For small charities media can be extremely helpful. Small charities can gain a lot of possibilities by simply having media sites. Websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram are fantastic ways to interact with people through social media. All these sites can be personalised so that they reflect your charities mission, allowing pictures, backgrounds and colour schemes.

Sites such as Facebook and Twitter allow you to comment on other posts, express feelings towards other things on your news feeds. You can retweet or like anything on Twitter and Facebook, retweeting is done when you agree with something after being retweeted it will appear on your own personal newsfeed; this is a fantastic way for charities to engage with other charities as it look like they will all share an interest.

Having social media accounts is also a fantastic way for small charities to see how many people are looking at what they’re doing,  and who is interested enough to follow you for recent updates.

It is a brilliant way for small charities to engage with people who support your charities cause. There are many ways to engage with followers by doing things such as launching like campaigns, Empower supporters to take action, build real relationships with social communication, Organize a twitter chat by creating a hashtag e.g #Jess’sblogsaregreat and  ask supporters to share photos or videos, create competitions to engage followers and finally treat your social networkers like V.I.P’s.

Creating a personal connection with your followers is very important, In a small charity it could be difficult to find the time for someone to pay attention to social media sites, but it is extremely important that if you have a social media site it should be checked, updated and followers replied to and thanked regularly.

I personally have experienced a fantastic example of a charity thanking me after raising money and awareness for them; During Sixth my friends and I organised a cake sale where all the profit would go to Parkinson’s UK. After the event we tweeted ‘@ParkinsonsUK’ with a picture of us in the process of raising the money and how much we had raised, shortly after we had a reply from @ParkinsonsUK thanking us, this made us feel like we had a personal thank you and what we had done for the charity was appreciated and recognised, based on Parkinson’s acknowledgement to us we decided to fundraise for them again.

Therefore, I feel it is really important for smaller charities to pay attention to what is happening on their social media sites and be aware to thank people to show that you are grateful, it creates a closer relationship with people who are interested in your charity and people are more likely to help again.

Another reason social media is fantastic for smaller charities is because everything on Twitter and Facebook can be shared, so it can be spread around the internet so more people can gain access to it. So the more times people share it, the more well-known your charity will become. Therefore it’s a good way for smaller charities to raise awareness of their cause.

So why not take up this incredible opportunity by creating a website for your Charity or business or even publicise it better on social media, when 2,405,518,376 are browsing the internet. It could become the most viewed webpage on the internet!