Charity communities are for life not just for Christmas.
November 25, 2011 by Martech Social
The recent Children in Need event included social networks as a key part of its activity. The charity saw meteoric growth in the week running up to the Friday adding thousands of fans on the day alone.
This success is great news but one that needs to be managed throughout the year, not just in the run up to and immediate aftermath of the event.
Comic Relief has also seen great success with Facebook. The 2010 fan page achieved 20,000 fans with the 'Official Red Nose Day' fan page reaching 336,000 fans.
But what value is a page if it is not updated? A charity, just like any other business needs to maintain that connection and relevance throughout the year. The official Comic Relief page, linked from www.comicrelief.com has not been updated for a month with a gap of two months before that. The page does highlight Red Nose Day 2011 and Sport Relief 2011 as the key channels, however the lack of updates points to lost potential, even if it was to 'point' to the current page.
It is rare for any fan page to 'lose' fans but they can lose engagement. The fan page for Children in Need has already slowed down its updates and resultant engagement
No doubt charity events of this scale will not need to worry too much about engagement, benefiting from major national television coverage. But for smaller charities this attention to regular engagement could mean the difference between success or otherwise.