and 3.2percent clout

(ahh)on Twitter,and 9.4 Facebook

postquality.Thesesomewhat

abstractstats mayallow me to record

fluctuationsand improvements,

but I'm now capturing the moreuseful numbers(eg number of people

who commenton our Facebook

page,and people that reply or

retweet our messageson Twitter)

in a weekly spreadsheet.

Two free tools I recommendare

TwitterAnalyzerand Samepoint.

Theformer showsgrowth of your

followersovertime, and - really

usefully- the numbersof usersthat

readyour tweets on given days(so

you can work out which were your

more popularconversation-starters).

Samepoint.comhas becomea

standardin my toolkit. Enterthe

nameofyourcharity and seewho

is blogging and micro-blogging

aboutyou in real-time.Thishas

allowed me

to pickup on tweets

from peoplewho didn't

know we had a presence

on Twitter,start to follow them

and sayhello.

WhileI likethe easeof plugging

my @monikerinto a self-generating

pageof 'facts',statsand figures;I think- if you havethe time- at

presentit's helpfuljustto aggregate

(eg thoughSamepoint)a listof

who's talkingaboutyou; keeping

a noteof how manythereareand

whether it's broadlypositiveor

negativechatter.

Staysimple;it's a fluid media

so it's probablybestto sanity-check

yourselfbasedon yourconversations.

It's not exactscience,but neitherare

any socialskills.Justdon't start makingnoteswhen talkingto peoplefaceto-face.

Thatmightlookweird.

Rob Dysonis PRmanagerat

Whizz Kidz and a board member

of CharityComms