Banyan Branch

Posted by Amy Rainey, Account Executive

I recently led an energetic team of live-tweeting, photo-taking, video-interviewing rock stars for Seattle Works Day, a one-day volunteer event and major fundraiser for the organization. The results of Seattle Works Day were amazing. More than 1,000 energetic volunteers – often serving on teams with their coworkers and friends – completed about 30 projects throughout the city, ranging from beautifying schools to clearing non-native plants at parks. (As one person tweeted, it was definitely “not a good day to be an invasive species in Seattle.”)

My team, comprised of savvy strategists from Banyan Branch, UW’s Master of Communication in Digital Media program and the United Way of King County, set out to generate buzz about the event on social channels and chronicle the day with real-time updates, photos and videos.

If you’re planning to incorporate social media into your volunteer project, consider these 10 tips.

1. Define your goals and your metrics for measuring success. For Seattle Works Day, our overarching goals included:

• generating community awareness of Seattle Works Day activities
• increasing excitement about Seattle Works Day and creating a sense of camaraderie among participants
• driving social conversation around Seattle Works as an organization

2. Create an event hashtag and make sure your participants know about it. Leading up to Seattle Works Day, we promoted the #SWDay hashtag on the website, informational packets, business cards, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and more. Use an archival tool like TwapperKeeper to capture all of the tweets with your hashtag, which will help with measurement.

3. Encourage everyone to participate, but identify some primary social media evangelists in advance and provide them guidance if needed. Our team visited a variety of project locations, but we also asked one social-savvy volunteer at each site to lead the way in posting Twitter and Facebook updates and shooting photos and videos.

4. Make it easy. Armed with several laptops, flash drives and memory card readers, we collected photos and videos from volunteers and our social media team at the after-party. We took care of transferring the photos and uploading them to our SWDay11 Flickr group. We also encouraged users to submit photos to the Flickr group at the after-party and on Twitter and Facebook in the following days. The Flickr group now has more than 1,200 photos. These photos are valuable assets for the nonprofit, which will use them throughout the year in web and marketing materials.

5. Create a fun, shared experience for your volunteers. At the after-party, we projected a slideshow of the photos from each project. People enjoyed sharing their photos — and subsequently, their stories — with other volunteers and learning about the work others had done.

6. Consider your volunteers’ equipment and Internet access. If your volunteers don’t have smartphones, they likely won’t be able to post live updates to social platforms. And if your project is in a rural area, your volunteers may not have fast enough Internet access. In these cases, focus your efforts on collecting great stories, photos and videos that can be shared later that day on your blog or other channels. You can also launch a campaign to encourage people to share their volunteer stories on social platforms after the event.

7. Have a “command center.” One of our team members manned all of Seattle Works channels throughout the day, retweeting and sharing the most interesting content posted from the project sites. That team member also monitored several keyword searches and the hashtag conversation, fielding questions and engaging with participants.

8. Tag and mention volunteers and organizations, which will help your posts appear in users’ feeds and encourage interactions. Likewise, encourage these participants to tag and mention your organization in their posts. Seattle Works’ Facebook page has benefited from a steady stream of posts and photos from volunteers and partners who have tagged the organization.

9. Create opportunities for people to support your event on digital and social channels. Seattle Works offered a “virtual team member” option for people who wanted to support the effort but couldn’t volunteer that day. We promoted the virtual team member feature on Facebook and Twitter leading up to Seattle Works Day and throughout the day.

10. Use social location services. Prior to the event, ensure your venue is accurate and easy to find on Foursquare (or whatever service you decide to choose). Whether it’s through a sign or an announcement, remind volunteers to check-in at your event. Check-ins can help contribute to the shared experience of a volunteer project and create awareness of the event among people who aren’t there.

BONUS (because Top 11 isn’t the same):
Use all the tools at your disposal. Our social media team primarily used iPhones and Android phones, Flip cameras and point-and-shoot digital cameras. Thanks to these widely available and easy-to-use tools – and the growing desire to create and share – user-generated content can play a large role in capturing your event.