In terms of subject matter, we discussed quite a few options at the start of the year for what we wanted to talk about, and we were thinking it was about time to tackle ‘data’. It’s a pretty massive and amorphous topic, but we’re thinking the priority focus could be on Google Analytics, and we would hope to pull up a few people’s Analytics accounts so we can see how it’s being used well, and what people are tracking and learning.

If we get bored of Google Analytics, we could also talk about Open Data (particularly if anyone was at the ECF session and has notes they could share). As we shared social media monitoring tips in our February session, we should probably steer clear of rehashing that, but any other ideas for data related chat very welcome of course.

A quick additional question might be what are people doing to meet the new European legislation on cookies and privacy?

View Larger Map

We’re going to be chatting about email – Johnny from 38Degrees will talk us through some of their recent campaigns and be answering questions (within reason!)

We ran a similar session a year or so ago, and it was one of the best – so definitely not to be missed!

As suggested in the meeting, at some point we’ll probably want to collate a bit of a wiki style review of various of these tools. We could create an entry for each on this site for instance, put them all in the same category, then share learnings about each if we use them? If you’d be interested in doing that – let us know in the comments.

So anyway, here’s the beginnings of the list from what we did yesterday:

Tweetdeck

• Provides a visual layout of your Twitter and Facebook accounts activities.
• Requires you to install Adobe Air, sometimes gets overwhelmed by the amount of activity and freezes.

HootSuite

• Similar to Tweetdeck, provides columns of your social media activity across Twitter & Facebook.
• It is a website so no software download is required.
• Has a bizarre pricing system that seems to escalate rapidly the more you use it.

SproutSocial

• Designed mostly for reporting by the look of it, although haven’t been able to produce accurate reports from it yet (Tom & Louise from ActionAid are trialling, so we’ll report back!)
• Like PeerIndex appears to create ‘eye candy’ reports.

Crowdbooster

• Gives you information about your most popular Twitter & Facebook content and who your influential users are.

Klout

• Gives stats on reach, influencers, etc.
• Mainly known for having a vaguely credible numerical value assigned to all Twitter users (although this was somewhat debunked by someone claiming their score went up considerably when they said nothing)

PeerIndex

• Seems similar to Klout & Crowdbooster.
• Evaluates your performance on social media, suggests additional people to interact with.
• Most useful bit seemed to be that it provides very pretty reports (suitable for senior management!)

ThinkUp

• Sounded interesting – apparently used by the White House, but couldn’t find a free version to test

Twilert

• Is basically an automated search that emails you the results. Looks very handy for reputation management, and for ensuring you don’t miss mentions on a topic that you’re campaigning on, etc.

Twazzup

• If you want to find out what people are saying about a topic, and who is talking about it, this is great.
• Essentially a research tool

Managing News

• Superb RSS feed monitoring tool

SocialBro

• Didn’t get a chance to install this one and have a look – so any reviews or tips much welcomed in the comments!

Other tools that were mentioned but not in so much detail were Radian and Sysomos, both quite expensive, and probably comparable to ThinkUp as mentioned above.

We should also give a very sincere thank you to Rolf who (remotely) inspired lengthy discussions about the campaigning and also pranking opportunities presented by IFTTT. Our conversation took a strange turn towards certain right-wing political commentators, and an app that ‘released the winged monkeys’ so I’ll leave that there…

Please add any of the tools I’ve missed in the comments, and I’ll try and stay on top of updating this until we choose a different format. Similarly if I’ve undersold one, or you’ve got additional info about what they can do, please point it out in the comments! FYI – not interested in hearing from the companies themselves, mostly as you don’t always seem to be that unbias. However charity discounts for tools mentioned would be welcome in the comments (just don’t Groupon spam us!)

Recent sessions that seemed particularly useful were the complete run through of exactly how new Facebook works, and how it looks like it will work for organisations (and of course we killed Pontus… sorry Pontus), and the session Pontus ran after that where we ran through ideas for the excellent Real George Osborne campaign.

With Cotweet and Formulists soon closing down, one thing that could be good to discuss is a comparison of alternative tools for monitoring your social media work and having more efficient communications. Similarly if anyone has any campaigns coming up they’re willing to share, or has any other items their keen to discuss this month, please leave ideas in comments or on our Facebook page. In case it promotes ideas, here’s last February’s meeting.

So here’s a proposed agenda:

1. What are you using to work with social media (please bring a list if you have time)
2. What do we want to achieve with the Digital Charities group this year? We should be proud to have got the new IKWRO site live last year for one!
3. Any campaigns or digital work that you’d be keen to share with the group.

Below is a map for how to get to ActionAid (nearest tube: Farringdon, plenty of bike parking outside)

View Larger Map

To avoid missing any updates, the best thing to do is to sign up for the email list from our contact page, and get hooked up to us via Twitter & Facebook.

So a quick update. Last month we met at WDM, thanks to Pontus for presenting their latest campaign, and hopefully there were lots of ideas that they’ll be able to implement as a result. We spent most of the meeting thinking about best practice for pushing their new video based campaign, and I certainly learnt a lot, so hope everyone else did!

For our December meeting, we’re sticking to our first Wednesday of the month schedule, and will be meeting on the 7th December for a social at the TAS/EV restaurant near Waterloo from 7pm (ask for Brani’s table or the Digital Charities group).

If you’re keen to come to the social to meet the Digital Charities group, please drop us a line via our contact page so there’s a chance of getting a seat for you sorted out!

Again – apologies for not keeping this site up to date with more regular updates. We’ll try to be better communicators in the New Year!

June’s meeting will go ahead as usual however at UNICEF’s offices, on Wednesday 1st June:

We are going to be thinking about a topic suggested by Neil (WWF) a while back:

Back to basics – ways to help your organisation think smarter about the web

This could include a range of areas such as:

- Encouraging people to take ownership of their pages
- Training in digital for non web people
- Use of social media
- Using online tools to manage projects
- Developing digital capacity outside of your team

Hi DCers,

Today I’m launching ECF Workdays: a monthly gathering to connect and re-connect Digital Charity and eCampaigning Forum community members by doing our normal work in the same room. It is this Friday in London.

The idea is simple: once a month, we do our normal work in a room with our peers. The small talk, breaks, lunches and any after-work socialising serve to provide stimulation and inspiration as well as a practical hands-on support group for whatever you are doing that month.

When: the third Friday of each month.

Where: I am hosting the first this Friday at the Islington Hub (by Angel Tube) from 10:00-17:00. Tell me if you wish to join.

Bring: Laptop to work from, possibly network cable / wifi dongle / mobile dongle (depending on what you need for connectivity to work)

Join: Email me if you wish to join the ECF Workday this Friday in London. There is only space for 15-20 people. WiFi is free. There is no cost.

As this is the first of many, we’ll improve model as we go, but this is the start.

For those of you in or around London, hope to see you Friday (let me know)

Cheers,

Duane

We’ll be starting officially at 4pm, but a few of us will be around from 3pm, so feel free to come earlier.

We’re going to spend the meeting doing something a bit different – putting our wisdom into practice, by helping a small charity with their online presence.

The charity in question is the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation, an organisation that provides confidential advice and other support to Middle Eastern women and girls who are facing domestic violence, forced marriage, female genital mutilation and ‘honour’ based violence.

We’ve not got long, but we think a lot can be done by 20+ people in a room for a few hours!

Some of the areas we might help with:

• Choosing and installing a new Joomla theme (or possibly migrating to a new platform)
• Finding great plugins that will give extra functionality
• Developing a social media presence and writing some advice on how they should manage it
• Highlighting their best content
• Recommending and/or implementing copy changes

There will be plenty to do for the technical and non-technical alike, and if you just want to listen and learn that is fine too!

As this will probably take longer than a couple of hours, we’ve got the room booked until 9pm (we’ll come to some arrangement re food). But of course, if you are only available for a couple of hours, we’d love to have you!

The February Digital Charities Working group is going to kick off our 2011 sessions in style. It will be on Wednesday 2nd February at either Greenpeace or ActionAid.

In my opinion, the sessions that got the best responses last year were probably the email analysis session, Steve Bridger‘s guest slot, the social media monitoring session with We Are Social and the video skills.

What do you want February’s session to be about? We’ll be thinking about it as well, but suggestions are always helpful! Some preliminary ideas:

• Blogging: successes and issues (such as audience). Could potentially do an entire session on this?
• Plans for the 100th International Women’s Day: Who’s in the UK coalition? (March 8th)
• The 6 Billion Ways conference (March 5th)
• Novel ideas for actions: Any interesting new formats or sites opening up new possibilities?

Leave ideas in comments below or on Facebook.

The plan is pretty simple. Find somewhere to eat together, then have a few drinks. Anything beyond that we can improvise on the night!

We should book the place to eat however, so please vote below:

http://twtpoll.com/ru0v2o

Add suggestions in the comments or via the Twitpoll please!