Concerns over reputational risk could be preventing many charities from making the most of the communications opportunities provided by social media.
A survey of delegates at the CharityComms conference on digital communications on Wednesday showed that 52% of the 91 respondents believed that the possibility of negative comment in a public forum diminished trust in and support of social media within their organisation.
Jonathan Waddingham, product manager at JustGiving, who spoke at the event, said: “Whether organisations are active online or not, those comments will still take place. It shows the need for charities to learn how to deal with such comments and how to have public conversations with people.”
He added: “Once you start a conversation with people, you might not always like the outcomes. But being open and transparent means you’ll develop greater trust with your supporters.”
Waddingham felt that the perception of the risk was higher than the risk itself. “It’s rare for charities to get negative comment because public trust in charities is so high. The fear comes from not knowing how to listen and respond.”
48% of delegates admitted they had difficulty convincing management of the value of social media tools. Waddingham said using case studies of what other charities have achieved through social media is a useful tool. He also suggested that communications professionals could do some social media activity “under the radar” for a while.
“Once you’ve got some results – such as evidence of greater engagement or more visits to a website – you can take that to senior management. That’s much more effective than saying ‘we need the money to do this because others are doing it’.”
The survey was part of a digital benchmarking report being compiled by CharityComms using interactive voting technology supplied by conference sponsor LiveGroup.