What is your charities name and Mission?
Speaking Up @speakingupnews is an advocacy charity for people with learning disabilities, physical disabilities or mental health problems. Our Mission is Voice I Action I Change – we believe that if you give people a voice, they can use it to take action and create positive change in their lives. We provide a range of advocacy services across the country, and also run innovative and user-led self advocacy projects which give people the skills and confidence they need to find and use their voice.
How long have you been using Twitter and who's idea was it?
We’ve been using Twitter since February of this year. The idea came from me! I’m Tessa, Speaking Up’s Marketing Officer, and having seen that so many charities were getting into twitter I was really keen to get us involved and tweeting as part of a broader move towards online communications and social media.
What have you enjoyed so far whilst using Twitter?
We’ve loved the opportunity to engage with such a fantastic range of organisations and individuals and build up a relationship with them. It’s a fantastic way to introduce people to all of our great projects and to let people know what we’re up to on a really regular basis, keeping people up to date is so much easier with Twitter!
Has there been an incidents of followers doing something wonderful for you?
The small things are rather wonderful to me – when I tweeted that we were looking to recruit new volunteers for a project in Peterborough, a number of individuals and organisations re-tweeted it for us and bought the message to a whole new number of volunteers!
What has been your biggest challenge to date?
I think the biggest challenge may still be to come! So far we’ve had great buy-in from the Senior Management Team at Speaking Up, who have been great and really let me explore Twitter (and other social media), but in the next couple of week I’ll be launching a campaign to win over the rest of the staff here! I think Twitter will only really work if we have all of our staff behind it – so my fingers are very much crossed!
Do you have a Twitter tip for other charities?
Get in there! And remember that Twitter is a fantastic tool for building relationships, so don’t be afraid to join in conversations.
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