Social Media Charity

Flickr redesign goes live 1TB of free storage for all

Social Media Charity — Tue, 21 May 2013 06:53:07 +0000

Well this is a surprise Yahoo has just announced that it’s highly popular photo storage and sharing site Flickr is being upgraded. As well as a redesign of the entire look and feel of the site they are also giving every users 1 terabyte of free storage.

Which is considerable that’s 1000 GB of space to store all your photos at the highest resolution you can. If you want to upgrade to more storage (really more storage) that will cost you $499 for another 1TB of space.

The cloud wars are a well and truly with us the question now is how will Google, Amazon and Facebook respond… are they even worried and is Flickr doomed anyway?

Google unveils Hangouts messaging and Google+ redesign

Social Media Charity — Sun, 19 May 2013 19:13:58 +0000

SOCIAL MEDIA UPSTART Google announced a Google Hangouts messaging feature for Android, iOS and Chrome on Wednesday, along with a major redesign of Google+.

Google unveils Hangouts messaging and Google+ redesign (via The Inquirer)

Hammer out on Twitter Interview

Social Media Charity — Fri, 17 May 2013 14:00:50 +0000

What is your charity’s name and mission?

Hammer Out is the leading charity in the UK South-West & Midlands offering a support network to people whose lives have been affected by any type of brain tumour. We are there at any time throughout diagnosis, treatment and beyond, and not just for patients, but their loved ones and carers also.

How long have you been using Twitter and whose idea was it?

3 years, developed and managed for the past 2 years by a part-time media co-ordinator who is also a brain tumour survivor herself.

What have you enjoyed so far while using Twitter?

The ability to connect so instantly and closely with people in a moment when they need a friendly response, and make a stranger feel they have a friend in you.

Have there been any instances of followers doing something wonderful for you?

Yes! We’ve had people decide to fundraise through picking up on our tweets, and some people who have been looking for support have actually discovered us through Twitter. That is something wonderful, because they are the reason we are here.

What has been your biggest Twitter challenge to date?

Finding the time to manage the varied online platforms which are so valuable for encouraging fundraisers and supporters as well as keeping in touch with the people we help.

Do you have a Twitter tip for other charities?

Don’t think it’s just about the number of followers you have – it’s as much about the conversation that you build with them.

Twitter #Music launches Twittersphere gets some tunes

Social Media Charity — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 13:01:08 +0000

Well Twitter is getting much more #Media these days, rolling out now in US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand is a new Twitter #Music service.

The way it works is fairly simple but could be very powerful as a discovery tool. Twitter collects data about what tracks are being shared across the network and the level of interaction.

It can then surface up to the second recommendations of new and current artists you may want to listen to in Twitter #Music.

The iPhone app is powered by iTunes and on the web Rdio and Spotify are providing the music sorry no Android app yet.

By default, you will hear previews from iTunes when exploring music in the app. Subscribers to Rdio and Spotify can log in to their accounts to enjoy full tracks that are available in those respective catalogs. We will continue to explore and add other music service providers.

A new area Twitter #Music will show you what the people you follow have tweeted or engaged with music wise, providing an opportunity for charities to engage in a new way.

If your confused by Twitter check out some handy books in our store.

Twitter launching a music service is interesting as it fights to stay relevant with Facebook and Google Plus. The expansion of Twitter cards shows that Twitter is willing to go beyond just 140 characters by adding a richer view for certain types of media content in the stream.

How do you think charities adapt to having #Music as a way to search out or maybe influence new supporters?

Discover Google+ pages while you browse the web

Social Media Charity — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 17:25:40 +0000

Google have released a cool little feature for use of their social network Plus. It should make it easier for pages to get discovered and circled.

A website will have to link its Plus Page and then when an opted in use visits a site that has authenticated the Plus page a small marker will appear at the side of the screen allowing the visitors to Circle the page.

Best we can tell this is part of the latest public build of Google Chrome a very interesting development.

Enhance your Google+ stream by following the Google+ pages that you find interesting:
When you visit a site connected to a Google+ page, a slider will appear on the side of the browser window. Hover over the slider to expand it and easily add the page to your circles.
The notifications button in your browser will be badged with a “+” to indicate when you’re viewing a site connected with a Google+ page. Clicking on the button shows your notifications just like it did before but now it will also display the related Google+ page information and provide a quick way to start following it.
Whenever a Google+ page is in your circles, all of the posts from that page will start appearing in your stream.
This isn’t the usual yada yada: The URLs of the sites you visit will be sent to Google in order to identify the Google+ profiles and pages linked to those URLs.

The end of social influence as a brand strategy?

Social Media Charity — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 14:42:00 +0000

A new study has cast doubt on the idea that key social influencers hold massive sway over large portions of social media users.

Social consultancy Lucule has developed a new model they call Pente that looks at a wider range of metrics when comparing social influencers to other variables like time of day, type of message and device.

Their statistical analysis indicates that the influence score accounted for only 3% of the variation in response. That is, 97% of the differences in behavioural response were driven by factors other than social influence. Rohn Jay Miller

This is something that has been spoken in hushed tones but until now there was little hard data to show what really influenced social media users to engage.

Now we have a better idea of the social landscape and can craft our campaigns so they include the right mix of social influencers to good planning and execution.

It’s never wise to rely on influencers to carry your message, even more so now we know they really are only one part of the engagement story.

I don’t think this sidelines influencers, but this new data does allow us to help influencers be more effective at delivering our messages.

Let’s take time of day as an example. Rohn Jay Miller’s excellent post reveals that mobile use is dominant during daylight hours but in the evening it’s the tablets that people reach for.

Consider if it’s wise to push out a campaign video at 5pm when the majority of people are travelling and so on a smartphone. The likelihood is they will skip your video due to bandwidth cost or device constraints.

However, the same video at 7pm is much more likely to reach the largest majority of users who are at home, on wifi and have a PC or tablet. The barriers to engagement fall away quickly.

Now this is a numbers game and you are playing to the majority rule so my advice is to build your campaigns to best talk to the available audience at the time you want to push. If you can create multi-phase campaigns that roll all day so much the better.

If you do you will automatically help your influencers by giving them content that the majority of their followers can engage with.

Check out the full post on SocialMediaToday for a more in-depth look at what Lucule discovered.

How to use Twitter Cards for your Charity Mobile app

Social Media Charity — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 12:39:57 +0000

Twitter have launched new functionality that will make everyone’s Twitter stream just a little bit more engaging. Taking a leaf out of Google Plus, Twitter has now expanded its “Cards” functionality to allow for iPhone, iPad and Android apps to stand out in streams with their own look and feel.

The way it works is to include meta data in one of your webpages where you talk about your Mobile app, say on your website. In that page’s meta data you add the following meta and customize it with your apps details and links to the Apple and Google stores.

To make use of Twitter Cards you first need to validate your domain with Twitter and complete the Cards sign-up process on Twitter Developers.

To enable this new feature, copy and paste this code into your and then customize it to suit your app. You can remove any tags that aren’t relevant. If you don’t have an iPad app remove those lines.

Let’s break down each Twitter Card tag and see how it works

This tag tells Twitter that the meta data below is to be used for an APP Card, if you don’t set this correctly it won’t work.

Here we are setting the app description that will be seen by Twitter users.

This is your iPhone app on the iTunes store’s unique ID code

The url of your iPhone app on the iTunes store.

This is your iPad app on the iTunes store’s unique ID code

The url of your iPad app on the iTunes store.

Your Google Play app ID

The URL to your app on the Google Play Store.

Once you have all of that information included, and your tags saved into your page, any time that link is shared on Twitter your App Card will be displayed instead of just a boring link and a page title.

It will be interesting to see if Apple and Google include this new meta on their respective stores, it’s bound to increase the visibility and virality of mobile apps if they do.

Let us know in the comments if you set-up your charity’s mobile apps with a Twitter Card.

Charity Twitter social media interview questions

Social Media Charity — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 12:03:06 +0000

Take part in our Social Media Twitter Interview and help other charity non-profits learn about how you use Twitter.

What is your charity’s name and mission?

How long have you been using Twitter and whose idea was it?

What have you enjoyed so far while using Twitter?

Have there been any instances of followers doing something wonderful for you?

What has been your biggest challenge to date?

Do you have a Twitter tip for other charities?

Send your completed questions to us and we will upload them to SocialMediaCharity. Don’t forget to attach your logo and your Twitter address.

The Facebook phone is coming…

Social Media Charity — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 08:02:53 +0000

It appears that Facebook and HTC are warming-up for the launch of a dedicated Facebook phone. Based on Android, the new Facebook device will offer deeper integration between the operating system and the world’s biggest social network.

This isn’t the first time Facebook and HTC have teamed-up to work on a device, the ChaCha was the first and had a dedicated Facebook button to quick launch their app.

This new project looks much more involved and may include a separate Home Launcher for those who want the look of the new Facebook mobile experience but on their non-Facebook Android device.

For charities, this could well mean Facebook users becoming even more mobile focused. Should Facebook also allow developers to create custom applications that take advantage of the deeper integration, it could be a big boost for charity non-profits looking to offer a cutting edge social / mobile experience for their supporters.

All will be revealed on April 4!

How your charity non-profit can survive the largest DDOS attack in history

Social Media Charity — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 09:34:16 +0000

The largest DDOS attack in the history of the internet is well underway, and if you’ve noticed the internet is loading more slowly, that’s the reason. There’s now a possibility that it might affect online banking and email.

We have been following this story since the first salvo was fired by Spamhaus, the non-profit spam prevention service, that blocked Dutch hosting company CyberBunker as a source of large amounts of spam hitting systems across the web.

CyberBunker hasn’t taken kindly to this, saying it will host anything except child porn and terrorism content, and has struck back launching a DDOS attack in excess of 300gb/s. This is equivalent to about 40% of the world’s web traffic all being directed against Spamhaus in an attempt to take them offline.

It failed. While the internet slowed down as routing points around the web became congested, Spamhaus and its partners were able to keep the servers live and their service intact. It remains to be seen what CyberBunker will do next, but so far at least all their DDOS attacks have failed to do more than dent the web the world over.

How did Spamhaus survive the largest DDOS in history?

When the DDOS hit, Spamhaus knew there was only one partner to turn to – CloudFlare – a company dedicated to accelerating and protecting the web from attacks.

CloudFlare is traditionally thought of as a web accelerator. It sits in front of your server and ensures that visitors always receive data as fast as possible, served from a location close to them. So even if your server is in the UK but a visitor is in America they get data as if they were just popping to the local shops and back… fast, fast, fast.

CloudFlare though, has another function. It offers some of the best DDOS protection in the world which is mostly FREE! Yes that’s right! You can make your website load faster AND protect against DDOS and other security issues and it won’t cost your charity a penny to get started. If you want to move up to the pro package that offers even more speed and security and it will cost you just $20 a month!

In our experience, the free service is ideal for 99% of charity / non-profits, and only in specific situations would you need to spend any cash to protect or accelerate your website.

The site you are reading this on now uses CloudFlare.

CloudFlare works so well because it’s able to analyse hundreds of thousands of sites using its network and provide fast action against DDOS attacks, in most cases filtering the bad traffic automatically and only allowing the good to pass through. Its caching systems ensure that it takes the hit, not your servers, and by distributing its servers across the world any attack that is DDOS in nature has to overwhelm many internet points worldwide, not just your server which is always the weakest link.

On top of all that CloudFlare also offers protection against other forms of attack like XSS and Injection Attacks, although we would recommend securing your code on the server rather than relying on a third party to deal with those particular security issues.

How to add CloudFlare to your service mix

It’s very simple to move to CloudFlare. All you need to do is sign-up, let them analyse your current DNS settings and then change your Domain Name name servers to the ones they give you. Just 12 – 24 hours later all requests to your website will first be routed via CloudFlare and protection and acceleration is active. In all it takes 10 minutes to do the actual work of enabling and setting up CloudFlare – more than worth the peace of mind it provides.

If you would like advice or would prefer not to go hands-on we can provide CloudFlare setup for you. Call us +44 (0)20 8123 2555 to learn more.