Just wanted to let you know about a free eseminar we are running next Thursday that could be right up your street. It’s a collaboration between NCVO’s Campaigning Effectiveness and Foresight teams. We will be exploring what are the emerging trends in campaigning such as the role of co-creation and leaderless campaigning.  We also hope to draw out some of the  implications that these change could mean for campaigning in five years time to help future planning.

We’d love as many people as possible to join in and contribute your own thoughts and experiences to the debate. Each session has a short video from our guest speakers to get the initial discussions going and they will be online to answer questions you may have. It’s all free and you can take part from the relative comfort of your own office.

All you need to do is join the Forum for Change website http://www.forumforchange.org.uk (free, just a few info details required)

and join the e-seminar group http://www.forumforchange.org.uk/group/eseminarcampaigningfutures

2.45 – 3 pm Hellos and introductions

3 – 4 pm The role of co-creation in online campaigning

Amy Sample Ward, Global Community Development Manager for NetSquared, who will guide us through:

• What co-creation means, and why it’s important
• What’s changing online for you and your supporters
• Threats and opportunities for co-created campaigns

Amy Sample Ward’s video is already up there so do have a watch here

4 – 5pm  e-campaigning in a leaderless world

Liam Barrington-Bush, Co-founder and Director of Concrete Solutions C. I. C, who will be online to talk about:
• Why Twitter is serious campaigning tool
• Why traditional organisations need to think about new ways of working online
• How to 'plan' a ‘leaderless’ campaigning strategy

Dan Glass, activist for Plane Stupid and So We Stand, and 2008 winner of the Sheila McKechnie Award for transport campaigning will also be on hand from 3-5pm to answer your questions on leaderless activism.

Has anyone else spotted this article on Beatbullying's virtual march? http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/News/MostDiscussed/1028782/Beatbullying-organises-Big-March/

 Innovative way of capturing the imagination of the public and campaign targets? Just a revamp of an old tactic? Tapping into 'slackertivism' and turning it to your advantage? Or too much time on their hands? Or none of the above? Would love to know what do you think. 

I still remember my history tutor at uni telling us it wasn't for our typically bad weather we could have had revolution in the UK in 1848 like pretty much the rest of Europe. Now we get to stay in the comfort of our own homes and protest on parliament could it all be very different.......

Best of luck, be very interesting to see what the impact is. Although a bit of a shame they haven't set any targets to help measure success, there I had to say it!  

Hannah Lownsbrough, Campaigns Director at 38 Degrees, recently spoke at  NCVO’s Certificate in Campaigning and she’s very kindly shared her advice for e-campaigning with us here:  

Online vs Offline? 

It’s not a case of choosing between the two. The best campaigns will try to make the best use of all the tactics available to them. Usually that’s a mixture of both online and offline.  

What’s online campaigning good for?

Creating a dialogue - with your supporters, members, campaigners, etc. Finding out and taking on board views gives you a mandate to act and creates huge opportunities for your campaigning.

Speed – email and social media allows you to contact your members quickly and cheaply, enabling you to respond to and make the most of opportunities as they arise.

Equality of access – the internet makes campaigning easily accessible to more people. It can't take the place of offline campaigning, which is why its important to make sure that people can engage in a variety of different ways, but it can help to get new people involved with your work.

Sharing good, exciting experiences of activism – builds a sense of community and being part of the political and the media debate, as it happens.

Crowd sourcing solutions – using your online supporters to help with campaigns, from coming up with technical ideas to developing copy or artwork for billboard campaigns or leaflets. For instance, we've been asking our members to post responses from their MPs on our blog, so that others could check if their MP had already replied. It also enabled people to make suggestions about the best way to respond to MPs, especially those who didn't agree with the campaign: http://blog.38degrees.org.uk/2010/07/27/save-the-bbc-what-did-your-mp-say/

Tips for…

Making your campaign work

·         Have a clear goal – as with all campaigning you should have a clear goal and means of achieving this. Don’t lose sight of it – it can be easy to get distracted by all the possibilities of online actions.

·         Be flexible – on both timings and delivery. Often, if the issue is in the news, or there's a big political debate about it, response rates will go up.

·         Be responsive - be ready to drop everything for the right opportunity.

·         Horizon scanning – regularly checking what’s coming up – in Parliament, internationally, the media, etc.Be prepared for events when you can be.

·         Talk to your members – what issues affect them? What do they want to take action on? What are compelling messages to turn awareness into action? Poll your members on their opinions

·         Have good back-up: make sure you can get advice on tricky issues quickly so you aren't held-up

·         Work collaboratively – don’t split online and offline.

Your actions – rules to remember

·         Limit distractions – stick to one ask per email with a clean design.

·         Aim for authenticity – responding to external events can often work better than set pieces.

·         Spend time thinking about how to frame your calls to action so they are engaging and relevant. Our campaign with a number of other groups (including Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace) to secure an amendment to the 2010 Energy Bill addressed an issue that wasn't immediately accessible, but we tried to frame it clearly and with a sense of urgency, so the call to action was clear: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/speakout/EnergyBill2010

Recruiting supporters

·         Think about the 'user' journey – action one step at a time rather than lots of choices that may overwhelm people.

·         Go to where people already gather (facebook, twitter), when they have time to respond. Test, if you can, to find out when your list is most likely to take action.

·         Ask your current supporters to recruit – have a presence on your website, facebook page, blog and twitter. These places can also be a good place to start conversations about issues, which increases people's interest and keenness to take action.

·         Paid-for online advertising (like on Facebook or Google) can be a relatively cheap and straight-forward way to increase involvement. It's also a good way to target specific groups, such as those who are already interested in your cause, or who live in particular parts of the country (or the world).

Thanks Hannah

 

Make your own film…

The allure to create a great campaign film that will inspire your supporters into immediate action is a major draw, but not always a realistic one.  As film can be a creative or documentary medium (and often some combination of the two), campaigners must be clear about the aims they are hoping for their online video to have:
Do you want to (primarily) inform, or inspire your viewers to action?  Who is your audience? Are you trying to motivate existing supporters or break through to a new group? 
Making your own inspirational film is a much harder aim to achieve and often requires dedicated professional input, which unless you are getting pro bono tends to be very expensive, by most campaign standards. I spotted in last week’s Third Sector that students from the University of Westminster who have taken a course on how to make campaigning and fundraising films for charities and voluntary groups are offering to make free videos for charities in their spare time this summer to gain experience. So if you have limited time and resources then it’s well worth finding out more.

Vox pops
Creating basic ‘vox pops’, or interviews with people, sharing their opinions on, or endorsing a campaign is probably one of the easiest ways to start. It can be done and shared easily and can be a good alternative to a text-based webpage. It’s recommend by advertising experts to try to reach your audience in at least three different ways and common sense that people have multiple motivations, so try to use different forms of communications and mechanisms to reach people with the same message. Films from a flip camera or mobile phone can easily be taken and posted up on a website in minutes. 

Don’t let the lack of budget stop you
One of the most inspiring examples I’ve seen of campaigners who have just given it a go is the local group of residents behind the Campaign to save Morden Park. As a small local group the campaigners they didn’t have vast resources but created a low budget but incredibly hard hitting film to raise awareness of the issue highlighting the impact of that will be felt by the community on a simple flip camera. 
watch the film (on YouTube) 
Jackie Schneider, from the campaign shared advice with us on how film can help support your campaigning
It is easier to persuade someone of your case if they can see graphically what it involves
It makes it easier to spread the campaign
It helped to re-invigorated supporters. Many of them were so taken by the images in the film that they doubled their efforts in campaigning terms!
Overcoming any challenges 
There were some issues such as the weather - the lack of daylight were challenging to overcome but we rounded up lots of our supporters to film at different times over the weekend so we ended up with enough footage. 
We didn't really need to do any sophisticated editing and could utilise youtube to post the film and send the weblink to supporters and it was non speaking so we didn't have to worry about sound levels.
Don't be scared by the technology. If we can do it anyone can!

Some examples to inspire 
Amnesty Belgium Wake Up Humans! film is one of the most interesting campaign films I’ve seen. It’s a brilliant example of how to bring an issue alive to people in the context of their everyday lives who would often take human rights for granted. Through a series of 'experiments' Amnesty Belgium tired to engage ordinary citizens to awake the defender of human rights in them. Text messages, internet, posters and direct mail are used to inform people that their rights were in danger.  Watch the video here http://www.protectthehuman.com/videos/wake-up-humans

The Woodland Trust have been very successful in making imaginative and amusing videos for relatively low cost to raise awareness for their campaign to conserve and restore plantations on ancient woodland sites. http://www.youtube.com/user/woodlandtrust 

Greenpeace’s film highlighting the consequences of the use of palm oil from Indonesian rainforests, very successfully mimics the feel of a KitKat advert till it reveals the very hard-hitting consequences for Orangutans.  http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/climate-change/kitkat/ 

What's the future?.....
This interesting piece by Rob Salmon from Torchbox shares examples on how campaigners are using live broadcasting and ponders on the future for anyone to broadcast from anywhere… http://www.fairsay.com/tools/campaigning-insights/unleashing-the-power-of-live-broadcasting

Some links
Making the most of video for human rights: some practical tips – Fairsay   

Witness have loads of resources on their website including
How to Create Videos for Change
Tips and techniques
Best practice informed consent
Video for Change – a guide to advocacy and activism – you can download parts of the book

BBC filmmaking guide
Media Trust Film Makers guides

 

 

"If a film changes enough minds. those minds can change the world."
Brian Woods, Award winning documentary filmmaker

Using film 

We all know the potential power of strong campaign visuals to inspire and motivate, sparking anger at injustice. The potential to turn that anger into meaningful action is campaign gold and the kind of thing we all hope to be able to attach to our own causes. 
Here we cover some ways in which campaigners are using film in their work to inspire others to action, by linking up with filmmakers, holding screenings of social action documentaries, which have clear calls to action and doing it yourself making films from scratch.   

Linking up with film makers 
The End of the Line example

Last year’s documentary film the End of the Line, highlighting the case for responsibly fishing of the oceans, achieved success beyond the box office.
The film had three simple messages: Ask before you buy, tell the politicians and join the campaign.   

7000 people saw the film in the cinemas when it launched on World Oceans Day 8th June 2009 yet it was estimated around 500,000 were actively discussing the film on blogs, forums, newspapers, videos... showing the spread of the message and campaign above the film.
But it wasn’t all awareness raising there was campaign success as well. 
The Pret a Manger chief exec Julian Metcalfe told the film’s producers: “Much as a result of your film, we took tuna out of Pret sushi entirely. No tuna in the box at all . . . so more in the sea, where they belong.”
M&S then changed their policies also; Marks and Spencer is one of the country’s largest retailers of sandwiches and the shift is likely to place pressure on other retailers to make the change.
A Spokesman said: “As all of our food is own-brand, it means there will be absolutely no products in our stores that use tuna which isn’t pole and line caught.”

Also a string of celebrity chefs also imposed a ban on bluefin tuna at their restaurants. One said   ‘Using Clover’s superb research and some stunning cinematography, the film brings home the point, perhaps with even greater impact than the book, that we cannot continue fishing in the way we do. It is simply unsustainable – so much so that some scientists predict a total collapse of pretty much all our fish stocks within the next 40 years. ‘I can’t call The End Of The Line easy viewing – I found it shocking, in fact – but it is compelling, and essential for anyone who cares about the state of our oceans. The good news is that the film is not merely a tolling bell. Clover offers genuine, practical solutions which could turn the tide.’ Tom Aikens

The film was heavily supported, and part funded by WWF, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and other foundations and has now been screened on television and numerous local campaigning groups, halls, schools, universities, and that is only in the UK. Ahead of a vote on whether the EU will back a trade ban on bluefin tuna the film was send to all European Commissioners asking them to watch and reflect on the film. The campaign continues… for more http://endoftheline.com/newsroom/

Holding your own screenings just got easier 

The Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation, Brit Doc  is an independent funding organisation that provides grants to documentary film makers working to bring around social change. Over the past few years they have been thinking about social impact of the stories they are involved with and have recently launched a new initiative Good Screenings which allows anybody to buy a license to screen a feature documentary from their catalogue. 

All documentaries are about social change and contain clear calls to actions and unlike other distributors they are actively promoting the use of these films for fundraising and campaigning. Films they have currently include Moving to Mars, The Age of Stupid, McLibel, the End of the Line. 

Anyone can buy a license to screen their selection of films and the license is calculated according to who you are, where you screen and how many people you're screening to, and you get to the profits for yourself or your organisation, campaign or cause. 
So do take a look at some of the best social action documentaries, which have clear calls to action here www.goodscreenings.org

They are just writing up a guide on how to hold a successful and engaging screening so watch this space.

Share your experiences  

Britdoc are looking to hear from organisations who are using film as part of their campaigning. They’d love to hear from campaigners, communications managers and funding organisations about the ways in which they are using film and the strategies behind it.

You may not have thought about using feature films as part of your campaign work, but if you would like to know the best routes to action, either way please get in touch with Sarah Moses at sarahm@britdoc.org 

Don’t forget theatre

Having seen the excellent and moving play Ruined last week, that explores and really brings home the impact of the conflict in Democratic Republic of Congo on women, I couldn’t not mention theatre here too. 

The play ran at the Almeida theatre in partnership with Amnesty International UK and supported by Congo Now a coalition of NGOs, members of the Congolese community and UK parliamentarians who are seeking to raise the profile of the DRC in the UK by campaigning in creative and thought-provoking way. Collaborations such as this provides another way to foster collaboration and to bring home the impact of your issue.   

Part two do it yourself – making films….. coming soon

The other week Patrick Olszowski, Senior Campaigns and Policy Officer at Mencap came to speak about ecampaigning to participants on NCVO’s Certificate in Campaigning he was fantastic and very kindly offered us his 10 top tips on e-campaigning and here they are…..  

1) What wins campaigns online is not technology but power, applied at the correct time, against the correct target, by the correct (and sometimes  incorrect) people.  Offline it is no different.
2) Campaigning is like judo - where possible try and use an opponent's own body weight against themselves - Greenpeace Green my Apple campaign is a good example (which used Apple's own branding on a spoof website to persuade Apple to stop using toxic chemicals in theircomputers)

  

3)At the heart of ecampaigning is story telling.  If you have the swankiest website and poorest story, you will never change anything Ideas are dangerous and that is why these are always your main arsenal. So before you even start thinking about technology, think

Message, Audience, Timescale, (Is this the correct) Tactic, (Is it)engaging, Recycle (use other ideas you already like), AnalySe (evaluate and split test all your work)  

4) If you don't buy your own Theory of change, then others won't either - you need a compelling narrative about how taking action now will lead to real world change - http://www.grantcraft.org/index.cfm?pageId=808
5) You need to use ecampaigning in an intelligent way to both persuade bosses and to win campaigns - winning the internal battle can sometimes be the hardest thing.
6) Know what you are getting into - Greenpeace's excellent campaign on rainforest deforestation vs Nestle is an example of a campaign against a corporate which shows how poorly used ecampaigning can be a real damage to your brand - http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/climate-change/kitkat/ 

7) Think about how you can use maps, pictures or audio to tell a story - not just text.  www.standupfortinylives.org/map/ or http://www.mencap.org.uk/page.asp?id=14849 
8) With a compelling ask and a tight deadline you can raise lots of money - along the lines of this Open Rights Group and 38 Degrees action which raised £25k in three days to fund adverts against the Digital Economy Act -

  
9) Great online campaigning can come from members of the public as well as professionals campaigners - http://www.mencap.org.uk/news.asp?id=13834 - and can marry online and real world campaigning.
10) To move forward think of your story, analyse where power lies, persuade your internal stakeholders and then and only then ecampaign!

Big big thank you to Patrick, if you have any other tips or if people want to elaborate on these please do.

 

I just wanted to highlight how Twitter can be used on your Louder campaign page as it’s really rather fancy. As well as having a live feed of your twitter account and a follow us button you can also add another twitter feed showing results of a live search – that can be key word, hashtag or account. With a very short set up both tools lets you have constantly updated content relating to your campaign without you having to  anything else.

Have a look at it in action here http://www.louder.org.uk/haworthaction/

 

You only have to look at how Twitter users embraced the it’s all Nick Clegg’s fault hashtag  #nickcleggsfault  to see how Twitter can be used, imaginatively and speedily, by tweeters to create a voice for themselves. By using humour tweeters responded to and highlighted the ridiculous in the right wing media coverage attacking the Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg. More on this...

Twitter is growing at gigantic rate, experiencing 1,500% growth in the last year (for more stats see The State and Future of Twitter 2010). For those who are not converts it does seem to be the latest in a line of social media tools that everyone thinks you should be using.

But what is in it for campaigners trying to bring about social change? Below sets out three main ways in which campaigners have already been using Twitter in their work to get you thinking and there are also three great examples to illustrate. Please add any experiences or thoughts of your own.

1. To find things…… people, info, intelligence that you probably otherwise would not be able to find or afford to pay for

One of the great things about twitter is how it can be utilised to find people, advice, and insider knowledge that many of us would otherwise not be able to access or afford to pay for. You could use it to find people in your local area interested in your issue or with a specific skill, or tap into feelings of discontent with a certain topical issue, contacting potential new supporters directly.  

Children’s Food Campaign, Coco Pops and Twitter
Children's Food Campaign is part of Sustain an alliance for better food and farming, they campaign on a range of issues to enhance the health and welfare of people and animals. In a recent campaign the Children's Food Campaign tapped into widespread anger felt by lots of parents to an advert by ” by Kellogg’s (a partner in the governments Change4 Life health campaign) for Cocopops which suggested to children “Ever thought of Coco Pops after school. Cocopops are deemed too unhealthy to be advertised on children’s TV and banned from school and the poster featured the Coco Pop monkey in a school uniform.

Children's Food Campaign utilised the power of twitter and search there to find people talking about the issue and contact them directly with details on the campaign and direct them to a campaign action. They found twitter particularly helpful in reaching out to a new group of potential supporters. As well as encouraging supporters to write directly to Kellogg’s Sustain also ran a fun and inventive competition for supporters to get involved and compose their own slogan for the advert. See http://www.sustainweb.org/childrensfoodcampaign/coco_pops/

Campaign Co-coordinator Jackie Schneider says
“As soon as the bus stop adverts appeared several of our supporters contacted us to complain so we knew the ads were not popular. I looked on twitter and searched the term coco pops ads and found lots of tweets from people who had passed the ads that day and wanted to comment on their inappropriateness. It was easy to follow those people and send them a message about our coco pops slogan campaign. We found that one concerned individual had already tweeted the address of Kellogg's CSR person.

Using twitter allowed us to find people who were concerned about the same issues we were so we could alert them to our work. Many of them signed up to The Children's Food Campaign as a result and went on to tweet links to us.

My advice would be to act fast. Twitter is a very immediate medium and things move on quickly. We were able to show the tweets to a journalists to persuade him it wasn't just us complaining. This led to a piece in a national newspaper.’

For the possibilities of this see the Campaign for Better Food example down the page.”

2. To act as an intermediary platform to find supporters and guide people to take action

As with all social media tools Twitter does pose some of the same limitations around converting awareness of an issue into action. But it seems that the way Twitter is used by its members, to send links to webpages, news stories or pictures, does make it much more conducive to linking to ‘offsite’ actions than most other social media platforms. 

Campaigners are already using twitter as an intermediary, to guide people who have shown an interest in your work, towards the ‘next step’ of involvement in your campaign. You can easily link Tweets to e-petitions, letter-writing actions and online surveys, with greater uptake than you would likely get from posting outside actions to a Facebook group, or a blog, as that is how people more people use twitter.

64 for Suu.org

Rapidly responding to the imprisonment and trial of Aung San Suu Kyi for 'breaking the terms of her illegal house arrest’ a campaigning coalition, consisting of amongst others Avaaz, Amnesty International and Burma Campaigning UK came together.

64 for Suu aimed to raise awareness of her situation and gather messages of support for Aung San Suu Kyi, ahead of her 64^th birthday. Within six days they managed to pull together a campaign website which successfully integrated social media platforms,  allowing it to display all the messages of support on the site. For more learning on the how they did this see FairSay’s write up here.

Utilising social media allowed the campaign to reach a wide audience of potential supporters in a very short space of time. In just a few weeks they had gathered over 18,000 messages of support – videos, tweets, photos or texts.

 

On twitter the organisations in the coalition used the hashtags #64forsuu and #assk64 with their campaign messages. Grouping messages of support with a hashtag allowed any shows of support could be captured and appear on the 64 for Suu.org website automatically without people ever having to visit it and upload it themselves.  This can easily be done through a Twitterfall http://www.twitterfall.com/ which streams tweets directly to you.

For more on the campaign see http://64forsuu.org/ or to see the tweets  http://twitter.com/64forsuu

3. As a platform for leaderless campaigning

One of the largest implications for campaigners is that Twitter can provide a ‘leaderless’ platform for ideas and messages to develop collaboratively amongst mass numbers of people, without formal coordination or leadership.  Popular key words and phrases (or ‘hashtags’) allow millions of people to connect, based on their views on a current event or issue.  One powerful example of this is the Trafigura ‘campaign’, in which public outrage, channelled through Twitter, led to the over-turning of the first gag order of public reporting of Parliament in 400 years, 12 hours after it happened.  What it demonstrates is the potential for groups, via the internet, to achieve change on their own, without a traditional organisation to coordinate strategy or actions. 

Trafigura example

At 8:30pm, on Monday, October 12^th, 2009, PR firm, Carter-Ruck secured the first gag order against the reporting of Parliament in 400 years, against the Guardian newspaper and a tabled Parliamentary Question about their client, oil trading firm Trafigura.  The firm was under investigation for the alleged dumping of toxic waste, in the Ivory Coast, leading to a range of health problems for local residents.  As a British company, Parliament was looking at the validity of these allegations and if legal action would be required.

That same evening, news of the gag order had reached the internet – initially via Twitter – but soon boiling over into blog posts, news stories and spontaneous, protest actions, initiated by members of the many-thousands’ strong self-organised online community.

By the morning of the 13^th, two of the country’s leading political blogs, and print magazine, Private Eye, had published the full-text of the gagged Parliamentary Question, as well as a wealth of background reporting on Trafigura’s practices in the Ivory Coast.  Before 2:00pm, on the 13^th, Carter-Ruck had withdrawn the so-called ‘super-injunction’, under public and Parliamentary pressure, generated largely through the internet.

It’d be really interesting to hear how campaign organisations are thinking about and responding to these types of situations and what roles they can and want to play in campaigns that emerge independently of them. Depending on how campaigning organisations position themselves to these developments twitter can be seen as either a major threat or opportunity, key will be how comfortable an organisation feels being ‘part of a movement’, rather than the ‘control centre’ of a campaign. This could involve a shift from previous campaigns, that organisations will need to begin thinking about and experimenting with. It could involve supporting and being involved in a campaign in different ways - whether offering a meeting space for the independent activists involved, making introductions to key decision makers, or helping promote the relevant work of others attached to the cause

Implications for the future of membership…

Closely linked to this issue a joint project the Future of Membership run by NCVO Third Sector Foresight, RSA with a coalition of leading membership organisations have started to look at what the future holds for membership organisations. The project has identified six key drivers that could play a key role over the next five years which are 

• Changing sources of identity
• Changing attitudes to money and consumerism
• Increasing availability of free information
• The rise of the social web
• Changing expectations of participation
• The commodification of membership

For more info on these issues and to assess how your organisation is preparing you can download the free Future Focus pdf What will membership be like in 5 years' time and for more on the project see http://www.3s4.org.uk/drivers/categories/membership

Twitter profiles

Here is a quick summary of some interesting conversations had on the incredibly useful ecampaigning-forum  around multiple organisational staff twitter accounts

There are many ways to coordinate work based twitter accounts

-          an organisational account

-          and or a campaigns team account

-          as well or just staff accounts who tweet in their own names and re-tweet the good ones from the main account where appropriative.

Having both an organisational/official campaigns team account as well as individual staff accounts can help increase the reach of messages,  s well as showing that there is organisational wide support and knowledge of a campaign or issue – which can only really enhance your work. One of the easiest ways to insure that there is a distinction between what is the organisational account and therefore ‘the official line’ and staff accounts is to get staff account to state a disclaimer - that these are my own personal opinions not necessarily those of my organisation. That way staff members are free to tweet about issues and actions themselves, and personalise their messages as they want. Staff accounts can of course also retweet anything important coming from the main organisational account.

To help organise all these twitter accounts and enable other followers to find people you can also group staff accounts in a list like this one from Amnesty

http://twitter.com/AmnestyUK/amnesty-uk

Or help coordinate and link up local groups the same way

http://twitter.com/AmnestyUK/amnesty-groups

Be interesting to hear what else has been working well….

Twitter general summary

Pros

-          Speed of communication

-          ‘Digestible’ format, that encourages broader participation

-          Opportunity for supporter/beneficiary feedback and dialogue

-          Conduit to connect with other campaign platforms

-          Single established platform of its type, thus no concern of an audience split between competing platforms (i.e. – Facebook and LinkdIn and Bebo)

-          Can create a less-centralised, and thus, less-resource intensive model of campaigning to develop

Cons

-          High competition for peoples’ time/attention

-          Individual ‘tweets’ can be  missed by  most recipients

-          Often less effective without understanding of ‘Twitter Etiquette’, especially if used as a broadcast (rather than conversational) medium

-          Message may outgrow your organisation’s campaign objectives, capacity, or remit, taking on a ‘collective life of its own’, which your organisation can no longer ‘control’

-          User-base (though growing incredibly quickly) is still not reflective of the broader population

Want to know more – comprehensive guide from DigiActive.org

Guide to Twitter for Activism http://www.digiactive.org/2009/04/13/twitter_guide/

Getting started..

There’s loads of useful helpers out there here are just a few

http://socialmedia-strategy.wikispaces.com/Sign+up+for+Twitter+and+follow+5+nonprofit+folks

http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2008/05/talk-twitter-to.html

http://www.technicavita.org/social-advice/twitter/what-is-twitter-a-short-guide-for-charity.html

Big thanks goes to Jackie Schneider, Rachel Collinson and the wise words of Liam Barrington-Bush

Email

Though not always considered ‘new technology’, as it is so widely-used (about 1.6 billion global users) e-campaigns often start with email.

As a means of managing your supporters and contacts, or a channel through which those supporters can share your campaign actions and information more widely, email is most often a campaigner’s primary method of communication.

Email lists are crucial. If there is one thing you do build and use email lists to keep track of data on your supporters and target your messages to them. (Think the success of Obama election campaign.)

The difference between a well-managed and a poorly managed list, is often the difference between a successful online action and an unsuccessful one.  Keeping track of who you are communicating with, when you have emailed them, and what they have done for you, are all crucial pieces of a good database.

Collating and managing data for email lists doesn’t have to be complicated, but if can help you better manage the relationship you have with your supporters. Allowing you to monitor what actions people have taken, when and how to thank for their support and identify those who might want a high level of engagement with you and the campaign.

Free event alert - If you want to know more about supporter action the forumforchange have a free afternoon seminar at the end of April on this. Looking at how do you recruit, sustain and empower supporters in order to achieve change? They aim to cover issues around getting to those hard to reach groups and empowering the grassroots as well as trying to tackle the issue of integrated fundraising and campaign asks, there is  more info here http://www.ncvo-vol.org.uk/inspiringaction

Learning shows that to increase the odds of a successful campaign email you should try to

1)      Ensure (when possible) emails are addressed to the individual receiving them, by name (i.e. – Dear David…);

2)      Keep messages brief (about 100-300 words);

3)      Have one ‘ask’ of an action you would like supporters to take (write to MP, sign petition, attend a protest, etc.)  b   

Once a supporter has taken action, try to make sure that they a) receive a ‘thank you’ email or are directed to a webpage, and b) are given a link to share the action with their own contacts (ideally, via email, as well as a range of social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter. This can be done using websites like ‘addthis.com’ and ‘sharethis.com’).

Most importantly make actions meaningful – people will become de-motivated if you invent actions to keep them busy. But if you have many campaign actions as part of your over all strategy don’t be sacred about telling people about them. A  recent study (advocacy online add link) shows that you are very unlikely to bombard supporters with actions, in fact you might not be able to keep up with their appetite.

Communicating – general tips

People have multiple motivations try to use different forms of communications and mechanisms to reach people. There is lots of research out there about on the internet about what motivates and inspires people to action.  But if any one  recommend some here to share please do.

Communications is key - in your messages think about the following

When you identify a problem accompany it with a belief that change is possible

Explain the purpose behind the action, how it will make a difference and how it is linked to the end goal

It can be effective to ‘denounce’ a target in your communications, but it’s more inspiring to motivate people to take action if you also ‘announce’ an alternative.

Thank people for their actions. Celebrate success – even if it is partial.  You could use examples of previous campaigns which have achieved success to motivate.

Be honest – change sometimes happens very slowly, and sometimes very quickly, manage expectations.  

Segment, segment, segment

If you can segment up your mailing list and tailor your communications do. There should be no such thing as the general public. Then think carefully about how to tailor your communications to target the different groups you want to reach.  Alternatively you could provide easy routes into different levels of campaigning with your email messages. With a variety of time dependent campaign actions so  If you have 5 mins do this… if you have 15 mins do a bit more ….

Email summary

Pros

• Still the widest audience, that goes way beyond any single social media site
• Cheap in money terms and does not require access to an external website
• Campaigners can manage contacts directly themselves, rather than through the limitations of what can be shared via websites like Facebook or Twitter
• Easier to track what people have done with your messages (i.e. – Emails opened? Links clicked? Which links?)

Cons

• Mass emails can often get blocked by email spam filters – there are ways around this though most span filters block emails to mass address at around 50 so if you have time send in smaller groups or through a mail merge system where each person gets an individual email
• Some audiences may be less-likely to engage with email, as regularly as they do with social media sites, or may not be on email at all. There is loads of research out there about which certain groups are more likely to use it and respond to it. But don’t make assumptions. There has been lots written on how ‘sliver surfer’ generation has been a generally untapped resource.   

More on e-campaigning try

http://www.helium.com/items/1017711-how-emails-could-be-made-more-effective-in-political-campaigns any others please add them…..

“Campaigning via the Internet (and other communication technologies like mobile phones) is known as e-campaigning. It is not a replacement to traditional forms of campaigning, but an extension. It is speeding up campaigning mobilisations, expanding campaign reach, creating new possibilities for pressing for change and enabling supporters to participate as never before.” – Duane Raymond (FairSay.com), A New Tool for an Old Art

Developments in new media or new technologies offer us more and more opportunities to reach and engage wider audiences and get people involved in influencing and shaping the decisions and activities that affect them. The potential benefits to a campaign are massive but starting out can be scary. Finding the resources in terms of time, money and skills to get to grips with everything can seem quite daunting….where exactly do you start?

But this needn’t be overwhelming, or seen as an add on to your workload; there is a wealth of resources, free online tools and experience out there as well as a community of people doing it well and constantly modifying and trying new things to inspire.

With this series of blogs we wanted to highlight some of this and share resources, tips and insights to help you campaign for change. So the following is based on what we have amassed from all the good examples out there and pulls together  all Liam’s hard work developing and promoting http://www.louder.org.uk/ and the role of new media in campaigning generally, as well as other Campaigning Effectiveness resources.

Over the next few weeks we will be covering a range of new technologies and how they are being utilised by campaigners to achieve change. Please add in any comments, links or resources of your own.