Natasha Boojihawon Managing Director at Union Street Media Arts CIC

1. We are an innovative social concept organisation that prides itself in creating people-lead ideas and campaigns delivered through media and arts, social and action research and state of the art digital technology. Our work is enriched by the lives of us and others. Natasha Boojihawon Managing Director at Union Street Media Arts CIC Business Development Officer at Women’s Solidarity Forum Community Development/Youth Worker Strategic Development Consultant Trainer Creative Producer (Film & Graphic Design)

2. We are a strong BME women’s umbrella organisation set up to support, provide a space for and campaign on behalf of grassroots organisations to influence social change. Through our combined expertise across the community, voluntary, public and private sector as well as our incredible lived experience, we continue to increase knowledge and information sharing, develop a collective voice, be visible, and raise and challenge important issues that disadvantaged groups face on the frontline. ‘Together, we can influence change’

3. NEW & SOCIAL MEDIA WORKSHOP • Demonstrating impact • Influencing for change • Marketing & communication • Benefits of new & social media • What’s appropriate for you? • Top tips for new and social media

4. DEMONSTRATING YOUR IMPACT Why is this important? • To attract new work • The cuts = more competition • Evidence to attract new funding • Evaluating your project’s effectiveness (keeping on track) • Record your contribution • Attract new partners • Attract new participants • To promote yourself

5. DEMONSTRATING YOUR IMPACT CONTINUED What are the benefits? • Developing a reputation • Growing your organisation • Bringing on board new partners • Attracting new work • Building morale within your organisation • Pride • Making people aware of you and your work especially the community around you How would you normally do this in your organisation?

6. INFLUENCING AND LOBBYING FOR CHANGE What is this? • Lobbying : influencing decision-makers to change their minds • Advocacy: influencing also through research, campaigns • Decision makers: make policies, so consider policies which affect you and your community • Quality: the things that help us influence • Method: the ways in which we go about influence • Outcome: what happens as a result of influence

7. INFLUENCING AND LOBBYING FOR CHANGE How do you do this? • Gather evidence. • Document what your organisation does – evidence • Find what’s missing in your local area or the needs- ask why it is important that these are acknowledged • Identify what you want to change • Identify WHO and WHY you want to influence. • Identify the right tools for influencing. • Keep an eye on the media perspective.

8. INFLUENCING AND LOBBYING FOR CHANGE CONTINUED Why is this important? • Represent the views of your community • Localism • Current socio-economic situation What benefits does this bring? • Increasing your knowledge • Increasing your klout • Advocacy for others • Increasing credibility/reputation • Another way to impact How would you normally do this?

9. MARKETING AND COMMUNICATION • It’s not just about business • Different M&C approaches • Audit your current needs/situation • Identify your audience • What’s working for you? • Make your M&C strategy match your organisation’s vision • Get advice and people to support your campaigns • Develop a clear strategy to be organised

10. WHY USE NEW & SOCIAL MEDIA? • Reach larger numbers • Develop and reach new audiences (eg young people) • Save money on marketing/maintain low costs • Increase speed of communication • Develop online campaigns – high profile & impact • There is a tool/platform for most things

11. WHAT WORKS FOR YOU? • New & social media tools have to work for you. • New media tools – professionalism • Social media tools – personality • Time input vs benefit • Your capacity & resources (audit this?) • Match your personality with social media tools • How/where do you like to have conversations?

12. WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE? EXAMPLES New Media • Wordpress • Tumblr • Mailchimp Social Media • Facebook • Twitter • Storify • Audioboo • Youtube

13. TOP TIPS FOR NEW & SOCIAL MEDIA • Choose platforms appropriate for you • Spend time exploring & testing out • Get help/advice/training from local social media surgeries www.socialmediasurgery.com • Build a strong database for campaigns • Have a personal touch/angle to your campaigns • Have different levels of campaign engagement • Use a variety of tools for the same campaign • Co-ordinate online and offline campaigning • Start and maintain conversations

14. TOP TIPS FOR NEW & SOCIAL MEDIA • Use simple and clear language • Share links • Post about current events happening around your community, the country or the world • Ask questions • Repeat old popular posts • Use analytic tools • Use master platforms (Hootsuite) • Retweet • Use your company branding/keep it in line • Keep your profiles up to date

15. TOP TIPS FOR NEW & SOCIAL MEDIA • Cross promote your social profiles • Checkoc your email contacts for new people and renew often • Use social media platform buttons on your websites (you’ll need to collaborate with your web designer) • Thanks people for following, repinning, retweeting etc • Schedule your posts! • Share ideas with other people! • Actively interact with other people. profiles, pages etc.

16. THANKS! We hope you’ve found this useful! Natasha Boojihawon natasha@unionstreetmediarts.com 0161 877 3124

17. RANDOM QUESTIONS – TWITTER & HASHTAG • The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a tweet. For best practices with hashtags, follow these expert tips: • No more than three hashtags per tweet. • Avoid starting a tweet with a hashtag, this gives a robotic and spammy impression. • Find hashtags by performing a keyword search just like you would Google, use the ones that move fastest and seem to best fit your topic area. • Hashtag caution: Too many hyperlinks (hashtags) will actually devalue the tweet.

18. RANDOM QUESTIONS – TWITTER & RETWEETING • The act of forwarding another user's tweet to all of your followers; how you retweet is an important part of your Twitter strategy. • If you are using the RT button on Twitter, just hitting the RT is reserved for high level influences. • Cutting and pasting the Tweet into the Tweet box and the semantics of RT = Headline, link, hashtag, RT @______, your comment Or • Your own comment or headline, your own content, link via @twitterID you are sourcing • How to get indexed by Google: RT a very popular tweet that you want your name to be associated with • Ask for it!

19. RANDOM QUESTIONS – TWITTER & 140 CHARACTERS??? • Use abbreviations www.socialmediatoday.com/node/512987 • Use short and concise language • Bitly lets you shorten, share, and track links with your bitly account, right from your browser!

20. RANDOM QUESTIONS – TWITTER & FAVOURITES • Twitter Favorites Favorites, represented by a small star icon next to a tweet, are most commonly used when users like a tweet and wish to save it for later. For example, when someone tweets something nice about you, your brand, service, etc., mark it as a favorite so it is always saved to in your Twitter history. Otherwise it gets pushed into Twitter's vast, annoying to search archives and eventually becomes virtually impossible to trace.

21. RANDOM QUESTIONS – TWITTER & LISTS • 1) The number one reason to use lists: each list allows you to add up to 500 people aka tweeps. You can have up to 20 lists (public or private though I recommend public). I suck at math but even I can figure out that’s 10,000 people! • It can take up to a year to garner a following of 10,000 people (or to even follow that many), but guess what? Lists allow you to jump over that hurdle. Lists are Twitter’s worst kept secret. Why secret? Because the List button is right there out in the open yet very few people utilize them or know what to do with them. • 2) Lists are a perfect way to attract followers to your stream. People are flattered you’ve added them to a list. It means you care enough to take that extra step (which takes seconds). It’s like you invited them to an exclusive party. • 3) Think of lists as labels, or folders, which allow you to break down your tweeps by your interests or categories. You curate your lists; you can be as general or as specific as you’d like. • Customize your lists ideally by keywords, interests, client base, etc. • Why is this important? As you grow, your home feed becomes a big, streaming mess, virtually impossible to keep up with unless you organize somehow. The beauty is you’ll now feel more in control by reading tweets in lists only, filtering out the noise. • 4) Here’s an easy link that tells you how to create a list though to be honest, Twitter makes it uber easy and the Create List tab is self-evident. • The best part about Lists is that you can list someone as you follow them. If you purge or unfollow, you can easily unlist them. • Lists are very fluid. They grow and change as your Twitter grows and changes. You may start with lists of people you connect with and six months from now you may have grown in different directions. And that’s okay. Lists are easily editable. • 5) Divide and conquer. As your account grows, it becomes harder to keep up with your followers’ content. Use lists to read only the tweets of those followers who are of most interest to you. • 6) Crib from others. BIG tip: as you peruse new followers, check out their lists. You can simply follow the list, which doesn’t mean you’re following all the people on the list (Twitter requires you follow people individually), but this is useful if you find the people on the list interesting and value their content for RTs. • BIG tip #2: click to the top left on members: that way you see who is on the list as opposed to the running scroll of tweets. • I do this a lot. Crib from other people’s lists – they’ve already done the work! Why not? If you have similar interests, follow the list and pick five to ten people from the list who interest you to follow individually. • Note: I don’t recommend following every person on someone’s list, or you’re just duplicating their work – in that case, just click ‘follow the entire list.’ • 7) Lists are editable. If your job or interests change, you can simply edit, retitle, or even delete a list. Twenty lists sounds like a lot but as your account grows into the thousands, you’ll find yourself editing and changing your lists. • 8) Lists can help increase your Klout score.Klout now encourages you to list people and give K+ for listing people. The importance of Klout is still somewhat controversial but if you’re into it, they make it easy to import your lists. • 9) Be creative with your list titles. I see so many ‘People who RT me’ lists. Snore. On my @RachelintheOC account, I have lists such as Awesome Redheads (you can figure that out for yourself), Charming Men (Guys: What do I have to do to get on that list? Me: Not ask), and Fab Writers (1 & 2). • 10) Karma. The more you list others, the more you are listed. Twitter is all about karma. Give and you shall receive. I find that the more I pay attention to lists, the more people follow me. And it takes only minutes every day. • A good way to be found on lists is to add yourself to Listorious, the Twitter List Directory. It’s free and easy to join.