No doubt you, like me, read lots of blogs that have lists of “10 best ways to use social media” or “top Twitter tips” and so on. I’m as guilty of this as anyone.

And you’d think with the enormous number of blogs, resources and top-ten articles out there, no union in Australia would not have at least one social-media maven or guru.

Obviously, and unfortunately, lots of unions are still just getting started with social media or have jumped in and are now not sure what they’ve gotten themselves into.

The problem I see with the scores of unions I come across each week and month is that their online and social media campaigning is in a silo, unconnected to the rest of the union’s activities. In short, most (but not all) unions’ social media and online campaigning is done without a strategy or plan. Without a plan, your Facebook or Twitter page isn’t going to do much for you — and will probably do more harm than good.

Like house-visits, phone calls and site-visits, social media is just one tool in your campaign arsenal. No union would just “do” house visits or large numbers of phone-calls without a plan, targets, goals and measures.

Yet lots of unions just create a Facebook page or Twitter account because a top-ten list told them to, or because they read about some amazingly successful social-media driven campaign that got 14,000 people to engage. It can easily appear that social media is an amazing silver bullet that will help unions connect with their members, recruit new members and put pressure on bad employers through Twitter campaigns.

The truth unfortunately is that this is rarely the case. Online campaigning and social media should be a part of any comprehensive union campaign, but it’s not the be-all and end-all. The real challenge is integrating your online campaign elements with the real-world campaign — how does your website and Facebook page link to your print materials, your campaign events and member meetings? Where does your online and social media presence fit with your union’s communications plan?

While it takes just a few minutes to set up a Facebook page, no amount of top ten lists will help you achieve anything with it unless it is tied to and integrated with your campaigns.

Here’s some questions to ask about your social media (and it’s worth asking these whether you’ve set up your Facebook/Twitter pages already, or are just in the planning stages):

• Who are you targeting?
• What is your message?
• What do you want to achieve?
• Does this fit with your other communication/promotional material?
• Do you have the resources to keep updating your social media accounts

Your online and social media plan needs to work out how social media will do what it does best — engage and interact with your key audiences: members, potential members, activists and so on. Creating a plan can take time, and may be a bit challenging for unions that are still struggling with online campaigning, but it is worth it.

So, before you invest more time and effort into social media take a look at your overall communications strategy. Look at the big picture before jumping in.

While I’ve written my fair share of “top 10″ lists, I’ve also been a consistent advocate of aligning your online/social media activities with the real-world activities of your union.

Related posts:

1. Social Media for Unions E-Book
2. Top social media tips for unions – UNI Global Union Communications talk
3. Why unions should embrace social media

If you haven’t heard about Mitt Romney’s $10,000 bet, chances are you weren’t on Twitter during the Iowa GOP Candidates Debate on 10 December and the days following.

Mitt’s bet is a good example of how social media is changing political news reporting. Since the dawn of time, political reports have listened hard for good (“gotcha”) quotes and sound bites that sum up a debate, announcement or interview. Now, social media is changing the way journalists pick their sound bites, by amplifying certain quotes and giving journalists a real-time gauge of public sentiment.

Tweet via @blakehounshell - managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine.

Within minutes of the fated bet, Twitter started buzzing. While analysts mostly ignored it, the social media response was strong. The Twitter hashtag #What10kbuys was added alongside a lot of the #IowaDebate and #GOPDebate posts. Eventually, it started trending in its own right.

Social media amplifies

The Mitt Romney #What10kbuys debacle shows that social media can amplify your message to all corners. A few years ago, Romney’s comment would have gone reported in a nfew newspapers, for a single day. The social media reaction to Romney has shown that what you say as a candidate will get widely promoted — and most of it is outside your control.

The amplification is not what you say about your campaign, it’s what everyone else is saying. It allows an undercurrent of sentiment to become mainstream — like the strong response that was appalled by the cavalier way that Romeny made a $10,000 bet as though it were a dollar-bet.

Another good example is the video of Rick Perry appearing to be drunk at while giving a speech. This video went viral, although the speech and event itself was fairly minor and uninteresting.

Social media scrutinises

After  the debate, the Democrats tweeted:

DNC: We want to know #what10Kbuys for you and your family. #IowaDebate

This helped not only to spread Romney’s comments further, but helped ensure that even people who weren’t watching the debate or following the GOP primaries have heard of it. What’s more, Romney’s defenders on Twitter have kept the hashtag going by trying to use it to attack Obama and the Democrats — leaving confused people days later to try to find out what it is all about.

Related posts:

1. Social Media for Unions E-Book
2. Social media and real political change
3. Why unions should embrace social media

More and more unions are starting up Facebook and Twitter accounts, but the fact is that your union’s website is much more important than all your social media combined.

In Australia, there are more people using social media than ever, but when it comes to actually interacting with your union in a meaningful way (such as joining, volunteering, contacting an organiser) the first thing they will do is visit your website, not your Facebook page.

With many unions still having outdated websites, now is the time to invest in a refresh. Afterall, websites are the central hub for all online campaigning.

Here are five reasons why you should fix your union’s website before it gets onto social media:

1. Branding

Having a fresh, modern website lets you ensure that the branding is consistent and professional. It means you can directly customise the user experience to support the goals of your union. Whereas Facebook and Twitter have strict limitations on how pages look, your own website means that visitors to your site get an experience that your union designs.

2. Control

When you control your own union website, you have complete jurisdiction over its code, hosting environment, page count, content, plug-ins and more. This means that you have control to make any necessary changes, as well as major improvements for specific campaigns. With Facebook and Twitter, you can only tweak minor graphics, but not the underlying code.

3. Content

Content is important for so many reasons — engagement, SEO and social to name a few — so putting your content on your website benefits you rather than a third-party platform. Creating content about your union, its campaigns and members, then putting it on Facebook does nothing to help your own site. Putting that same compelling content on your site increases the likelihood that people will share it on their social networks. Having your own website means that you have control over your content — third party sites like Facebook always have the risk that it will be deleted or lost.

4. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Talking about SEO, many unions have asked me “how can we drive traffic to our site?” If garnering lots of visitors to your site is a priority, then having control over your own union website is essential. Having a new, modern website that meets contemporary standards will mean that your content is more likely to have good search engine results. When properly coded and managed, your union’s website delivers natural and sustaining search results (due to search engine optimisation) that drive traffic to the exact pages on your site where you want visitors to be.

5. Analytics

Unions are used to making data-driven decisions on organising, recruitment and finances. It’s time to step up to online analytics, and at the moment you get the best analytics from website tools. Most social networking analytics are still rather rudimentary, with the more in-depth tools costing a small fortune. Free analytics tools for websites, like Google Analytics, given you world-class tools to examine your website and your online campaigning.

UPDATE: A Bonus 6th Reason: Joining

No matter how whiz-bang your Facebook or Twitter page is, there are only two ways potential members can join your union: using a hard-copy membership form and on your website. If your union’s website doesn’t have a page for potential members to join, then stop reading this blog and go and set one up right now. Having a page to join up new members is really one of the most important functions that your website can have. The good news is that you can customise and tweak your join page to make it more effective. It’s generally much harder to do the same for hard-copy membership forms (although it is possible).

Now, I’m not suggesting you drop social media. I’m advocating that your union should invest in a quality, professional and modern website that acts as the central portal to your other online presences and tools — including email, social networking, mobile and so on.

Related posts:

1. Five useful and free tools to measure your union’s social-media impact
2. Social Media for Unions E-Book
3. Top social media tips for unions – UNI Global Union Communications talk

Why has your union joined the social media world?

Some unions may be there because of the motivations of a single person — the secretary, or an eager organiser or communications officer. They join because they feel they must.

Some unions may be there to broadcast their activities – they don’t want a conversation, just an audience. They simply set up their accounts and wait for the followers, fans and friends to start listening.

Others join “just because” — and abandon their profiles after a few days or weeks when other priorities arise.

The real motivation for unions joining a social network is “connection” and “engagement”. You should want to connect with your members, supporters and potential members. You want to take part in a conversation, not a monologue. You don’t want to come across as spam or a megaphone, or someone who doesn’t “get it”. If you set up your social media account for the wrong reason, it may be hard to shake off bad habits.

Unfortunately, making real, thoughtful and strong connections with people using social media takes time, effort and most of all, planning. If you set up your Facebook page and never return, you and your union will not only have squandered an opportunity, you will seem unconnected, lazy or clueless. On the other hand, posting too much could get you viewed as a pest, resulting in people unfollowing or unfriending you.

Unions aren’t unique in the hit-and-miss approach to social networks. Almost every organisation, whether charity, government or business does the same. They don’t post to their blog or twitter for weeks or months at a time. They don’t reply to @ messages or comments left on their page. Looking at some profiles of unions out there, you’d be forgiven for thinking that they’d closed up shop. Spurts of sudden activity of long absences show that your approach to social networking is distracted, sidetracked, disorganised or overworked. There’s no plan. No strategy. And therefore, the spurts of activity won’t really influence anything.

Whether your union has a team of one responsible for communications and marketing, or a large team, your approach to social media should be consistent. Engagement and connection doesn’t happen through sporadic contact — it occurs through regular, repeated contact and sharing.

The key, early on, is to assess realistically your resources and commitment, and set a schedule based on that commitment. The goal should be consistency. Choose a schedule for at least six months. Prioritise your main social networks. For example, if you don’t think you will be able to keep up a LinkedIn page, Facebook and Twitter, not to mention union blogs, then just pick one. It’s better to do a smaller number of things properly than lots of things poorly.

In order to provide some practical advice, I’ve copied down a “social networking agenda” that you can use to design your own. I’ve also suggested a few tools for you to use to make things a bit easier.

Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn

These three social networks are the most used networks and have different implications for keeping on top scheduling.

Twitter is by far the most fast-paced social network. It operates at the “speed of now” — which means it requires more time and attention. Things move very quickly, so if you set up a Twitter account, you should expect to spend more time updating and replying (especially as your following grows). If you can only update Twitter once a week or once a month, then you should probably stick to Facebook.

Facebook is the largest social network on earth, with over 800 million users. It moves more slowly than Twitter and is based on promoting “engagement” — so the more people comment or like your union’s Page updates, the more it will appear in other peoples’ feeds. Multimedia updates are especially important. Facebook isn’t quite as hectic as Twitter — so focus more on quality than quantity. You can probably get away with updating Facebook once or twice a week, as long as they’re thoughtful updates rather than links to your union’s latest media release.

LinkedIn is used by “professionals”, especially IT, marketing, and finance professionals (with medical, recreational and education coming next). With over 100 million users, it is the third largest social network and is primarily used for “professional networking”, posting jobs and keeping an online resume. However, a lot of users are active on company pages and the LinkedIn forums. If your union covers doctors, engineers, bank staff or any high-tech workers, then you should consider setting up a LinkedIn union page, and keep an eye on the company pages that will represent your major employers. Because it is smaller, LinkedIn updates aren’t as time-sensitive. You can afford to update your LinkedIn page or participate in forum discussions on a weekly basis.

Social Media Monitoring

Keeping abreast of what’s going on is an important part of social media. It’s one of the great uses for any organisation, whether a union, a political party or an NGO. People talk about you, your industry, sector or activities even if you’re not there. Getting involved in the conversation not only means you can put your point of view in a controversial circumstance, but it also helps you build networks with people interested in your cause or activity.

But how do you keep up to date?

I regularly use three tools — all of which are free — called Google Alerts, CoTweet and Postling. (Note: I have no affiliation to either of these services.)

CoTweet

I have regularly used CoTweet for the last two years. It is an exceptional Twitter tool that lets you easily manage multiple Twitter accounts, track custom searches, and manage teams or groups of people to monitor your social media. It also acts as a CRM (client relationship manager) so you can make notes on particular users and keep track of questions or comments from people, and so on.

Finally, it lets you schedule updates, so you can arrange to send pre-arranged tweets. When I set up a social media schedule at the start of each week, I look at as many updates that can be done in advance and set them up on Monday.

CoTweet is mainly useful for Twitter, although you can use it to update Facebook with a bit more complicated set up. I use the free version, but there are “enterprise” versions that cost money (and more easily integrates with Facebook).

Postling

Postling has more uses than the one I use it for. The paid version lets you update and monitor your entire social media presence, from Facebook to Twitter, blogs and more. The free version lets you monitor social media accounts — and provides you with a daily digest via email. This is very useful for me, as it saves me doing custom searches or trying to track down tweets or Facebook updates.

If you want to pay for it, Postling is probably one of the most comprehensive social media tools out there (that doesn’t cost a fortune, like People Browser).

Both of these tools will help you keep on top of any social networking accounts you set up. There are of course many others. Quite a few people I’ve come across use HootSuite (I’ve never used it) or TweetDeck (I only use the Android app).

Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a fantastic, flexible tool and useful for a lot more than social media. It is basically a free media monitor, where you set up custom searches for specific stories or phrases (like the name of your union, major employers you cover, legislation or individuals) and Google will then email you when a new story or web page is published that includes that term.

Even if you aren’t interested in social media, Google Alerts is useful for keeping track of fast-moving stories, or making sure you’re ahead of potential PR crises (like during industrial action). It also finds updates in hard-to-find conversations taking place in forums.

A social media timetable

Use this as a framework for your own timetable — based (obviously) on how many social networks you use for your union and how much time you have to devote. Put the timetable in your calendar as appointments so you don’t book yourself during these times and also so you get reminders (if you use Outlook or Google Calendar).

Twice Daily in the Morning and Afternoon

• Check Twitter via a program like CoTweet. Respond when necessary. (CoTweet lets you save messages to reply to later, so you could check in the morning and reply in the afternoon.)
• Check LinkedIn. Reply to emails and comments when appropriate.
• Scan Twitter followers for relevant conversations to join.
• Check your business’s Facebook Page for questions and respond when necessary.
• Scan Google Alerts. Respond as appropriate.

Weekly or on Weekends

• Build Twitter Lists to better organise ongoing discussions and special interest groups. Set up saved searches in CoTweet to find out if people are talking about your union.
• Catch up on LinkedIn discussions (especially if you’ve set up your union as a company page) and the pages of companies your union covers. Add to discussion when appropriate.
• Send LinkedIn invitations to connect with members.
• Add new content to Facebook like a video or photos.
• Think of ways to repurpose this content for other purposes (such as your union’s journal, blogs or email newsletters).
• Identify new social networking influencers (for example, people with high Klout) and build relationships where appropriate.

Through the Week

• Mondays: Schedule tweets through CoTweet to go out once or twice a day at regular intervals.
• Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays: Add new content to Facebook (e.g. photos, events, links to news articles, videos, questions, polls, etc).
• Tuesdays and Thursdays: Respond to blog comments.
• Fridays: Check traffic at your blog or website (especially pay attention to referrers).

Obviously, your daily social networking to-do list will be much different, given your available time and commitments. Just be sure to make the schedule achievable. If it’s not working, change it. Be prepared to scale things down if you find you’ve bitten off more you can chew.

Related posts:

1. Social Media for Unions E-Book
2. Five reasons your union should fix its website before getting onto social media
3. Why unions should embrace social media

At the end of September, Facebook announced massive changes to pages, profiles and its “social graph”. For union communicators just getting the hang of setting up a Facebook page for their union or their campaign, what do these changes mean?

Thankfully, Wildfire, a social media marketing company, has produced a good summary of the changes and their implications:

Timeline
Very soon (if you haven’t hacked it already), your profile will be completely overhauled into a sleek new page with large cover pictures, featured actions, certain aggregated information and more. At its core, this Timeline is a chronology of a user’s life on Facebook, with items automatically appearing based on an algorithm intended to capture a user’s most important life events. …

Open Graph and Custom Actions
Last year, Facebook rolled out Open Graph, allowing brands to connect to a user’s Facebook social graph. This year, it rolled out significant changes, allowing app developers to create custom actions using any verb and object related to the activity taking place on the app. …

Newsfeed and Ticker
Closely related to the Open Graph changes are the Newsfeed redesign and introduction of the Ticker. According to Facebook, ensure that the overall concept behind these changes is to make sure users don’t miss important events, regardless of how often they log in. …

And the main take aways:

• “Likes” are still very important – they are still the lifeblood of Facebook
• Newsfeed vs. Brand Pages – Only more engaging updates from Brand Pages will appear in the newsfeed
• Reevaluate your brand’s strategy - Make sure you focus on increasing engagement (likes)

Read the entire Wildfire post here.

Related posts:

1. Best practice use of Facebook for unions
2. Three tips to get more people liking your union’s Facebook page
3. Four more tips for using Facebook for union organising

Today, Create Jobs for USA was launched by Starbucks and the Opportunity Finance Network – aimed at attracting donations from the general public to fund job creation programs run by OFN.

Whatever your views about US-style philanthropy programs run by large corporations, their JobsforUSA website is an almost pitch-perfect example of a campaign landing page.

Visit Create Jobs for USA here: http://www.createjobsforusa.org/

1. Clear page headline and copy

• The main heading for the page should be easy to read, specific and simple to grasp. They should compel visitors to read the copy below and then take action.
• The copy itself should be short and to the point. It should be written clearly and briefly explain the relevant details of the page’s purpose. Where the donated money goes, what the cause is about, etc.
• Remember – in all likelihood, someone who has reached your landing page has arrived there from an email or social media link — you don’t need to re-convince people to take action.

2. Use images and videos that are relevant

Related posts:

1. Three tips to get more people liking your union’s Facebook page
2. Use your union’s Facebook page to build your email list
3. Writing effective emails: halve the words

I was asked over the weekend to comment on the use of social media by Qantas, who on Saturday announced that they would lock out their workforce and ground their entire fleet. It is now clear that this was an attempt by CEO Alan Joyce and Chairman Leigh Clifford to bully their workforce during collective bargaining.

I made the observation that despite the lockout and grounding being premeditated and planned well in advance of the announcement, Qantas’ social media use was almost a text-book example of what not to do during a crisis.

Over at MarketingMag, Simon Dell has written an article arguing that:

A ‘social media strategist’ was quoted as saying that Qantas had dealt with this very badly in the social media space, just tweeting and responding to everything with broadcast tweets, rather than addressing specific issues. That, to me, is the mark of a social media strategist unable to understand the PR side of the situation. How was Qantas going to reply to the tens of thousands of tweets? How do they prioritise one over the other? Where’s the manpower to reply to them all?

They did what they had to do in moments like that: kept quiet. It was already a PR disaster. The Qantas board knew what it was going to mean when he made the decision. Having someone try and reply to tweets wasn’t going to fix anything. Best to just shut up, sit quietly and ride it out. Anything they said was going to make it worse.

So, if you’re interested, here are my views on Qantas and its use of social media during the lockout:

As a semi-regular flyer, my perception of the “damage” to Qantas is seen in terms of “reliability”. One of the main problems for Tiger for example was that it constantly (in the eyes of the traveling public) cancelled flights. The low cost was seen in terms of not actually arriving in the chosen destination.

The lockout of staff and grounding of the Qantas fleet by Alan Joyce means the “reliability” question for travellers is writ large.

A corollary to this is that during the actual grounding of the fleet, passengers and their families wanted information. The broadcast nature of the Qantas social media accounts (especially Twitter) meant 2 things.

1. The thousands of passengers and their families looking for information about their flights got no information (= Qantas is unreliable); and
2. The social media space was taken up by others, especially the unions, dissatisfied Qantas staff, angry passengers, frustrated families, annoyed taxi drivers and so on.

While the Qantas PR machine was in over-drive getting their key messages out to traditional media (especially television and newspaper journalists), they left the social media space almost entirely alone. Qantas certainly did not “keep quiet” as Dell suggests they did. They were out there briefing journalists and discussing strategy (it now appears) with senior Liberal Party politicians.

Crisis management 101 says you should not “shut up”. This lets others tell your story. You should be out there, taking command of the situation. Instead, Alan Joyce and Qantas management blamed external factors (union) for the crisis, rather than taking responsibility. A golden rule of crisis management is that “it is impossible to over-communicate during a crisis”. While Qantas did a fair job in briefing newspaper journalists, they definitely under-communicated online.

What could they have done? Overall, take a leaf from the book of the various banks who recently had their IT systems break down (resulting in no money transfers, broken ATMs, etc):

• Replied to passengers with details of who they could contact for more information – the Qantas customer service phone line or an email address. If there were 1000s, its fairly easy to have a standard reply and to only respond to those asking for specific information about flights. The questions Dell asks about how to prioritise, etc, would be fairly standard social media customers service fair — just ask the banks.
• Tweeted (or re-tweeted or live-tweeted) the various interviews and other lines that CEO Alan Joyce was giving to the traditional media (or at least linked to stories). In terms of the PR battle, they could also have re-tweeted supportive messages.
• Given updates more than once every hour or two – especially for passengers “who come in late” to the grounding story. On Saturday they were down to one tweet an hour.
• Put out their line on why the fleet was grounded (in the Fair Work Commission, they said under oath that it was over “safety concerns” due to stressed pilots).

Obviously, Qantas hasn’t invested in the social media infrastructure that some banks and other large corporations have (Vodafone is another good example of a corporation that provides “crisis” customers service using social media). However, given that the grounding was premediated and known well in advance by senior Qantas executives, I’d have thought that one of them would have pumped more resources into the PR/Comms dept before the grounding took effect.

In my view, Alan Joyce and the Qantas management mostly botched the job of communicating during the lockout. They left most of the public communications to third-parties like Tony Abbott, the Liberal Party and extreme corporate peak-bodies. They didn’t provide talking heads to the scores of 24 hour news shows.

Latika Bourke, an ABC journalist who covered the story extensively on Twitter, including the Fair Work hearings over the weekend, commented on Monday that many of her Twitter followers were Qantas passengers and staff, who were turning to her live-tweeting of the lockout and Fair Work hearings to get accurate information about what was going on. This is a gap that Qantas should have filled.

What’s more, they missed out on a prime opportunity to directly talk to their frustrated customers whose travel plans were disrupted. However, they now have the opportunity to follow up their disrupted passengers with all those cheap flight offers and discounts — using social media. Let’s see if they do.

Overall, I think Alan Joyce’s decision to lock out his workforce is despicable. With Qantas Chairman Leight Clifford having “form” in the deunionisation of Rio Tinto, it’s clear that this lockout and grounding is part of a strategy to deunionise Qantas and off-shore as many of its workers as possible to countries with poorer workplace rights than Australia.

I can only hope that Qantas remains a strong Australian airline, and that corporate grubs like Joyce and Clifford are hastily shown the door.

Related posts:

1. Social Media for Unions E-Book
2. Social media in the workplace
3. Why unions should embrace social media

With more and more unions relying on Internet campaigning to support their campaigns, it’s essential that we do everything we can to make them effective and successful. Indeed, a campaign website is increasingly essential to the success of campaigns that traditionally would have only included posters, leaflets and stickers.

A union’s website can be the first (or only) interaction that a potential member or supporter has with the union. So it needs to be a good experience. While many unions are increasingly using social media, a Facebook or Twitter account for your campaign, without a specific campaign website, is like tying one hand behind your back. You’re operating at half-effectiveness.

A campaign website needs to not just exist, it needs to perform. It needs to attract visitors, educate them and convince them to take action. There’s no point in having a website “just because”. Today, the web is social and interactive. It’s not static like most union websites tend to be. As such, a union’s campaign website can no longer just be an online media release. It needs to integrate search, blogging, social media and engaging content (such as photos and videos).

Today, increasingly potential union members and supporters like to do online research. They are used to this through their typical web behaviour – where you read reviews and conduct research on  goods before you buy them. Many people turn immediately to Google (or, less likely, Bing) to find out about an issue, a service or a product. Making a decision to join a union (or support a campaign) is no different.

So, here are the four must-haves for your union’s campaign website.

1. Make it easy to find

It would be a disaster for a union to spend thousands of dollars (or more) on a campaign website only for it to go unvisited and unnoticed. There are several easy ways to make sure your site is easier for people to visit.

• Try to build inbound links: Building inbound links (where other websites link to you) is a simple way to get found. This can be done through traditional media and public relations — getting news stories mentioning your website. However, many unions forget to do some basic things, like ask peak bodies (Trades Halls, ACTU) to link to their campaigns. Search engines use as part of their algorithms, the number of quality, trustworthy sites that link to yours. Getting news sites and other union sites to link to your campaign website helps it be found. Additionally, don’t forget about blogs and bloggers — and if your organisers or members keep a blog, ask them to write a post about your campaign site (or send a link to Creative Unions). You could also ask to write guest posts (so long as you have a pre-existing relationship with the blog).
• Do some basic search-engine optimisation (SEO): SEO basically means making your website easy for programs like Google, Yahoo or Bing to find and archive your content. There are a lot of companies that promise the world with SEO — like “guaranteed first place”. While there is a science to SEO (and if you have the money, you should talk to your website designer about it), even a basic attempt at SEO will significantly improve the ability for your site to be found. SEO is based on “key words” – and there are different parts of your web page that search engines look at, such as headlines, sub-headings, image tags and links. Content management systems like WordPress do SEO “out of the box” fairly well, and most open-source CMSs have good quality free SEO plugins. The main thing is to keep your “key words” in mind when writing your page — and absolutely ensure you include your keywords with your images (e.g. “ALT text”).
• Don’t forget your title tags and meta tags: This is something that can easily be missed — even for major companies and online groups. The Title tags  and Meta tags are information that is contained in the background of your website, visible only to search engines. The Title tags also appear in your browser at the top of the page or tab (next to the favicon). They are also displayed by search engine results. Most open source CMSs (like WordPress) manage Title and Meta tags automatically, so you don’t need to be a coding genius, but some may require set up.
• Make sure you have a site-map: Search engines use site maps to sift through your web pages easily and find updated content. The best-practice site-maps are called XML site-maps, which are basically a special kind of file that lists all your website’s pages, and when they were updated. This is constantly overlooked — and for unions with large websites with lots of pages, it means that many of those pages will be extraordinarily hard to find. Open source CMSs have plugins that will automatically create XML site-maps for you, and if you are getting a consultant or developer to build a campaign site for you, make sure you ask them to create one.

2. Get good design based on usability

Atosha and I founded Creative Unions to promote good union design. Once you’ve managed to get a supporter or potential member to visit your campaign site, you want them to stay on your site and (mostly likely) take some kind of action.

This is where good design is essential. If your site is not user-friendly, intuitive and pleasant to navigate, your visitors will leave. Most websites have a “bounce rate” (the number of people who look at only one page on a website) that is between 30-60%. Many times, those visitors will never return — and why would they if their experience was frustrating and pointless. (Think trying to find a contact email address or phone number on a bank website!)

There are some simple things you can do to make a good impression the first time someone visits your campaign site — and studies have found that good design is the most important element.

I’ve written about making great campaign websites here. To reinforce those points, here are some extra tips:

• Have a simple colour scheme: The right use of colours can make the important information stand out, while not distracting the viewer. Having lots of colours, or clashing colours, can reduce usability and create frustration.
• Avoid unnecessary animation: If your union’s digital consultant suggests flash animations, say “no”. Don’t use animated gifs, background music, scrolling news tickers, or other “cool” gadgets and media. Things that move on a web page grab the eye and can distract from your most important content. If something does move on your site, make sure it is the important thing, and that it supports to goal of your site.
• Use intuitive navigation and layout: Follow the F-layout for content, and make sure your menu makes sense for the main pages people will try to find (e.g. contact, join, about). The (in)ability to easily find what they are looking for is one of the main pieces of feedback for websites. The key for good website navigation is to keep it simple and not to have too many layers or levels. Less is more with design, so don’t feel compelled to cram images, icons or photos on each page unless they really add to the purpose of the page.
• Typography must be readable: Fonts, and font colours should be easy to read. Don’t make them too large or too small. Make the difference between header-types clear. Use bullet lists, section headers and short paragraphs.
• Maintain consistency between pages: Key design elements, such as colours, logos, navigation, links, etc, should remain consistent between your homepage and sub-pages. This doesn’t mean every page should be the same, but it should recognisably be the same website when you go to different pages.
• Use the right images: Unless there is a very good reason, don’t use stock photos. Make sure the images you do use are specific to the content of the page, rather than generic. Tests on stock-photos versus photos of real, relevant people show that the real images win every time. Unions are in a great position to use images of members or organisers — this should be a great strength.
• Keep accessibility in mind: People with disabilities, especially visual impairment, use the Internet. Make sure your website is compliant with basic international usability standards (and demand this if you are outsourcing your campaign website creation to a consultancy). With this in mind, you should also try to make sure your site works on mobile phones and tablets, and a range of Internet browsers (Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Chrome, etc).

3. Have engaging content

Now people have found your site, got a good first impression, you need to make your content engaging and your calls to action compelling. When thinking about this, keep in mind the 10-second rule and ask: will a visitor know immediately what to do when they reach this page? Will they understand what page they’re on without help or explanation?

If your campaign website has a clear goal, with a clear call to action, it should be readily apparent to anyone visiting your page what they should do — read the article, sign the petition, sign up to the email list, or donate money.

• Use clear headlines: Make your most important ideas and calls to action prominent — using headlines and page titles. Make it clear why the visitor (potential member or supporter) should support your campaign or join your union.
• Include calls to action and next steps: Even if you just have a blog post or campaign update, make sure you include something for the viewer to do once they have read the update. If they’ve received their update, ask them to do something (share the page with friends, donate, join, etc).
• Test your copy with A/B testing: A/B testing means using two versions of a page with slight (or large) differences to test which version is more effective. It’s fairly easy to do, and can result in significant improvements to the number of people who complete your call to action. Especially for your home-page, don’t assume that they first version of the text you’ve written is the best or most effective. You can see a good example of A/B testing at work here.
• Don’t use jargon: Don’t use jargon or language that only insiders would understand. Unions are serial offenders in using industrial gobbledygook. Specialist terms and acronyms should be avoided. Spell things out if you must use technical terms, but avoid them whenever possible.
• Keep things simple, short: The shorter and more concise your website text, the more likely it is to be read and understood. Don’t try to be clever with word-play or cliches. With your campaign website, you want to be immediately understood, and you want your call to action to be crystal clear.
• Consider a campaign blog (but only if you have the time and resources): Blogging is great for most of the things I’ve written about here. It keeps content fresh and updated, blog CMSs have good out-of-the-box SEO and it is a great way to get inbound links. The downside is that blogs need to be kept updated — which means someone in your union needs to continually update it. A blog is probably most appropriate for your main union website rather than campaign site.
• Make your content sociable and shareable: Add “Tweet this” and “Facebook like” buttons to all of your pages. Social sharing is a great source of traffic — with the added benefit that the people visiting from these sources are more likely to hold similar views to the original person who shared the page. Most CMSs should include plugins or widgets that make social sharing easy.

4. Have goals for your campaign website

I have consistently advocated for union campaign websites that have specific goals and purposes. There’s no point in having a campaign site “just because”. It should have a specific purpose and goal. For campaign sites, you probably want supporters to do something. Campaign sites should therefore care about “conversion” — converting a visitor into a supporter, or a potential member into a member.

Calls to action are the key to measuring your campaign website’s goals. Most calls to action involve asking visitors to fill out a web-form with their email address and other details. You should be able to easily compare the number of people who view your call to action and the number of visitors who actually complete it (your conversion rate).

• Have a clear call to action: Make the call to action the most prominent part of your page. For simple campaign sites, you should probably make the call to action the centre-piece of your home page.
• Less is more: By the time someone has reached your campaign site, it is likely they have a fairly good idea of whether they will support your campaign or not. You don’t need to spend a huge amount of time convincing them, just to make it easy for them to take action.
• Here are four effective calls to action to use for inspiration.
• Consider the “engagement funnel”: What happens once someone fills out your form? Are they taken to a “thank you” page? Are they given an additional, secondary call to action? Will they receive an automatic email confirming their action? Have an answer to these questions. Think about how you can keep your new supporter or member engaged.
• Only include essential fields in your forms: There is a temptation to collect as much information as possible in your forms — address, workplace, postcode, etc. The more information you ask from people, the less likely they are to fill out the form. Think about the minimum information you need, and consider how you can subsequently get more information from supporters after they have signed up to support your union’s campaign.

Conclusion

Online campaigning has changed forever how unions engage with members, potential members and supporters. It is growing rapidly, and in Australia almost everyone has access to the Internet, social media and email. Unions cannot ignore it, and we certainly cannot use it poorly.

Online campaigning is more than just having a website for your union. It should integrate your social media engagement, email communication, media management and on-the-ground organising. Any campaign website you create for your union should be adaptable and easily changeable. Just like organisers continually refine scripts and talking points, so you should continually test and improve your campaign websites.

These four points are guidelines for your union’s campaign site — and if you are not building the site in house, then hopefully this article gives you some questions to ask your digital consultant.

Related posts:

1. Three world-class union campaign websites
2. Why using free web services for your union campaign website is a bad move
3. Four effective “calls to action” to use on your union campaign website

Jeremy Heimans, the CEO of Purpose.org – an “incubator” benefit company that supports major global progressive campaigns – has written an interesting article with five new rules for organisations to build their brands through being purpose driven.

The entire article is worth a read, and Heimans – who also founded Avaaz and Get Up – makes a good number of points for organisations wanting to be taken seriously on social change.

1. Start with internal transformation.
2. If you’re not there yet, avoid declaring victory.
3. Champion a movement, not a campaign.
4. The stakes must be high.
5. Most important, ask your consumers to take action.

In my view, the final rule is the most powerful and significant – especially if you care about empowering people.

Heimans makes the point:

Successful social initiatives that create real social impact will need a combination of 20th century top-down persuasion-brands that tell the world their point of view through marketing and communications-with the tools of 21st century engagement: movements that provide the tools for advocacy, social involvement, distributed evangelism and self-organization.

Many progressive organisations, such as unions and climate action groups, focus on empowering members and supporters to make the change, rather than having staff of the organisation wave their magic wands and solve the problem. Tools like Twitter, MailChimp and CMSs like WordPress empower normal people to take online action – and increasingly make off-line, real-world action easier to organiseand coordinate.

For an additional, and excellent, resource on purpose-driven campaigning, check out this PDF by Make-Believe (the PR firm responsible for the Federal 2010 Greens campaign).

Related posts:

1. Online social activism and Twitter
2. Essential social media reader: “The Dragonfly Effect”
3. Abbott’s “direct action” frame and carbon pricing

There’s an interesting debate over at the New Organizing Insititute about the use of the Retweet feature on Twitter.

Matt Stempeck, the new media manager at NOI recommends that advocacy and progressive organisations use the official Retweet feature. He cites four reasons:

1. You don’t have to edit or abbreviate the original tweet. With the official Retweet feature, you no longer need to squeeze “RT @username: ” into the message, saving you precious characters.
2. Your followers don’t want to see the same tweet twenty times. When you use the official Retweet feature, Twitter automatically hides the duplicate tweet from your followers if they already follow the same person.
3. Twitter will show the original tweeter’s avatar instead of yours. With the official Retweet feature, the original tweeter’s picture shows up and you’re relegated to a byline below the tweet.
4. Twitter’s better at counting official retweets. Retweets are critical part of expanding your reach beyond your usual audience, so it’s good to know when they occur. Twitter now sends a nice little email notification when you’re Retweeted. It even tells you how many followers the Retweet went to.

However, a month later, Asher Huey the online organizer for New Partners, an environmentally-focused consultancy, strongly suggests you don’t use the official Retweet function. Asher argues that:

Twitter and most Twitter clients will not show your target a tweet in which they are mentioned if the re-tweeter uses the retweet button. However, that person will see every retweet, if people use the traditional RT.

Asher’s argument boils down to (not) using official retweets for “advocacy” – that is, online pressure tactics such as swamping the target with @ mentions. Matt’s argument boils down to the official retweet feature being more convenient for users.

Who is right?

Call me a cynic, but despite my belief that social media is a valuable online organising and communications tool, I am not convinced that Twitter is a powerful “advocacy” tool. With most organisations or individuals on Twitter who might be the subject of “pressure tactics” relying on a staff of professional social media officers, the actual target (Obama in Asher’s example, or BP or another corporation) will never actually experience the pressure.

I could be wrong – and perhaps there are many examples of Twitter advocacy being effectively applied.

In my view however, the strengths of Twitter (and Facebook, etc) are with spreading information or a call to action quickly, or increasing the commitment of supporters for a cause.

Related posts:

1. Adding Twitter’s @Anywhere
2. Social media and political news reporting
3. Interesting use of Twitter in elections

Memorable political visuals immediately tell a story and add context to headlines.

Tip: if you looked at the photo on this article before starting to read the text, then you’re like 90% of voters. If you’re not sure why this matters, you’re like most political commentators and pundits.

There is a large amount of research about how voters (and readers in general) consume media. But, by and large, we have not done enough as a political party to apply it to how we communicate to voters. This is especially true in these days of the “live web”, where grabbing the attention of potential supporters and voters is crucial.

What does all this mean?

We know from research (in Australia, the USA and UK) that visuals are a crucial connection point in how people consume information and experience politics. To some extent, the media professionals in Labor know this – which is why we avoid our Prime Ministers and Premiers being photographed walking alone, or being filmed near a door with an “exit” sign. Yet we still issue media releases and media kits that are pages and pages of text. Our party’s website is exceptionally text-heavy. Many of our MPs’ newsletters and information leaflets are crammed to the gills with text, and photos are often an afterthought.

Around 90% of people who consume media (especially the newspapers and websites) look at the visuals first: photos, graphs, infographics, displays, and headlines (etc).

Having a visual attached to an article (whether printed or online) makes it three times more likely that someone will read the text associated with the image.

Headlines are more likely to be read if they are accompanied by a photo.

The bigger the picture, the more likely readers are to read the headline.

With social networks like Facebook and Twitter focusing on the now, now, now – we can safely assume that most people’s attention spans aren’t getting longer!

All of this adds up to the sobering truth: voters experience politics at a cursory level at best. Their sense of politics and what Labor stands for is significantly derived from headlines and images that appear online and in print (and obviously, on television). For the average voter, it is the collection of headlines, photos, graphics, cartoons and graphics that accompany politically-themed news stories that give them impressions about politics.

The text – and the quotes – are literally the last thing that most people see. This is true, not just about politics (although it is especially true about politics) but most other areas. Text – the details, facts and key messages that we political tragics like to focus on – is consumed last. Which is not to say it is unimportant, just that it is not as important as we like to think.

The corollary of this is that the most “informed” voters are often actually the least informed. Research in the United States suggests that voters who consider themselves the most informed about politics actually perform worse than random chance when asked about the issues. Similarly, those with higher education (an undergraduate qualification or higher) were more likely to be misinformed about important issues than those with high-school qualifications or lower.

This is for similar reasons that most voters take only impressions from political communications (whether in newspapers, television or online) – they tend to consume information that reinforces existing biases and assimilate only those facts that confirm their existing beliefs.

What actually happens is that voters, especially partisan voters, rationalise decisions they’ve already made, rather than arriving at positions through consideration of facts.

How does this help us? Considering a significant public policy campaign that Labor is engaged in currently – the carbon price – there are a few things we can do.

Firstly, we shouldn’t rely on facts to “win” the “debate”. For those people who are interested, it is likely that they have already formed an opinion and are now cherry-picking the information that confirms their existing opinion of the carbon price. If they support it, they likely ignore contradictory evidence, and similarly, if they oppose it, they will be more likely to read political opinions that also oppose the carbon price.

Rather than relying facts and figures to communicate about policy or politics, we should talk far more about the “why”. There is a lot of research about political communication, and it shows that facts and figures doesn’t work in influencing people’s opinions. Providing context and explaining relevance in a concise, simple and consistent manner that speaks to our aspirations and ideals is more effective. (This is, of course, not to say we shouldn’t have fact-based policy making.)

Secondly, we should use visuals more to spread our communications. Think about those chain emails that get sent around the office – the ones with pictures of cute dogs and cats. The Youtube videos of surfing dogs or someone riding a motorbike with a BBQ strapped to their body. These are frivolous examples of effective communication – the visuals tell the story. And, importantly, they are consumed incredibly quickly.

Think about the most effective political ads and most of the time it is the visuals that are most powerful. The Reagan ad that portrayed the Soviet Union as a bear, or the Bush ad that portrayed terrorists as wolves stalking through a forest. Those ads were considered very influential in the outcomes of elections – yet they were only 30 seconds long!

Strong, powerful visuals that quickly tell a story are more likely to get a video or photo shared. They help people form impressions about complex issues.

With the rise of social media (Australia has the highest per capita use of Facebook for example, with the fastest growth demographics being the over 50s), progressive political organisations like Labor need to communicate more with images. The images we use should be customised to the issue – no stock-photos or file footage!

Thirdly, using social networking (online and in the flesh) helps us tap into what is known as the “power of weak ties”. The friend of a friend, a distant relative, an acquaintance – people with whom you do not have a deep personal relationship are still able to communicate with you freely, share their ideas and their views.

Because most voters are impressionistic, social networking can help form those impressions – and having a political view shared by someone the voter knows (even distantly) spreads those political views via social diffusion. Social diffusion is incredibly effective at sharing information. Think about a book, film or restaurant you have read, watched or visited recently. Chances are that your decision was in part influenced by a recommendation by someone you know. The recommendations of friends and acquaintances can influence our choice of suburb to live in, school to send our kids to, which doctor or dentist to go to – and how we think about politics.

Social media, like Twitter and Facebook, puts social diffusion and the power of weak ties on turbo speed. And we need content – engaging, visual, evocative and narrative – that can be shared through online and real-world social networks.

Related posts:

1. Communicate, don’t sell
2. Why are Liberal voters really unhappy?
3. Four pillars of social networking

These are my notes for the Skype presentation that I gave this evening to the UNI Global Union Communicator Conference. I was asked to talk about “top social media tips for unions”.

Top Social Media Tips for Unions

Basis of my views are the Creative Unions manifesto.

For too long, unions have been slow in taking up new techniques, new campaigning tools and improved standards. Creative Unions sees its role as promoting best practice for communications, campaigning and design – especially design. Atosha and I set up Creative Unions in 2009 to find international benchmarks in the union movement, not just in Australia. If you haven’t seen our site, check www.creativeunions.org.

Social media is an incredibly powerful tool for unions to reach a new audience and communicate with existing members. The rules of social media – conversation, participation, openness and community – fit well with union values. We must use this tool wisely to be effective.

At the NTEU, we face the same challenges that many unions face in adopting best practice for social media. I don’t claim to do everything perfectly. Facing and overcoming cultural barriers, inertia and making sure everyone understands and agrees with what we want to achieve with social media.

Most of my tips are principles that are general in nature. I have many more specific tips for unions to use social media and online campaigning on my blog.

My top tips

1. Social media is about conversation

Tools like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs and a few others present excellent opportunities to engage members and potential members in conversations.

The days of one-way, broadcast communication from unions is over. If members and non-members can’t talk with you in the forums of your choice, they will talk about you in other forums.

The conversation is not just between you and the member. Two, three or even scores of people can be involved in a social-media conversation on Facebook or a blog. This can be the most important, powerful part of social media.

If you have a union Facebook or Twitter account, don’t just wait for members to leave comments or send you messages. You need to initiate conversations as well as respond.

2. Ownership and relationships

Social media helps people build attachment to brands – and unions should not be an exception. By being open and transparent, and living up to our values of “member-centric” organisations, smart unions should increase the commitment of members and reduce barriers for non-members to join.

We can no longer run closed systems where the Secretary approves everything. We need to empower our delegates and members by giving them a union voice in social media. We should encourage members and staff to blog, to tweet and to “brand” their social media presence with the union’s logo or campaign design.

3. Make your social media purpose driven

A big – and sometimes legitimate – criticism of non-profit social media is that it promotes slacktivism or clicktivism. As unionists we don’t want people to think that just by following us on Twitter or liking us on Facebook that our members activism is over.

Engaging with the union is the first step towards the member becoming more active.

Your social media plan should link with your broader communications and organising strategy. How does your social media link with your online campaigning? Your bulk-email campaigns? Your on-the-ground organising? Your media management and PR?

How can your union’s use of social media encourage people to become more active within the union? As organisers, we use commitments to develop activists. Social media can help build commitment because behaviour leads attitude. Facebook and Twitter engagement is a form of public, social commitment to a cause or activity.

Make sure that you have a plan beyond just “we need a Facebook page”. What do you want union members to actually do? What real world follow up do we have planned? Have we, as union communicators, sat down with organisers?

4. Track your progress, set goals

This links with the previous point – how do we know if what we are doing is working? Set your goals. How many followers, conversations, comments, clicks, likes do you want. We need to set these goals because most unions have scarce resources. Metrics and goals let you see how well your social media campaigns are working. Are people actually liking or sharing your content? Are people clicking on your Facebook links to your union’s campaign website?

5. Don’t forget the basics

Facebook and Twitter both provide free guides for non-profits to use their platforms. There are also great resources out there for non-profits. Just because it doesn’t say “union” doesn’t mean that we can’t use those techniques.

Caveats

There is no silver bullet

Just having a Facebook or Twitter account doesn’t make an online campaign. There are lots of other things that shouldn’t be neglected. For online campaigning, in my view bulk email is still the most important tool available for unions.

Don’t expect millions of followers overnight

It takes time to build trust, earn followers and get them engaged. Here’s a few ideas for getting more Facebook followers:

1. Ask your members to like your Page.
2. Make your content interesting and relevant so people will want to get it.
3. Reach out to like-minded groups and interact on their pages.
4. Promote your page on your website, emails, print media, etc.

It takes time and resources to do properly

It’s free to set up a social media account, but you need to devote resources to doing it properly. This takes the time of a union official or volunteer – to check comments, respond, engage and updates. Producing content takes time. Videos, photos and news. Tweeting your media releases won’t cut it.

There needs to be a purpose

Don’t turn your activists into clicktivists. Make sure that your social media presence has a purpose. How does it ensure that it achieves your union’s campaign and organising goals? Don’t do social media “just because”. Have a reason, set goals and measure your success.

Go where the members are (aka, why Facebook)

Most people use Facebook in the West – there are exceptions in different countries, such as South America, Russia and parts of Asia. But Facebook is the juggernaut, despite slowing growth. There is no point in insisting that your members only engage with their union on places like UnionBook. Most members and non-members use social media to interact with friends and family. The union needs to engage with members where they are, even if Facebook is a business and not union friendly. There are web services that can scan your membership list and tell you which social networks they are on – so use them.

Design is important – even in social media

All your union’s communications should be professionally designed – not just your website and print, but also social media. Your Twitter backgrounds and your Facebook page pictures should be professionally designed and consistent with your other online and off-line communications.

Everything is archived and public

Don’t assume that your social media activities are private – even if you’ve got privacy settings set up. Be aware that employers and other opponents will be scrutinising your online activities as well as everything your union does and says.

Whether it is a misinterpreted comment on your blog, or a “tweet” taken out of context, it is highly likely that something will go wrong.

The best way to handle these mishaps is, like all crisis management, to be honest, acknowledge the mistake, explain how you are remedying the problem, and move on. Ensure your response is timely – within 24 hours is a good benchmark. If possible, break the story on your own terms rather than wait to be called out on it.

Website References

www.creativeunions.org

www.alexwhite.org

www.mortartown.com

Related posts:

1. Social Media for Unions E-Book
2. Five reasons your union should fix its website before getting onto social media
3. Why unions should embrace social media