charity:water was founded by Scott Harrison (above)
CASE STUDY
Connecting with consumers
charity:water (
charitywater.org) is a New York-based organisation, founded in 2006, whose purpose is to bring clean drinking water to the developing world. It’s led by Scott Harrison, who discovered that the social web could be used to connect with donors in unprecedented ways. A challenge for many charities is
demonstrating the difference that small donations make. The journey from ‘click to cause’ is often opaque, with donors unclear how their funds are used. charity:water is different. Donors specify how, and where, their donation should be used, and then Google Earth, YouTube and Twitter are used to track and report. Such evidence-based donating makes the giving
European industry audit A key part of my new report focuses on auditing 50 health clubs – market leaders defined by number of clubs – across 10 countries in Europe to capture their social media use. Are they blogging? Do they use Twitter, Facebook and YouTube? If they are, how frequently are they using these platforms? Overall, I was surprised by the low
use of many social media platforms. For example, blogging on specialised publishing platforms such as Blogger, Word Press and Type Pad is not on the radar of the health club industry. Indeed, when I researched my report, the only evidence I found of a chain blogging was SATS in Norway. More brands were using Facebook,
but the level of member engagement was low. McFit in Germany topped my research with 7,597 ‘likes’. However, to put this in context, McFit had 975,000 members as at December 2010, so less than 1 per cent of its members ‘liked’ its offi cial Facebook page. I believe 10 per cent of all members should be a realistic ambition if a brand has confi dence in its service proposition.
june 2011 © cybertrek 2011
process more transparent and fosters a deeper relationship between donor, recipient and charity. The charity also recently launched
mycharity:water, whereby individuals can promote a specifi c project, raise donations, track progress and share information with other donors. When I last looked, US$8.1m had been gifted by 101,000 donors. The charity has a fanatical social media
following. It has 1.3 million Twitter followers and was the very fi rst non-profi t Twitter account to gain more than one million followers. By way of comparison, Water Aid, the 30-year old charity, has approximately 10,000 Twitter followers.
Club brands are now on Twitter, but
again the level of consumer engagement is low. Fitness First UK topped my Twitter table with 1,953 followers (at November 2010). By May 2011, this number had risen to 3,581, still representing less than 1 per cent of its UK membership. Fitness First’s Twitter use is very
good – it Tweets frequently, averaging 51 monthly tweets since joining Twitter, and proactively responds to follower questions and queries. Sometimes its tweets are not about health and fi tness, as this message on 11 March 2011 demonstrates: “Our thoughts are with everyone affected by the devastating earthquake and tsunami news we have woken up to this morning in the UK”. This helps the company maintain a human dimension, visibly acknowledging that not everything is about fi tness and that its members have interests and concerns beyond the gym.
Becoming social The social web will have a transformational effect on the health club industry, and I believe it is incumbent on anyone connected to the
Total transparency: charity:water allows donors to specify how, and where, their donation should be used
All this means that charity:water has
a rapid means of engaging with large numbers of enthusiastic followers. Via Twitter, Facebook, mycharity:water, YouTube and its blog, the charity distributes photographic and video project updates, recruits staff, lobbies politicians, discusses new projects and encourages its donors to talk about fundraising efforts. There is of course a magic ingredient to
its success: the compelling organisational purpose. Without this, there is nothing for the social web to amplify.
industry to invest time in understanding how to harness this amazing innovation. I do hope you are excited by the arrival of the social web. It has been nearly 600 years since Gutenberg invented the mechanical printing press, an innovation that transformed the way people communicated. The web has only been with us for 19 years, and so is still nascent. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web, thinks this: “Twenty years from now, we will look back and say this was the embryonic period. The web is only going to get more revolutionary.”
healthclub@leisuremedia.com ray algar
For further information… For a free copy of The 2011 European Health Club Industry Web and Social Media Report, visit:
europeanwebreport.ning.com Ray Algar, MBA is managing
director of Oxygen Consulting and co-founder of
LoveTheGym.com ray@oxygen-consulting.co.uk
Read Health Club Management online at
healthclubmanagement.co.uk/digital 49
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