Gavin Wray // Carefully crafting content since 2001

The second free Social Media Surgery for voluntary and community groups in Birmingham was held at the BVSC in Digbeth on 26 November 2008.

The idea behind the surgeries is to help individuals working in voluntary and community projects in Birmingham who want to know how to make better use of the web and social tools to benefit their work.

Help and support is provided by the ’surgeons’, a group of bloggers, social media and web types who provide their free time to offer advice to the community groups. They’re a lovely, generous and inspiring bunch with a home on Paradise Circus.

After some tentative toe-dipping into this world at Brum Bloggers meetups, with friendly encouragement from Jon Bounds, Julia Gilbert and Nick Booth, I went along as a first-time surgeon to see if I could, well, try and pass on some knowledge and learn something new myself too in the process.

In tandem with fellow first-time surgeon Ben Whitehouse, we talked with Mark and Michael from the Birmingham City University Students’ Union. They were interested in equipping group organisers in the Students’ Union — working on community projects and fundraising, for example — with the social media tools and skills to run their own online groups.

We talked about free web tools, building and inter-linking networks and the importance of a personal blogging ‘voice’ to help individuals get started with their own blogs on specific community issues – and building up their own networks around these blogs.

I sketched a spider-like diagram of individual blog authors connecting through Twitter and how the linkages between networks on Twitter can occur. Looking at the sketch now, it’s a mass of scrawled spider death but I hope it proved useful.

Amongst many things, we talked about:

• Getting your own blog quickly through WordPress.com
• Keeping your network informed and building wider connections using Twitter
• Starting small – targeting a receptive enthusiast first and encouraging them to blog
• Speaking with your own personal voice on your blog
• How Google Analytics can help you monitor your website traffic and understand your visitors’ behaviour – and how it can used to measure the impact of promotions when you attempt to attract more traffic
• Aggregating many RSS feeds into a custom feed for your own community using Yahoo Pipes

Other groups at the Social Media Surgery looking to learn more about the web and social media tools were: City Centre Neighbourhood Forum, Perry Barr Multifaith Network, the Get Walking Keep Walking project and the Digbeth Trust (apologies if I missed any off – please add your group’s website in a comment).

I hope those who came to the surgery got the advice and encouragement they needed to go and try out some of these tools and ideas.

I certainly learned about the great work these voluntary groups are doing in Birmingham and the depth of incredible digital talent in this city.

Carefully posted on 27th November 2008
Filed under Blog
Tagged with Birmingham· Birmingham Bloggers· Charity· Networks· Social media· Social media surgery· Volunteers
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