Social Media for volunteer recruitment and management

There are hundreds of social media sites the following are the ones you are most likely to make use of and see links to on other voluntary organisations websites.  How much use you make of social media for recruitment and communication will depend on who you want to communicate with, what you want to communicate about and your available resources in terms of technology and people to keep things up to date and to monitor activity.  Websites, e-newsletters, blogs and forums are all still valuable tools but social media has the added advantage of allowing you to connect with other organisations and people who may not previously have known about your organisation. 

• Facebook remains one of the largest social network services and is used by a wide range of age groups, half the UK population have an account.  The largest demographic is among 25-34 year olds but over 30% of users are aged 35 plus.  Voluntary organisations are using it to highlight events and activities, share photos and video and to communicate and interact with users. 
• Useful guidance can be found on
  • http://topnonprofits.com/posting-guide
  • https://knowhownonprofit.org/how-to/how-to-get-started-with-social-media
  • Examples: http://blog.justgiving.com/top-five-charity-facebook-timelines/

• Twitter has10 million users in the UK, the majority are 18 – 34 with 80% active on mobile devices.  Tweets are limited to 140 characters and voluntary organisations are using tweets to send out links to interesting articles or videos or to their own website to promote events or opportunities.  For a user guide see
• www.knowhownonprofit.org/how-to/how-to-get-more-followers-on-twitter
• https://twitter.com/DoitUK

• Linkedin has 15 million users in UK it is designed specifically for the business community. The goal of the site is to allow registered members to establish and document networks of people they know and trust professionally.
• http://www.charitycomms.org.uk/articles/how-to-use-a-linkedin-company-page-for-a-charity

• Flickr has 92 million users worldwide.  It is a photo and video sharing platform.  It is being used by voluntary organisations in a number of ways.  Animal charities are capitalising on people’s interest in looking at animal photos by using the images to attract and connect with the audience.  Other charities are using it as a campaigning tool, for example using before and after photos to show the difference their work makes.  The platform is used by both genders fairly equally and favoured most by the 25-54 year old age group. 

Example: www.flickr.com/groups/walking_for_health/

• Pinterest is essentially a digital scrapbook that allows people to 'pin' images from the web onto themed boards  it has 2 million users in UK. Pinterest requires brief descriptions but the main focus of the site is visual.  Interestingly photos with people in them are 23% more likely to be shared.  80% of users are women (50% of those have children) and 55% of users are aged 25 to 40 years old. 
• Example:NSPCC http://www.pinterest.com/thenspcc/

• Youtube every second one hour’s worth of video is posted so anything posted will need to be promoted by other means to improve its viewing chances.  The platform is very popular with under 24 year olds.  There are 4 billion video views every day.
• For more information http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/Communications/article/1207515/Focus-on-YouTube
• Example: http://mashable.com/2009/08/19/youtube-social-good/
• http://mashable.com/2014/03/20/youtube-dogooder-awards-2014/

• Instagram.  a simple photo- and video-sharing app with a huge and growing following, especially among young people.  300 million users posting 70 million pictures a day and use it to carry on conversations using photos, filters, comments, captions, emoticons, hashtags and links elsewhere to talk about things and share interests. It runs on the Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch as well as Android phones.  
• For more information http://mashable.com/2012/05/29/instagram-for-beginners/

The Guardian has a useful article http://www.theguardian.com/voluntary-sector-network/2015/apr/21/charity-instagram-tips-fundraising-campaign

Tumblr is a micro-blogging platform that churns out millions of posts on a daily basis.   There are currently 256 million blogs on Tumblr.  For more information: http://mashable.com/2012/06/03/the-beginners-guide-to-tumblr

Examples: http://bestival.tumblr.com/post/159895884881/we-need-you-were-recruiting-28-volunteers-to

Snapchat  www.snapchat.com

Used extensively by teenagers for messages and selfies.  Particularly for telling stories that last only 24 hours – stories can gain huge followings.

http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/131313-what-s-the-point-of-snapchat-and-how-does-it-work

Examples of social media campaigns:

Report on charities in social media: http://www.aberfield.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Charities-in-Social-Media-The-Power-of-Images1.pdf

  Whatsapp

Over a billion users.  Used for sharing information, can create groups also easy to share photos and videos.

Examples of use:

See https://www.charitycomms.org.uk/how-charities-are-adopting-whatsapp