Using social media for campaigning

Welcome to this session on using new media for campaigning As we’ve said in the brochure This is an introductory session on some of the tools that you can use So if you are an experienced online campaigner then we might be covering old ground – feel free to go to another session
To introduce myself I am Louise Brown ICT Development Officer at NCVO My role is to support NCVO members to use technology more effectively Through a variety of funded projects, events, resources and one-to-one support Speaking with me is Gary Copitch Chief Executive of People’s Voice Media An organisation that connects communities through the use of digital communication tools to support civil society and improved governance Gary will tell you more about People’s Voice Media a bit later
So what are we going to be covering today? I am going to spend some time talking about how you can use new media tools in every area of your campaigning, picking out some specific tools such as blogging, twitter and Facebook Gary is going to talk to you about his experiences at People’s Voice Media Giving communities a voice using new media We will also have time at the end to discuss your campaigns, ask questions and share experiences
Before we get going I want to give you a chance to find out about the people in the room Talk to someone near you that you don’t know and: BRIEFLY Introduce yourself What does your organisation do? Most importantly what is your latest campaign? (if you’re not working on anything now, what has been your most recent campaign?) TIMINGS 5 MINUTES Will be timing so make sure you cover both of your introductions
So, why are we even bothering talking about new media? Why is it something we should be building into our work? Going to startle you with statistics Want to make the point that this kind of thing isn’t going anywhere, in fact it’s growing RUN THROUGH STATISTICS These figures are enormous And you will only be reaching a tiny % of those with your traditional campaigning methods – opening up new audiences to you New media tools are also making your decision makers and influencers more accessible, Which we will cover later in the session
But what is this thing called new media? There are lots of different terms you may have heard: new media, social media, social networking, user generated content They all have their nuanced differences but essentially they describe the same concept It can be easy to be overwhelmed by the millions of new media tools that are out there But you just need to remember one thing…
New media is not really about the tools, it’s about they can do And a change in behaviour from internet users It is a movement away from the traditional broadcast function of the old, static website Where information used to be placed on it for people to come to and read To something that is centred around the user It’s about what content the user can create, the connections the user can make and what is relevant to them
HOW ARE PEOPLE USING NEW MEDIA TOOLS? LISTENING/ RESEARCHING – what are people saying? What are people saying? Finding reviews of products CREATING Making film, content, audio, comments, reviews And putting it online SHARING – what are you up to? Videos/ Photos/ stories REPORTING – what is happening in your area? Reporting events What is happening in your area? CONNECTING I think there are broadly 3 different types of connections that people make online (1) Friends (2) colleagues (3) around an interest
So why is all of this relevant to our campaigning? Dialogue Reach, quickly Access Share Expertise
BUT … ** New media is NOT a campaign ** Online campaigning is most effective when used alongside traditional offline methods Not a way to save money Offline and online fuel each other Provide content for each other BUT give opportunity for people to do more
When running any campaign you should try and follow a process We call that the campaign cycle Starts with an analysis of the issue – knowing the external factors, their impact and how you can change them Developing the strategy of your campaign and planning how you’re going to carry it out The exciting part of delivering your campaign And then monitoring it’s progress, evaluating it and feeding all of that bag in to improving your campaign
We are not going to be covering the theory of campaigning here today But there are lots of resources out there to help you The Good Campaigns Guide is in the process of being revised Hoping that it will come out at the very beginning of next year There is also a campaigning conference happening in January
Back to the new media, the first thing you are going to want to do is Analysing your issue and routes of influence Some of the elements of this are: Understand the issue Know how to use your evidence base to establish your campaign Develop your research and policy Examine external factors Identifying routes of influence
KNOWING WHAT THE WEB IS “SAYING” Keep up to date with what people are saying on websites, blogs and other online Track talk about your organisation or your campaign issue Changing role of campaigning Campaigns no longer sit within organisations Can help you find individuals and connect/ support them
STAYING ON TOP OF THE NEWS RSS pushes information to you Spot the orange symbol Save time by not having to browse sites There are political websites, news websites, organisational websites all with RSS feeds
To read RSS you need a reader account, such as GOOGLE READER (can also be within browser) This is mine New information is in bold I can save or share Keeps me up to date
Dialogue analysis can be expensive but there are some free tools … Wordle of Building the Big Society document Takes any piece of text and represents it visually Useful in picking out key words or buzz words
They Work for You looks at what people are saying in parliament and devolved government assemblies You can search for what a specific MP is saying or set up a search to see what people mention a keyword If you create an RSS feed of your search you can feed it in to your Google Reader account and get updates automatically You can also get these updates sent to you as an email
As part of your planning you need to think about who you need to influence and how to reach them New media is making it easier to reach people with your campaign These are new media profiles for local and national politicians in Wales
Planning and delivering your campaigns Gary’s session will cover in more depth capturing information and stories, What I am going to talk about it the way you get that information out there
Before you start you should ask yourself some key questions: What do you want to say? – what is the message or information that you are trying to get out? Who are you trying to reach? – kno wing who your audience will help you to decide which tools to spend time on Where do they go online? – if y our campaign is targeting teenagers then there’s no point going on Twitter as they’re not the key demographic Start small and work u p – don’t feel like you have to be on every new media platform Pick the right people internally to manage it – having someone who is enthusiastic about using these tools will make your campaign more successful than if you just ask the person who normally manages your communications
The point about knowing where people go online is a key one I think This Americanised graphic services to illustrate the point that different new media tools have different user profiles Typically older teenagers, graduates and 20/30s use Facebook Small children use Bebo People aged 35-55 are more present on Twitter So focus your time and resources on the sites where your audience goes
Some issues you might come up against: Knowing what to say/ what people want to hear – people coming to new media for the first time can find it difficult to know what to say The key is to be authentic. To interact with others and be a real person, not a PR machine Reacting to negative comments – it can be tempting to ignore negative comments but it’s more powerful to confront them with a solid argument and encouraging your supporters to respond Personal vs Professional – it’s a valid concern for people not to want to use their personal profiles for work related campaigns – although a valid concern, personal profiles show how passionate you are about the campaign. Talk it through as an organisation Protecting your brand – some organisations a re all about the brand. Keeping control New media is very much about letting go and trusting your staff and supporters to behave appropriately As an organisation draw up some guidelines for how people use new media tools Online safety – if your online interactions involve young people then you should talk as an organisation about how you would deal with online safety, as you would with face to face work. Develop a policy that sets out the clear dos and don’ts. Will you “friend” young people? What is your responsibility over material that is posted via your networks?
The first major tool we’re going to talk about is Facebook How many of you have a personal Facebook account? How many of you have an organisational presence on Facebook?
Why should campaigners be bothering with Facebook? You can easily tap into existing – and trusted – networks of people About 350 million active users Its really easy for people to share information on Facebook – sending links to your cause to your friends About 3.5bn pieces of info are shared every week You can mobilise your supporters to take action; either a real life action or something they can do virtually
PAGES vs GROUPS There are different ways for an organisation or campaign to have a presence on Facebook Pages are public spaces where people can show support by “liking” (can have more than 5,000 friends) – Groups are more like mini networking spaces and can be good for mobilising a campaign Administration: Pages don’t have a personal identity, groups do URLs: Pages can have customisable URLs Members: Groups can moderate members, can’t moderate who likes your page Privacy: Pages are public and less personal, groups can be private if necessary and moderate Email: You can’t send emails to members of a page, but you can send an update. Groups can send emails No reason why you can have both But think about what you want to achieve first
Making Facebook work for you Don’t rely on it to run your campaign Promote your Facebook presence through your emails, other communications and offline M ake use of the in build tools – like twitter feeds or rss feeds Engage your friends and colleagues and encourage them to promote to their friends and colleagues
Increasing your Facebook fans: Promote , promote, promote: email signature, newsletters, Twitter, print Bring people from outside FB: widget on your website or blog, host video, badge Create an arrival tab: personalise your page Tagging: get people to tag you in their posts or donate a photo
Our next tool is Twitter How many people here have a personal Twitter account? How many of your organisations have a Twitter account?
Twitter is a really good tool for: Reaching out and engage with people interested in your issue Tak ing part in debates around your issue – therefore raising y our profile Promote your campaign – really easy for people to share links to information and actions Find out views about your issue – either by directly asking the question or searching for what people are saying
So what is this thing called Twitter? Microblogging site Tweets are a maximum 140 characters Because space is a premium there is a lot of use of short links like tiny url or bit.ly You follow people to hear what they saying and people follow you to hear what you are saying (not necessarily the same) You have a profile picture Which can be customised with a twibbon to show support for a campaign You can also change your profile pic totally like this one for amnesty You can use a hashtag to identify what you’re talking about You can also search for hashtags to see what people are saying (#bigsociety #questiontime) Retweeting is someone re posting something you’ve said Trending topics are the most popular words being tweeted about at that moment Getting your campaign into the trending topics can give it a real boost
What’s the best way to use twitter? Start by following the people and organisations that you know , or know of You will quickly see who they are talking to and find new people to follow Don’t be afraid of being personal in what you say. Knowing that there is a human at the end of an account makes it more interesting to follow If you have stories for your campaign then make use of them. Post links to videos or case studies and encourage others to share them. Interact with your followers Once people know you are on twitter they will want to talk to you There is nothing worse than an account that just broadcasts information without any answering of questions or comments
You can search for people, tweets or hashtags that are relevant to your campaign by searching for them If you’ve got the hang of your RSS feeds you can set it up so that all new search results go into your Google Reader I have key word searches set up for NCVO, #bigsociety #StokeKnittington When you find these people, follow them and talk to them There are features within lots of websites, facebook and blogs that allow you to feature your twitter feed Create easy to share shortlinks – register with bit.ly and customise Promote your twitter account everywhere; newsletters, email signatures, events and publications
One example of a organisation using twitter well – Dogs Trust Professional background Personal tweets Follow key words and respond Answer questions as well as broadcast Pictures of cute dogs do help
Our final tool is blogging An online space for people to talk about what matters to them Increasingly being used as a simple way for people, organisations, communities and campaigns to have a web presence
Blogging can be a really useful campaign tool It can help to build a relationship with your supporters Gives people an inside view of the campaign and updates on progress Most blogging websites – Wordpress – allow you to pull together all of your new media content from around the web as well as all of that they are: Easy for searches to find Easy to set up Easy to share content
To introduce myself I am Louise Brown ICT Development Officer at NCVO My role is to support NCVO members to use technology more effectively Through a variety of funded projects, events, resources and one-to-one projects Speaking with me is Gary Copitch Chief Executive of People’s Voice Media An organisation that connects communities through the use of digital communication tools to support civil society and improved governance
Now that you’ve heard all of this How do you think you might use new media tools as part of your campianging? Its up to you whether you talk to the same person as earlier or someone else If it’s someone else don’t forget to tell them who you are and what your organisation does 5 minutes
ave you any questions?

Using social media for campaigning

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