Charity begins online

Have been thinking a fair bit about the way that campaigning organisations and charities are using social media effectively recently. And some are using it very effectively indeed.

In no particular order, before I pick out some of the common themes

1. Amnesty UK. They've been active on social media for a long time (I've included one or two of their films here which I've picked up via Twitter). But the way they ran the 1 in 10 campaign for International Womens Day was textbook. Really good. And my mate Steve works there/writes for their blogs. Result
2. Comic Relief - Other campaigns have persuaded Twitter users to change their avatars for the day, but no-one has managed it as well as them imho. They gave people the tools to do it easily (with help from James Governor), and pay a little bit for the privilege. I have a sneaky suspicion that @amanda might have been involved - one of the leading lights of ...
3. Twestival - Enough said. A lot of good people had a really good time, and raised a fair whack for charity:water (the first Charity: water well will be dug next week)
4. The gift of life - a campaign by Holly Shaw to get as many people as possible to sign up to be organ donors yesterday. It resonated with a lot of people on Twitter, until, by the end of the Day Gordon Brown got in on the act and backed the campaign, perhaps conscious of his wife's growing involvement in online campaigning. Talking of which...
5. Sarah Brown - This morning she had 50 odd followers on Twitter. Now she's got 650 odd. She's following a lot of UK charities on there, and her bio is "signing up a million mums". Watch this space - she's going to use it very well...
6. Earth Hour - although I'm a bit dubious about the real-world effects of this WWF campaign, the fact they got massive brands and buildings to participate, made it extremely accessible across all social media and generated significant media coverage says something....
   
7. Yes yes yes to safe sex - campaign by MTV and The Body Shop to raise money for the Staying Alive Foundation (MTV's AIDS charity) by selling a limited edition Lip Butter. The reason this one gets included is because the campaign has energised the social media community, by encouraging active bloggers (mostly more active than me, it has to be said) to compile on-topic Spotify Playlists. A shrewd move. Everyone likes to check out their peers musical tastes. (Mine is on the yesyesyes blog here)

So what are the secrets of good online "Issues" campaigns?

Make participation easy, fun, worthwhile, and incredibly shareable (especially via Twitter).

Of course there are then all sorts of questions about how "engaged" people actually are in online campaigns when it's now so easy to (be seen to) participate - but if a campaign's objectives are to "raise awareness" (i.e. be talked about) then ticking these four boxes will undoubtedly help.

If I've missed any other amazing examples or obvious secrets, I'm all ears...