Why VSO needs social media
Update added – and progress made: See end of post.
Okay I am writing this with the intention of posting it on the VSO Forum – all previous social media suggestions to them have either been ignored, got lost in VSO’s maddening email system or been dismissed as ..well it’s just for geeks and techies – our older volunteers won’t get it.
Trust me, they will and they do.
But as it seems the whole world is signing up to Twitter – where is VSO?
VSO has a Facebook site but it’s run by VSO well wishers rather than VSO themselves. In fact there are groups here, here and here. Are any of them official?
That’s not to mention the whole stack of in-country VSO Facebook groups – all of them, as far as I can see, set up by volunteers rather than VSO Staff. VSO Cameroon here.
There is a VSO photo group on Flickr but it’s not run by VSO.
There must be literally thousands of VSO blogs but none, despite some desperately unappealing and archaically designed pale imitations of blogs on their own site, are acknowledged or used in anyway by VSO.
Compare that with the Peace Corps which documents, uses and celebrates its blogs – over 5,000 international blogs are documented and linked.
As a volunteer I have been repeatedly asked to write about the experience for new recruits. I’ve been asked for photos for use in publicity materials and newsletters. I was more than happy to oblige but I had done it already.
Start tracking those blogs and working with Flickr and there is reams of info and pages of pics just waiting to be used.
What about your own VSO blog? Use RSS to track those global blogs and pick the very best posts to highlight.
Imagine it:
Yesterday we received an email from Clare, a prospective volunteer, wanting to know about whether it’s possible to manage on a VSO allowance – by chance there’s a post by Bob in Uganda on this very subject. You can find the link here.
I’m imagining a blog with menus down the side grouping the blogs to volunteers in different countries. Easy enough to click through. Easy for new volunteers, all set for far away places, to find the sites that are of most interest to them.
And it’s of use to serving volunteers too.
Another scenario:
We’ve received a message from Jim in Cambodia, he’s having problems taking credit card donations for his NGO. Is there anyone out there who has suffered the same problem and found a potential solution?
And what about the likes of YouTube? How about this culmination of my own fundraising activities in Hanoi. A new training restaurant for street youth learning hospitality skills.
Or this – former street kids reaction to the same opening. We can use all of this – can’t we?
Imagine how they can inspire.
Not forgetting those Flickr pics too. A stream of volunteers doing their thing in amongst smiling African kids and Asian colleagues to wondrous backdrops. Nothing will sell VSO like those pics.
Wouldn’t every single wavering, potential volunteer see them and think – I want to be them.
Who wouldn’t want to be them?
And this is before we even get to Twitter.
VSO is very almost suspiciously cagey about the jobs it has. It has examples of jobs on its website but if you actually try to find out about them then you slowly find out that they don’t exist or have already been filled.
I have lost count of the times that I have been emailed by people wanting to sign up but who are just absolutely confused by the system. Even me, as a second time volunteer, on returning I got confused all over again.
Why not just list the jobs that are needed and then you can start marketing them accordingly?
Imagine using Twitter. A sample tweet:
IT expert needed for one year volunteer placement in Nairobi, all expenses paid, please retweet.
That message would be three times round the world in minutes. All expenses paid? Have you any idea how much people are paying to do voluntary work and here’s an organisation offering to pay you.
Or how about this Tweet:
John in Mongolia needs £500 to pay for computers – he needs your help. Donate here. Please retweet.
It’s your followers, people with a real interest in what you do that are retweeting. They are taking your message and passing it on and on and on. Their followers are sending it to their friends and so on.
And these followers – serving volunteers who can use it as a way of sharing information, support and asking questions, interested members of the media looking for stories, NGO workers, potential new recruits. The list is endless as is the power of their support and of their general goodwill.
And this applies to all social media activity – it is all shareable. Make it interesting, engaging, personal and honest and people will share and promote it for you.
And all of the time you’re sucking people in. As people follow you they are also following individual’s blogs and Twitter feeds. They are following narratives within narratives.
They are following the success of VSO and starting to understand what they do and what makes them different and how their work changes lives.
If budgets are cut they’ll lobby their MPs for you. They are on your side now.
But they are also following Sarah in Ethiopia as she battles to empower local women. They are following Lisa in Ghana as she fundraises for an orphanage. Can they do it? Will they do it? Will they get through the homesickness or beat the local corruption and reach their goal?
Look what Kiva have done. Every person they lend micro credit to has a blog detailing their progress. Each volunteer sent out is also requested to blog.
Suddenly people have a vested interest in their achievements.
When they donate they can, literally, see where their money is going. They can see the progress that their cash is helping.
FACT: Kiva volunteers pay all their own expenses and yet because of Kiva’s online presence – still they come. The volunteer I knew paid $2,000 to be here for two months.
When volunteers blog, people can send messages of support in comment boxes to people like me who are struggling through isolation and loneliness in their posts.
VSO has to stop messing about with Community Forums and Moodles and all of this. It smacks of money spent on clueless consultant chancers. The world is adopting social media and it’s gone way beyond a fad. If Barack Obama can harness it in order to become president than VSO can certainly use it to fill those vacant job posts. No one claimed Obama’s supporters were all geeks.
Since I started blogging and tweeting I have taken calls from the BBC, the New York Post, CNN, the International Herald Tribune and many many others who have found me thanks to my blog and have dutifully helped to promote the NGO that I have worked for. Click those links to see the publicity.
In Hanoi literally thousands of dollars came in for my fundraising thanks to my blog. I once received an email offering over $5,000 as a result of a single blog post.
When I read this blog post out at a VSO recruitment event I got a massive response. Look at that post – and look at the comments at the end of it. So much goodwill.
So far social media representation by VSO has at best been done, seemingly grudgingly, or on an ad hoc, ill-thought out basis. VSO needs to get its act together.
If VSO is so scared about what its own volunteers will write then how about offering training on what can reasonably be written on a blog? How about including that in the vols handbook? How about canvassing volunteers for their blog URLs so they can be tracked using RSS (the official VSO blogs don’t even have RSS).
But you can’t just ignore blogging or social media. The genie won’t go back in the bottle. Sure VSO volunteers could write the wrong thing and upset bosses and even governments. But they could just as easily say the wrong thing, act the wrong way or talk to the wrong journalists. You can’t stop them doing that either – you can only train them not to.
To be done properly this tweeting and blogging is a full time job but I am sure it will pay for itself many many many times over. From a higher and quicker rate of sign up, through sharing of expertise, through brand recognition for VSO.
For feelgood and support for volunteers. For mentoring. Through answering questions for new volunteers.
For media interest – for materials and information to give to journalists.
But mostly just through the sheer inspiration of all the adventures and marvellous achievements that are happening right now that can be shared with a wider audience.
I believe in VSO and I am struggling to think of any organisation, commercial or not for profit, that could more greatly benefit from social media.
It’s no longer reasonable to address another shortfall in volunteers by commissioning another advertising campaign and hoping that bored commuters on the tube will be inspired by them. (Incidentally London’s tube is the only place I have ever seen those adverts – what about the rest of the country?).
You can’t blame poor sign up on the recession too. Frankly I feel incredibly lucky to be volunteering while a recession is on. Shouldn’t people be wanting to get away from the doom and gloom? What about all those newly unemployed – couldn’t they fill all those empty volunteering posts?
VSO can grow spectacularly through social media. I am convinced of that.
Considering what it achieves its general profile is negligible. It’s online profile is confusing. It’s social media profile is entirely driven by its volunteers and supporters – not VSO.
At the very least, if VSO builds a social media presence, then I’ll stop getting emails from people who really want to sign up but the best they can get from VSO is yet another maddening standard email response.
It has to be done. It must be done.
Update: Okay, following a very positive email exchange with senior VSO staff we now know that VSO are listening. If you have any thoughts on the above blog post – for or against. Or have any further ideas that I may have missed then now is the time to add them.
VSO appears genuinely committed to a drastic overhaul of its online social media thinking – and has promised to involve me in the process (which I’m more than a little chuffed about). In the meantime, anything you add to the comment box is likely to be read by them.
Go. Comment.
February 16, 2009 at 12:00 pm
Steve – awesome post. Will pass this on to some people I know are working with VSO on their online presence. Keep up the brilliant work!
http://www.twitter.com/stevebridger
February 16, 2009 at 12:04 pm
[...] @ourman: Why VSO needs social media and how they can use it: http://ourmanincameroon.com/2009/02/16/vso-blogs-twitter-flickr/ « előző | sylwiapresley — 2009. 02. 16. [...]
February 16, 2009 at 12:06 pm
There’s certainly a huge amount of goodwill out there among tweeters, just a week ago I launched a voluntary charity project on Twitter and have a had a brilliant response. Good luck.
February 16, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Sounds like a good job for you to do when you finish up with Bameda Steve!
February 16, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Steve,
Thanks so much – been hitting my head against a wall on this for several years now. I first suggested it on a small scale when I was in Hanoi as a way of building links between volunteers while providing head office with the photos and the info they needed for in-country briefings. But no one understands it and they are not taking the time to understand it.
I’ve also been knocked back a couple of times by the web people. They have an online community set up and an online community specialist and yet their work doesn’t include social media – I mean, how can it not include social media?
They have forums? Who apart from squabbing football fans still post on forums?
One of the things they don’t get is that this doesn’t have to be on their website. It doesn’t have to be a “VSO Blog” it can be the volunteers blog that they just dip into. They don’t have to control it – they can just cherry pick the good bits for their own uses.
Linda, exactly – Twitter is about goodwill – not about competition or trying to catch people out. It’s about supporting and sharing. They need to harness this.
Caitlin I wish. The best thing is I could do it from anywhere in the world. Get me a work via and the same support they offer volunteers and set me up in Hanoi and I’d happily churn this stuff out every day. They’d be paying me less than their cleaners.
February 16, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Yep, job application by any another name.
Are you the only VSO’er to feel thus? Doubt it.
[But, you should be hired!]
Good luck in driving it through.
February 16, 2009 at 10:03 pm
fantastic post, thanks!
February 17, 2009 at 9:34 am
Hi Steve
I work in VSO’s public engagement department looking after our new online community and I came across your blog post. It was really interesting to read your viewpoint, it’s great to have feedback from our volunteers.
We’re always looking at new ways to engage with our volunteers and supporters and as a result we’re currently trying to increase our online presence and make much better use of social networking tools. We launched the VSO online community in September as a place where we can talk to our volunteers and they can talk to each other and link to their blogs and groups elsewhere. We’ve also got a Facebook fanpage (http://en-gb.facebook.com/pages/VSO/10986039307) a YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/vsomediauk) and a channel on Green TV (http://www.green.tv/vso). We’re about to start using Twitter too, and my colleagues in Comms are very keen to start making better use of volunteers’ blogs and photographs through websites like Flickr.
So we’re working on it – but we know we’ve got a very long way to go! Any other ideas anyone would like to share on how we could use social media at VSO would be great to hear – many thanks for yours Steve.
Thanks
Sara
February 17, 2009 at 11:11 am
Now I know what you should be doing – you have solved your own problem – go for it – knock them on the head, kick them into 2009 and take there communication system over.
You now have a goal.
February 17, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Bravo bravo and again bravo. Brilliant post – one of the best you’ve ever written I think. spot on.
February 17, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Brian, the ironic thing is that while several hundred people have read this because a) they follow blogs or b) they’re signed up to Twitter – I can be fairly confident in saying that nobody at VSO has read it.
From my stats I can see that nobody has clicked on the link I left on their community forum.
So ironic in the sense that there is no point in telling VSO that they don’t do social media via social media – because they won’t read it. Honestly an organisation like that and they don’t even have a permanent blog search in place.
Yes – as you, DG and others spotted I’d love the job – but only if I could do it somewhere nice ;o)
Rach and Rachie – thanks very much. Just wish I could get someone at VSO who matters to read it.
February 17, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Hi Steve,
If this isn’t a blue print for a volunteer organisation to take advantage of the influence, impact and mutual support that exists within social media I don’t know what is.
Turn the VSO spotlight on the work of the many volunteers and supporters out there and you will reap massive benefits, as well as a real online presence.
The tools mentioned are not expensive or difficult to use, if they were they wouldn’t have proven so popular, the important thing is that VSO uses them every day to help the overall direction of the organisation.
Will be interesting to follow how this progresses.
February 17, 2009 at 5:20 pm
A brilliant post and something I’m really passionate about too. It’s incredible to think that an organisation so well-established isn’t keeping-up with this, particularly given articles like this one in the Guardian http://bit.ly/O24pI
Given how easy this is to develop, I really hope VSO get on with it and realise that a consultant isn’t needed to implement this. It’s all so very very easy.
As a hopefully soon-to-be volunteer I fully support this!
February 17, 2009 at 5:53 pm
Thanks for the support everyone.
Just a quick apology to Sara from VSO whose comment is now included (it was stuck in the spam filter).
She makes some valid points but I’ll disagree every time when faced with the idea of the online community – it doesn’t look great, the technology is outdated and it’s virtually unuseable when you are battling with developing world internet.
Those VSO blogs on your own site look just awful.
As regards the YouTube page – I can’t find the link on the main website so I can’t see the point.
What is needed is something to pull all these individuals parts you have mentioned together. A VSO blog – backed by regular, personalised Tweeting would utilise those YouTube films and those Flickr pics you are keen to start using.
But mostly it is not VSO’s films you want – or VSOs pictures – it is the volunteers’ pictures.
Their experiences have to be communicated better to the audience.
I’ve just heard from a local VSO employee that they cannot fill a number of posts locally. I am astounded. From the volunteer perspective VSO has a product that people should be competing for – there should never be a shortage.
VSO should be considered a rites of passage – something that most people aspire to do during their lifetime – in the way that Peace Corps is in the US.
Something needs to harness the joy that is involved in working like this. The materials are already out there – we just need to bring them together.
February 17, 2009 at 6:36 pm
Well, I have now found this from the VSO community site. I agree that VSO needs to start to look more towards social networking; I’m not so sure that all users will have the technical skills – or the inclination to want to use them. Certainly from recent volunteers I’ve known who’ve gone to do VSO, some have wanted to use blogs, others haven’t been particularly interested.
My feeling is that VSO should be looking to use blogs/twitter etc., but should also ensure that those who aren’t using these tools don’t lose out, and don’t feel disenfranchised because they’re not interested in using them.
Twitter is an interesting case – there are a lot of users, but I think you’ll find there are more non-users; I was at a conference last September, it was for educational technologists – most had a blog, most had signed up to a pre-conference social networking site; most encouraged their students to blog. However, when it came to twitter – well, I’d say that more people put their SecondLife name up on a list than their twitter ID.
I do use twitter; I got into it because others were using it; it took time – and I still don’t like certain things about it – most notably the fact that you can be public or private – but there’s no half way point if there’s something you want to tweet to only a sub section of your followers. It’s all or nothing.
I just ignore posts I’m not interested in from those I follow (e.g. when the local paper did to death the fact that the Football manager had been sacked!) – however, I know that for others, that’s enough to make them drop someone – too many tweets on something they’re not interested in.
Twitter’s good, but I think that it could be better – some people want to tweet to only a subset; others want to be able to ignore tweets that have a particular hashtag. BUild that in, and, I think, you’d get more users.
Sorry, that was a rather long comment.
My personal view is that I’m fairly active in a number of social networks. I do encourage people to participate – if they think it’s for them. I know, however, that there are a great many people who’d just rather not.
February 17, 2009 at 8:33 pm
OM,
This very specific post – irrespective of all the other reasons your own `bloggies’ have for continuing to enjoy your writing and your person – is maybe one of the most important and `non-negotiable’ you have made to date.
You may not be the only one who can directly and dramatically and strategically re-shape VSO’s `policy and practice’ in the arenas of SMedia / [Comms more generally].
But you should definitely be at the hub of any team empowered to re-boot VSO’s 21C comms strategy.
b,
B
February 18, 2009 at 12:02 am
Steve – this is an excellent post, and I can only hope that it catches the attention of someone sufficiently high up in VSO to make a difference.
It’s obvious: investing huge amounts of money in print adverting in 2009 is every bit as silly as the BEF charging off to France on horseback was in 1914. Occasionally people need to be shaken out of convention, and probably the most effective way of doing so is for you to write blunt posts like this and then to wave it under their noses.
Social media is offering great opportunities, and when you see so many small agencies around the world marketing themselves so effectively with minimal effort and just by following a simple, coherent plan, you have to wonder just what something like VSO could achieve if it got itself organised.
“And all of the time you’re sucking people in. As people follow you they are also following individual’s blogs and Twitter feeds. They are following narratives within narratives.”
– One of the best descriptions I’ve read of SM. And who better for narratives than the VSO? If Barry’s Graphic Design Company (recently invented) from Bath can make themselves sound exciting online, then why can’t VSO with all their global projects, struggles, successes and stories?
Answer is that they can. They just, like most bulky (1,500 people apparently) need the odd jolt to get themselves going. Let’s just hope that that doesn’t take too long.
Good luck.
February 18, 2009 at 7:33 am
Just re-read this awesome post and the comments – please can I say that from my experience, the ‘technical’ skills needed to get to grips with this stuff are minimal, if an old fart like me can do it, anyone can.
February 18, 2009 at 8:40 am
Echoing Linda, you do not need any particular skills to harness basic social media. For Twitter, if you have access to a computer and can type, that’s all you need – it’s as simple as texting.
Emma, don’t write Twitter off as being full of Second Lifers and educationalist geeks – it’s full of journalists and PRs and other people who have some power and influence to spread the word of a good cause. And Twitter is the fastest way to do that.
February 18, 2009 at 8:50 am
Emma, I agree with a lot of things you have said – nobody should be forced out here. But I also think that it is patronising to believe that old people don’t know their way around the web,
I am increasingly finding the absolute opposite. I think interest in the web is not age specific at all.
Regarding Twitter – I partly agree and partly we have moved on. I recently listened to a podcast by the Word magazine on Twitter. They commented that it gone from nothing to everywhere in 10 days.
While those of us who have been tweeting a couple of years know that is not true – but it has certainly “crossed over” in the past couple of weeks. I used to get a steady trickle of new followers – now I am getting 20 a day. It’s no longer just for geeks.
But I think you should also remember that if a Twitterer reads a message saying “Social worker needed for post in Uganda – allowance and expenses paid” he can still forward that message to his social working friend who has expressed an interest in it. It’s just a case of cutting and pasting links.
Twitter, Flickr, Facebook etc – may all be fads but social media isn’t.
Regarding Twitter’s limitations – I think Twitter culture is growing as an application. Using something like Tweedeck I can both search for info and exclude stuff I don’t want to see.
I particularly can’t stand live tweeting from conferences – but if people are using hashtags then I can simply filter them out.
I don’t think VSO are daft enough to suddenly deposit their entire marketing budget into this area – but when you see their online blogs you know that something has to be done.
Brian – thank you – hub is the word – so many good VSO blogs, so many incredible experiences, so much learned – it just needs the right system to pull it together and to share it with a wider audience.
Peter – I think narrative is all important – while we talk about blogging and twitter and whatever else we should never forget that it’s what you use them for that is all important. We have to engage and we have to think – narrative.
Linda – not only are the technical skills minimal – they should be and must be minimal. That is why this stuff works – that is why people adopt it.
With a little bit of goodwill and maybe some free advice from well wishers along the way – the system mentioned above could be set up for £50. You don’t get many print adverts with that.
February 18, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Sorry I’m a bit late in viewing and commenting on this excellent post. Speaking as a volunteer in a charity organisation I too am disheartened by the amount of money that gets poured into re-branding and relaunching projects – without talking to the volunteers ‘on the ground’ about what is needed or wanted.
As a freelancer I know how key social media is to help combat feelings of isolation and in helping you to obtain the information that you need fast. I can only imagine the benefits to VSO volunteers.
You can teach your granny to text – and twittering from a mobile is even easier – so I don’t think the age argument is valid anymore (if it ever was). Similarly people my not wish to blog – because of the time it takes and the difficulty with Internet connections – but that doesn’t mean that they can’t utilise other forms of social media.
Congratulations and good luck!
February 19, 2009 at 3:49 pm
With a little bit of goodwill and maybe some free advice from well wishers along the way – the system mentioned above could be set up for £50. You don’t get many print adverts with that. Where send £50? email me with where to send.
From a 71 year old worked on steam typewriters, ended up on main frames that is 45 years of work – so don’t write oldies off please.
February 20, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Steve
What a wonderful call to action! A positive call to action based on informed experience, and clear examples of what is lacking and what can be put right.
I’ve been similarly frustrated at the lack of speed and indeed awareness of a good few charities over the years in terms of how they could benefit from using the Internet to fundraise. With the rise of social media now, the barriers to entry are now almost entirely within an organisation.
I’m adding this to my delicious tags which means it will feature on the front page of UK Fundraising in the next 15 minutes.
I can imagine sharing this with other people at other charities who have hit brick walls in trying to persuade their organisation to embrace and experiment with these opportunities.
Good luck. As someone else said, you’ve indirectly just written a fine job description for yourself.
February 20, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Claire,
Certainly amongst volunteers i have found no line whatsoever between age and technology take-up. For every young whizz kid there is a retired IT enthusiast.
The beauty of this low-tech stuff is that it is open to anyone who can get near a computer – and that’s all but the remotest of volunteers.
Incidentally the current VSO forum is a nightmare on low bandwitch – by the time you have registered and flicked through pages you’ve waves literally hours.
DG – no writing off from me. Social media tools are so cheap that on a number of occasions I have funded them out of my VSO allowance (which isn’t a lot) – people here don’t have credit cards so it’s usually the easiest way.
There is often the feeling amongst orgs that they are buying peace of mind if they splash out a fortune – but it’s all changed. That’s what social media does.
Howards – glad I made your delicious links – I look forward to it appearing. If anything the reaction to this should show VSO that such thinking does work.
I’m contemplating taking the initiative and writing a proper report for VSO and laying my cards on the table – ie I want it to be me that does this.
February 21, 2009 at 6:38 pm
OM – Write the Report, don’t `contemplate’ doing it.
But…’big but’ , let them know that the Report and its intellectual content is your property, and that you retain the right to share it with other potentially interested charities should VSO decline / prevaricate / appear unwilling or unable to progress in this arena.
In fairness, I can’t believe that you are the only `tech-comms-socmed-savvy’ guy / gal within orgs such as VSO who might have the credentials to make things happen for VSO in accord with the indicative Vision above. I’m sure you wouldn’t claim that to be the case either.
But, another big but, I doubt if anyone in VSO has better creds, taken in the round, than you do – and am 100% sure that none would be more genuinely passionate about fulfilling the `role’ hinted at here.
So, don’t wait – if only for your own personal satisfaction – compile a coherent and well-argued Report / Case?
Good luck.
February 22, 2009 at 10:25 pm
Do what Brian says and where is email?
February 23, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Report written and sent – thanks for the encouragement.
March 11, 2009 at 12:23 am
[...] These Digital Times & A Case Study on Communication and the VSO [...]
May 9, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Hi Steve, couple of good examples in case you ever need them…. MSF Canada’s blogging system – http://msf.ca/blogs – brings as much traffic to the CA site as all the rest of their content put together. Can prob get stats for you if you want them…
On older volunteers not getting it… I am working with knitters on an online fundraiser called p/hoop at the moment and it is based around a social network dedicated to knitting (and all things knitting) called ravelry.com. I am not saying that all the knitters are old, far from it. The point is there are something like a quarter of a million registered users I think and they are from all agegroups, countries, walks of life. Is a great example of a thriving online community. And it started… from blogging.