If the organisation you are with is looking towards Social Media as a medium to promote your services online or start a fundraising scheme or simply just starting, then you may want to check if the usernames on these sites are available.

The right domain name is always important to reflect your website, most charities especially national ones have the domain name that reflects their core branding; obviously you should be doing the same.  Social media is slighly different and although it may not be the core URL that matters when you promote your site, it does matter when you are promoting your services on that particular service.

For instance you want to use youtube as a medium for promotion of videos, you would certainly want to be able to use your brand as the youtube channel.  But if it is not available you obviously want to try another similar username. Now what you do not want to be doing is looking over a dozen or more sites trying to match the right username.

Here is were the feature of Namechk comes into effect.  This a simple but effective tool that will check over 76 social media sites to see if the username is available.  You simply type in a username into the text field, and a nice little ticker will run along each of the sites, within a few seconds you will see sites where your  username is available in a  green colour, and sites whereby the username has already taken appear in red.  To be totally obvious the words ‘taken’ or ‘available’ will appear.

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All over the internet and especially in the Social Networking arena like LinkedIn, Twitter, facebook, etc you will find bold claims of SEO {search engine optimisation} or SMO {social media optimisation} experts who are willing to lend their expertise to bring you upto speed in the latest development of Social Media.

The truth of the matter is that most are self taught!  And after countless hours on wiki’s, blogs, social networking sites and other social media have skillfully learnt how to utilise these tools to assist and help clients, friends and fellow bloggers/twitters how to harness the full potential of these tools.

But what difference would it make if you were actually had a qualification in Social Media? Not just a Qualification, but a Masters Degree? Not just a Masters Degree, but one of the first people in the world to recieve a Qualification, NO; a Masters Degree in Social Media!

Birmingham City University is delivering the Masters Degree in Social Media.  The course length is only 1 year and the University will provide the support you need to get a work placement.

What would the first thing you do?

You make it go viral! This is a massive opportunity.  Judging by the number of blogs I read today on this subject alone I know it has gone viral, the blogosphere is ignited and thrilled at this advancement.

I tell you what I would do.  A learning log, I would publish a blog that is a learning log of the entire journey.   I would tweet it daily, update the facebook live feed, get a facebook fan page, add it to my LinkedIn page, hell I would get a custom badge and add it to the LinkedIn Page.

In fact, you know what; I think I will!

I will contact Course Director Jon Hickman tommorrow and have a chat with him about this opportunity.   In fact here is the hashtag #masocialmedia that the tracking software can find this post.

I will give you an update some time this week once I have the conversation.  In the meantime I leave you with this youtube video’s:

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If the combination of charity and Twitter post enticed you to explore Twitter more, then here is a free ebook that contains screenshots of a step-by-step guide to setting up an account on Twitter.  

Twitter is really self explanatory and need not provide a guide and the videos in the previous post provides the basics to setting up, nevertheless this is a good resource to get grips with the basic and covers one or two pointers that you may miss out on.  

You can download the ebook at this link.

Also here is a link to a Twitter tool that auto folllows users on a keyword match basis. 

You will need to use the unlock code:

This tool will follow only people who twit about specific topics! there is a  likehood that people you are following will also most likely follow you. 
So you want to build highly targeted list of followers,  this tool will do assist in this automatically.  

So if you use a keyword match for ‘third sector’ or ‘child safety policy’ it will do a search and start following users who include those terms.  This tool is at its early stages and I am in discussion with the developer with suggestions i.e. not to auto-follow but provide the link to that users account to do  more thorough research to find out more about that person.  

The results will not be immediate. It analyses the twitter posts around every 30 seconds. If it finds your keyword(s), you automatically follow that user.  Most of the time when you follow the user, he/she follows you back.  Check your twitter account periodically, and you’ll see the changes.

UPDATE:  The feedback for this tool is mixed.  Some are concerned that this tool is Twitter meets Spam.  I suggest that this tool is used carefully and possible with a disposable twitter account.  Find as many users as you can, analyse what is their interest and then select which people you genuinely want to follow.  Go to your main account and start following them.  

Be sure to visit the FAQ on this site.

There is a craze at the moment about sending automated messages when someone follows you.  however this should be avoided since this is being used as a spam tool and users are un-following those who send automated messages.  I would suggest a personal touch to messages were possible.

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For those of you wondering what on earth is going on with Twitter which has grown to be the 7th most visited Social Networking site in the UK, here is a brief explanation of the world of Twitter and its effects to within 3rd sector.

You may have come across twitter due to the phenomenal embrace of Twitter by the blogsohpere, especially in light of recent events whereby a massive charitable campaign was spearheaded by the twitter community in the name of Twestival.

Twestival is an initative founded by Amanda Rose that has captured the twitter community and Twestivals have/will be held across 202 cities around the world.  All of these on a volunteer capacity to raise $1million. So far {18 feb} $250,000 USD has been raised = 55 water projects in Ethiopia, Uganda and India – clean water for just over 17,000 people.

To round up volunteers with such sheer passion and commitment would not have been possible just a few years ago.  the power of the New Voice is hear!

here is a couple of videos to first give you a heads up on twitter:

Twitter in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

And the Telegraphs real human experience and perception on it:

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Twitters growth has gone mainstream since the likes of Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross have endorsed it  on network TV and avid and savvy users.

Twestival may have been a large initiative on a grand scale but that does not mean that smaller volunteer groups and charities can not take advantage.  I do not want to cram all the information on how to maximise the usage of twitter into one post and how your can really take t to another level, but that is an area I certainly intend to investigate on behalf of the 3rd sector and great some real success stories out there.

For one, whilst writing this post I do not have a twitter account for the 3rd sector blog, I have several other twitter accounts; and they are  not to deceive or spam anyone.  Far from it, because online I wear different hats and carry different pseudo name; simply because of the multiple activities and campaigns I run online.  As an example SocialProfilr is the twitter account that is used related to Social Media Optimization {America version} which is growing healthy with 316 follows to date.

So for certainly I intend to create a twitter account for 3rd Sector Online and subscribers and followers of this blog will get an invite.  But the point of the matter is if you are reading this blog post and have not yet started a campaign for growth on Twitter and intend to then these words should ring sweetness to your ears:

“95 percent of charities and volunteer groups will not take advantage of Twitter although 1,000,000 of people will be ready to contribute one way or another to charitable and volunteer aims and causes”

For real!

The opportunity is massive, and with a world-wide audience a small volunteer group in Audenshaw, Tameside could be seeing people from across the globe assisting in raising funds and promoting the cause.

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