Sylwia Korsak

I am sure I am not the first person to say this – actually I am writing this in response to @ifundraiser’s recent post about how we approach Africa in fundraising activities, in response to the recent ActionAid UK’s bloggers tea party I attended and to something my son said few times. You see I am not an experienced fundraiser – I would never dare to say that. I have started actively working in social media for this sector a few years ago, and even for personal projects, I have only used it for few years. I do know however that in all our work we do and project online the story really matters – not because it is fiction, but because most of the stories we tell ARE reflecting our reality. With the rise and huge development of social media over the last few years, the idea of the postmodernist story in a story and play between fiction and reality has resulted in a great self-regulating notion of trust – trust in what we say, who is saying it and what the meaning of our conversation really stands for.

Yet, I am genuinely upset about the current narrative surrounding Africa and fundraising activities run in the African region. The notion of guilt in all major charity campaigns in the UK in support of African countries does not work for me – and as this recent study shows that I am not the only one. When it comes to my personal choices in supporting charities I based them on a complex set of variables (personal experiences, current social media competence and skills of charity’s team, transparency and engagement in actual work in the field, understanding of how my money actually helps people at the end of this really complicated process). I have to honestly admit that most of the time I donate to causes where stories are told from many angles, in multiple directions and at the end of the day is relevant to me. Just as much as I have become more aware consumer of commercial brands I expect charities and fundraisers to tell me – why should I donate to the work THEY, and not someone else does in the region.

My son, every time I mention Africa, states: “Yes, place where all children are poor and have no food”. What kind of definition of a continent is that? I am doing my best to educate him on the origins of coffee, music I love to listen to, thousand of years of history of Egypt and way people used an ordinary plant to make paper…I am trying to talk about amazing animals and nature of African countries…I sometimes even mention Ushahidi when talking about iPad apps (something that he can relate too;)). Now, this is what I can do. I can raise him in touch with my fellow GVers from the region too – I can teach him to think outside of the box.

But is this going to make me feel better? I am not sure. I have recently attended a great blogger event run by ActionAid UK in London dedicated to child sponsorship. I had the opportunity to listen to their celebrity chatting about the need for support and the poor state of many African countries and just after that to a British couple who had a chance to visit the child they sponsor. It was not so much the celebrity appeal that worked for me – I was actually a little bit put off by the notion of sadness, guilt and almost expected responsibility (but it is my personal problem with the notion of celebrities). What really grabbed my attention was the visible process of connection between the people who support a child and the supported community. I liked the pictures from the village. I like the stories of bravery of kids walking miles to and from school and a teacher dedicating her time to educate many in a small school. I was taken by the reality on pictures and in personal experiences. I was also impressed by the commitment of charity workers themselves. I needed to look at the process of charitable support through many channels.

I think Richard is right in mentioning inspiration and need for a shift towards genuine, long-term relationships in today’s UK fundraising sector. And of course, you will see me rambling a lot about the potential of social media to share those messages and build those relationships. But the bottom line is – we need more stories from African region and we need to change the way we talk and think about the region. I like the idea of Sea Africa Differently campaign and I hope it will not be lost in endless, more traditional narratives of UK fundraising sector because it is exactly the charities that have the power to shape the view of Africa in the UK.

I think we need to look at many other alternative narratives.

This is my last post with top blogging tips and I think that most of my remaining points can be combined in one – becoming a trust agent. The term was coined by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith in their book on the topic. Here is the core of the book:

“1 – Trust Agents are digital natives using the web to be genuine and to humanize their business. they are interested in people (prospective customers, employees, colleagues, and more) and they have realised that these tools that enable more unique, robust communication also allow more business opportunities for everyone.

2 – They are the power users of the new tools of the Web, educated more by way of their own experience and experiments than from the core of their professional experiences. They speak online technology fluently.

3 – Trust Agents use today’s web tools to spread their influence faster, wider, and deeper than a typical company’s PR or marketing department might be capable of achieving.

4 – Trust Agents care about the people in the equation. They work to grow relationships that eventually influence people’s experience with an organization.

5 – They make people feel comfortable, all the way, building deep relationships before ever asking something of others.

6 – We don’t need to make another team lose to win ourselves. There’s plenty of room.

7 – No matter whether you have lots of connections or few, don’t use this as a measure of your success online.

8 – Trust Agents are being in the center of a network and being able to spread ideas.

9 – Trust Agents build networks, then build circles, and then include others in those circles.

10 – Part of what you do as a trust agent is realising that everyone else has great ideas, that they are professionals, and that they have angles you’ve yet to consider.”

Becoming a trust agent as a blogger means having consistent, trusted and genuine voice. It means giving much more to the community than asking from it. It also stands for collaboration and contribution as opposed to self-praising, talking about others, not so much yourself. It means talking about our inspiration and showcasing who we are through our work and values we represent not empty words or titles we come up with.

Start with moving away from talking about who you are to what you do. Move away from talking about your own achievements to showcasing others – inviting them to write a guest post on your site or take part in an interview. Share case studies, good tips and interesting learnings. Care for your readers and provide them with content that has a potential to change their lives for better.

With this attitude, you will have more genuine relationships with fellow bloggers. You will extend your on-line networks to off-line events. If you work with brands, your voice will be trusted. Your audience will come back with great ideas, support and they will stand behind you. You will feel that your blogging is actually changing your own life for better too!

We all do it. We hate the word “strategy” yet we know what we want to do here, on our blog let’s say in the next few weeks – even if the plan is…not to plan, not to strategize, not to commit;) It’s important for our readers to know a little bit what to expect. I do not mean actually publishing your content plan or intentions but gradually building up your tonality, posting on particular topics, setting up the rhythm of your blog.

As readers, we want to feel the atmosphere of your blog. We want to know when to expect the next post – or not to wait for it, just check the site now and again. We want to know what types of topics your blog usually addresses and from that point of view, we do like consistency.

And then one day if anything changes we like to be guided into the change – we like to be told about a new event you are to attend and expected a rise in the volume of your posts. We like to understand why suddenly your blog has additional Flickr widget so that we check the blog in a browser, not only in RSS reader.

We are all learning this stuff and I am convinced that to some extent we are all experimenting with innovation. I just think that now and again it’s worth stopping, looking back and deciding how we take our blog to the next level.

I personally spend Christmas time on looking back at my year and around the end of the year I re-think my approach to blogging and the web in general. I am sure you can find your own best time and approach, but whatever you do – share it with your audience and educate them on the how of your blog – directly, though the way you do it or simply by consistency in your posts.

 The idea of management of our web shadow was probably clear to most of us for a while now – as we are all responsible for each other here, in on-line spaces. But it was really Antony Mayfield’s book that made it clear to me just how crucial it is to keep an eye on our own privacy and monitoring of on-line conversations around our own data (name, nickname, address, blog title, hashtags, etc). I strongly suggest it as one of the mandatory reads for everyone wishing to use the web wisely.

Writing up blogging tips for mothers present on-line has made me realise that increasingly we are becoming more and more responsible for our kids and their web shadow, for our friends and family, even for our work contacts. Increasing linking between social networks helps us to manage the noise and amount of updates we are to send to all our audiences but we need to be aware of consequences of various access levels we provide to 3rd party applications on Facebook, Twitter, Google+. Klout – Twitter grading service was strongly criticised for pulling in family members from Facebook and in some cases publicising relationship that its users were not even aware of! We have a lot of options to manage our data, our privacy levels and group our relationships in various categories – let’s learn to use those for the sake of our families and friends! Let’s start to expect the same from our on-line friends too!

Just as a side note from someone who talks to KS1 and KS2 kids about on-line behaviour I would like to point our that as parents we tend to overlook the fact that all the information we share about our kids on-line – even if it’s just a photo of a newborn baby or first day of school – contribute to their on-line footprint so we need to wisely consider what to share and what to leave for private on-line communication. I have no intention to scare you off from using social media, I would just like to see the confident and competent usage of on-line spaces in conversations about and with our kids.

 While I am preparing to the ActionAid UK Blogger Tea party this week I decided to post my top tips in separate blog posts – I think on Thursday I will only have few minutes to present so I would like to explain my points in more detail. I am starting with something pretty important to me (both as a blogger, as well as social media marketer who works will bloggers quite often) – disclosure.

When you start blogging you need to clarify the goals of your presence on-line. Sooner or later you might be approached by agencies or directly by brands or even by individuals asking you for article exchange, product review or involvement in an event for example. What would you do if someone posts a public comment asking you to post a review of a new baby product (please note: my audience on Thursday will consist mainly of blogging mothers)? Would you prefer to be contacted by email? Or maybe you would rather avoid any involvement with commercial brands? Increasingly our individual on-line reputation depends on how we get involved in promotional activities or any blogger engagement programmes. Me, for example, I avoid direct engagement with products that are not relevant to my audiences and topics of my blog. I am happy to learn and review new social media services or social media campaigns, often I do take part in events and nonprofit campaigns but always according to my personal preference and relevance to my blog (which is designed to be the extension of my geeky life, so it makes perfect sense). I receive quite a lot of pitches but I choose to stay away from many because they happen to be irrelevant to my site. I was once asked by an agency to take part in a project based around embedding of a branded widget on my site – and even though it was related to photography I did not like the idea of embeddable code and content which I cannot really control within my site. When I gently declined it was pointed out to me that I did indeed take part in a fairly commercial blogging give away – which I think was a very rude and ignorant response from someone who probably just started working with bloggers and does not realise that we do not really like to feel that pushy communication. Specially that in this particular case I was involved in a give away on my friend’s site  and the topic was relevant to my hobbies.

What should we do to clarify our approach to our own blogging and how we expect to be involved with organisations and brands? Here are few major points:

1. Dedicate an area of your blog to clear statement on the topic – you can use your profile information area, contact page, about section or create a dedicated “disclaimer” page.

2. If you work is related to blogging, point out what on-line presences (Twitter, Facebook, Google+ profile) are personal (“Personal opinions only”) and where are your work related posts.

3. If you share a work related post with your personal networks, explain the context. Sometimes just tagging it #work does the job.

4. If you are involved in promotions, sponsored blogger events or any other activity which might mean that the content you are sharing is not purely YOUR opinion or is your opinion on a sponsored activity – make sure you explain your relationship with involved brands to your audience.

5. If you are paid to blog – find the appropriate moment to disclose that too.

As your readers, we want to know how you relate to what you post and what you experience off-line. As marketers we need your guidance on whether we can and if so then how can we approach you. As fellow bloggers, we want to link to your content with a ful understanding of its context.

It has been slowly 2 years since I started those virtual events. From chat – which was at the time the best forum for this group discussion – we have moved to Google+ Hangouts and today we have our notes for you…on YouTube. Our kind friend, Michael Tucker has spent his evening last night (11 AM GMT) recording our session for us and live-streaming it too and this evening we have it uploaded to YouTube too – for you reference.

Next time we will use Bambuser, just to see if we can improve on the image quality, though I think considering the fact that Google+ does not allow direct upload to YouTube this is a great achievement! Enjoy – it’s longish but it has some really good case studies there for social good and tech.