The Virgin London Marathon is this weekend and the air of pre-race calm is almost palpable. Runners who have trained months for this event are now, having completed their longest run of the training season, resting up for the big day. But this is also the last chance runners have to raise funds for their chosen charity. After all, over three quarters of the 37,000+ participants run for charity, making fundraising fever an almost universal theme at the event. Sometimes it seems like the marathon is more like just a charity drive, with a little bit of running, rather than the other way around.

Of course, this is all easy for me to say – I’m not actually running the thing. But I’ll be cheering the runners on from the virtual sidelines at my home in Wiltshire (let’s hope there’s a southerly breeze that day to carry my good vibes to London).

I’m an occasional runner and total wannabe marathoner. I’ve been reading running blogs for years, largely from runners who write about their training towards a certain goal, be it a marathon or a 5k.

Their blog posts on training, food, and funny words like “fartlek” carry a weighty sense of aspiration and determination that inspires me. And for the runner, the advent of blogging has transformed a once solitary activity into a social outlet. You could almost argue that blogging is the ultimate run log, while Twitter and Facebook offer a sounding board for those spontaneous bursts of victory (or disappointment).

So, on top of my usual blog-fawning, I’ve been tracking the London Marathon buzz using our own tools. It would seem that for all the noise about training, food and fartlek, there’s one noice that rises above all the rest: fundraising.

Twitter: Charity People

Our Skyttle Realtime Twitter Analytics tool showed how charities more than anything else are driving discussion. Over the last few days, the top organisations mentioned in tweets include Breast Cancer Care and Prostate Cancer Charity. Meanwhile, the top retweets came from the Alzheimer’s Society.

Ok, so it’s no surprise that people are using tools like Twitter to promote their given charity, but this isn’t exactly clever. No amount of tweeting or funny costumes will guarantee you hit your fundraising goals. Instead, it’s all about using stories to appeal to people’s “human interests”, at least according to Peter Gliheany, director of Forster:

The key these days is to make sure you extend the reach of these stories through social media and give people a chance to immerse themselves in the preparation. This is likely to help increase fundraising, which is what it is all about.

I’ve found a few people who’ve been making great use of social media to weave these stories and build awareness (and bank accounts) of their chosen charities.

Involving Sponsors at Race Time

Eamonn Costello is tweeting split times, and live map position during the race so people who sponsored me can feel involved on the day.

Using Humour To Attract Sponsors

Phil Wilson of Follow Phll to London is running the marathon for Breakthrough Breast Cancer. Phil’s blog is a great example of what lots of runners are doing to raise awareness: documenting his training process and giving readers lots of opportunity to donate through sidebar widgets and promos in choice posts.

But Phil isn’t just asking for money, he’s giving his readers a little something extra:

Put me through more pain during the London Marathon for charity with dreadful songs! Email me a song title with the artist. Be kind or darn right horrid! Come on! Get tough! The Birdie song? Anything by Demis Roussos? Tigerfeet on a loop for an hour?(But that will cost at least £75) Send a donation of at least £5 per song per play or more to my Virgin Money Giving account below. (Enter song title as the donor with your first name) and I will add it to my MP3 play list for the London Marathon! How much more pain could I possibly suffer? PS. “Single length” only. Both sides of Dark Side of the Moon would be £71:66!!!!!!! So there.

So far, Phil will be suffering through “Run Rabbit Run” by Harry Bidgood, “Puppy Love” by Donny Osmond and “Making Your Mind Up” by Bucks Fizz, to name a few. I asked Phil if it was working for him on Twitter:

“Totally. Keeping it funny has helped and the more pain I suffer the better the interest! Well… That’s human nature.”

Getting Creative with Online Video

Ben is a 33 year-old teacher who will be dancing the London Marathon as part of his Free To Dance campaign to raise money for his charity LearnBurma. If there was one thing that made me smile the most in researching this blog post, it was definitely his promo video:

Are you running the London Marathon this weekend? Know anyone else who’s doing neat stuff with social media to help them train, interact and/or promote their chosen charity? Let us know in the comments!