Our very own Ben was part of a panel on the PR Week video podcast this week, alongside the Refugee Council’s Gerdi Rees and Charmaine Griffiths from the British Heart Foundation.

The panel was discussing the role of digital in voluntary sector PR, following the news that Oxfam has appointed a digital PR specialist as part of a plan to transform the way it uses online communications.

The video contains some top tips on how third sector organisations can make similar moves into changing the way they communicate online, so have a watch and if you have any further questions or want to find out how Bright One can help you with your Digital PR, please get in touch.

This is a guest post by Ken Punter, Digital Media and Publications Manager, World Vision UK. To participate in World Vision’s Week for Children and become one of the 5,000 Britons to sponsor a child please visit www.worldvision.org.uk or call 0800 501010.

World Vision launched its first national Week for Children on 8th June with an urgent appeal for 5,000 new child sponsors. Five is very much the theme of our campaign, with over 5,000 children in need of sponsorship in five sub-Sahara African countries that have amongst the highest child mortality rates in the world. This is largely due to the five main killers of under-fives: malaria, HIV and AIDS, pneumonia, measles and diarrhoea.

We are aiming to raise awareness of the nine million children who will die from preventable illnesses this year. 99% of these avoidable deaths will occur in the developing world, so we are urging members of the public to give just a little to make a huge difference to the lives of children and their communities.

A large part of the initiative was to increase awareness of the campaign. In additional to our outreach to national and regional print and broadcast media, we used a number of digital channels to communicate our message.

People would be communicating to their friends and peers as potential sponsors, whether through word of mouth, blogs or Facebook, who may then pass on the information to other potential sponsors. In addition to the Facebook fan page that has videos and images, we also created a YouTube and Flickr channel to increase visibility on arguably two of the most popular sites in the world. These sites also make it easier for readers to share the information and provide an interface many are perhaps more familiar with.

Twitter and Facebook allowed us to increase our interaction with supporters. Most importantly, it allowed our messages to be spread more effectively. Through these channels, we are also able to acknowledge and thank those who helped spread the message.

Blogger outreach is seen by many to be a fundamental tactic when creating any digital campaign and we took a relatively conservative approach even though we felt that our information could be relevant to many blogs. Initially we identified several blogs who we felt were a good balance between influence and relevance to our campaign.

Throughout we asked the questions: have they written about World Vision in the past? How likely were they to write about this campaign? This allowed us to concentrate and build relationships with a small number of bloggers. We continued with this organic approach to blog relations through the Week for Children, only approaching those bloggers who reached out to us via Twitter or Facebook.

When looking at any type of communications campaign, we always look at how digital tactics fit in with offline tactics and “real world” activities – we believe that they should always work together and not in silo. To this end, every piece of content created is related or repurposed for use online, via the offline media or in the “real world” with each tactic driving traffic or interest to the other.

For instance, we partnered with Channel 5 for a series of reports on the five killers of children under five in Zambia and Mozambique, to be broadcast during the 5 o’clock news slot throughout the Week for Children. Channel 5’s news correspondent, Jonathan Samuels, met with mothers who have lost children and looked at how simple interventions are saving lives and transforming communities. This was communicated to both our Facebook Fans and Twitter followers, who then spread the message to their friends.

Social media tactics can go some way to helping improve the reach of a campaign. Facebook Fan Pages, blogger relations and Twitter can help you build a relationship directly with supporters and key opinion leaders. However, only by combining the digital tactics with traditional communications tactics could we optimise our campaign.

To participate in World Vision’s Week for Children and become one of the 5,000 Britons to sponsor a child please visit www.worldvision.org.uk or call 0800 501010.

This post is written as part of Volunteers’ Week, a national celebration of volunteers and volunteering which takes place from 1 – 7 June of each year. This year, Volunteers’ Week is celebrating its 25th anniversary.If you would like the opportunity to find out more about volutneering opportunities with Bright One, you can contact us on info@brightone.org.uk.

Bright One is run completely by volunteers and would not exist as an organisation without these people giving up their spare time to provide valuable communications support to third sector organisations.

We want to acknowledge all of Bright One’s volunteers for their contribution to our organisation. They are all making a valuable difference, not just to Bright One, but to the many organisations we are helping. The feedback we get from the organisations we work with has been overwhelmingly positive towards Bright One’s volunteers, which shows the commitment, professionialism and passion that they bring to their work.

Bright One’s volunteers give their time for free, and the least we can do is to recognise this fantastic commitment by showing our appreciation for them. As such, we’ve left a ‘Thank You’ message on the Volunteers’ Week website. You can read our message and the many others from organisations all around the UK who have nefited from the generous help of volunteers by visitng the Volunteers’ Week site here.

To all of our volunteers, we are really grateful for all you do and the difference you make!

The SHINE UnConference for Social Entrepreneurs took place last weekend at The Hub Kings Cross in London.

We were there for the first day and had what can only be described as an inspirational time. Being surrounded by those both interested in engaging with and supporting social enterprise gave the event a momentum that we’re sure many took back into their everyday lives - many of whom will be running social enterprises.

We were on a panel in the morning called ‘Question Time’, which was billed as  “a question-and-answer session with some inspirational social entrepreneurs”. The panel was hosted by Cliff Prior, CEO of UnLtd, who did a great job of facilitating the discussion between Ben Ramsden of Pants to Poverty, Davina Roberts of Punch & Juicy,and Annys Darkwa of Vision Housing. Needless to say, we were honoured to be sat alongside such fantastic social entrepreneursand hope that we gave out lots of useful advice from our own jourey so far. You can read what Nick Temple, one of the ’social reporters’ at the event, thought of the panel here.

We even got to do a bit of social reporting ourselves, helping people to find their way around Shine and letting people who couldn’t attend the event follow along via Twitter.

We also hosted a session in the afternoon. Called ‘Social Media Media Easy’, the panel session brought together a group of online social media champions and saught to answer any questions from social entrepreneurs on how to use online communications tools to strengthen their messages. On the panel was Steve Bridger, Rachel Beer from Beautiful World, Jonathan Waddingham from Just Giving, and Nicola Jones from UnLtdWorld. The panel faced some tough questions, but when asked if they found the session useful, the resounding cheers of ‘yes!’ from the audience showed that the panel gave incisive answers using their years of experience in the field.

It’s a shame that we did miss the second day because we could have joined David Wilcox, Amy Sample Ward and Andy Gibson for the Social Collaboration Game. They were showcasing a new event format based on the content of their forthcoming book Social by Social. Luckily, David has put up a comprehensive set of notes so that we can all join in the fun.

All in all it was a fantastic event. It was a particularly special occassion for us as it was at this event in 2008 that the seed of an idea for Bright One was first planted and we haven’t looked back since.

Who knows where we’ll be next year, but one thing we can be sure of is that we’ll be first in line to attend Shine10!

This is a guest post from Becky McMichael, a PR at Ruder Finn, lover of gin and tonic, firm believer you can have a career, a family and live outside of London. You can read more from Becky on her personal blog or on the Ruder Finn blog.

No matter how much work you do behind the scenes, as a junior PR consultant, a client will never know who you are or why they are paying for your time unless you take an active role in meetings. Getting started with this can be tough for many people, especially when there is a large team of more senior folks in the room.

Here are my tips:

1. Agree a role with your manager before you go in
2. Own a bit of the agenda to run through / update on
3. Keep something special to tell the client - a hit you got, an opportunity you secured or a new industry thing they might be interested in
4. Ask questions….think of something before you go in
5. Check their news daily - you won’t learn and feel confident offering an opinion if you don’t read
6. Look at the headlines before every meeting - any customer or competitor been written about that day?
7. Check the stock price, it’ll help you know what their focus is before the meeting
8. Introduce yourself and explain your role on the account
9. Listen in to as many calls as you can - good way of learning before you speak
10. Listen in to media briefings - helps you know the ropes before you host them yourself
11. Remember the client is paying for your time, always think about demonstrating value to them by making a contribution

Anything I missed?

Want to write a guest post for Bright One? Send your ideas to info@brightone.org.uk!