Alex White » social networks

What’s your union’s social media strategy?

Alex — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 06:15:55 +0000

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.

Top social media tips for unions – UNI Global Union Communications talk

Alex — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 12:59:19 +0000

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:

Ask your members to like your Page.
Make your content interesting and relevant so people will want to get it.
Reach out to like-minded groups and interact on their pages.
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

Three tips to get more people liking your union’s Facebook page

Alex — Tue, 31 May 2011 00:48:14 +0000

The whole point of a Facebook page is to get traffic to it so you can spread your message and engage others in spreading it for you. A Facebook page with no fans isn’t really going to achieve your union’s online campaigning goals – just like a campaign website with no visitors isn’t likely to be a success.

Growing the number of fans you have for your union’s Facebook page isn’t a mystery – unions can use the same real-world campaigning and outreach techniques that work in organising, and apply them to social media.

Here’s three tips that may work for you in growing your union’s Facebook page.

Have you downloaded my free “Social Media for Unions” ebook yet? Download it here.

1. Ask people to like your page

When you’re campaigning online, use every opportuntity to ask people to like your Facebook page. Send them an email with the explicit purpose of asking your members to “like” your union on Facebook. (If you use an email marketing service like Mailchimp, then it should be able to directly target emails to only members who are already on Facebook.)

Send out tweets from your union’s Twitter account asking your followers to like your union. If your union’s website has a prominent “call to action” area (such as a scrolling image carosel, like the NTEU‘s) then make one of the images a big “like your union on Facebook” message.

Asking people to like your union on Facebook may sound a bit “naff” but if you don’t ask, you don’t get. Unions are used to asking non-members to join the union – why not ask members to like the union on Facebook? (Also, don’t forget to get all your organisers and union staff to like your page!)

2. Make your content interesting, relevant

The Facebook secret algorithim – the way it decides what gets put up on everyone’s Facebook news-feed – prioritises content that has more comments and “likes”. By making your page’s updates interesting and encouraging people to comment or like them, you are increasing the likelihood that your union’s updates will appear far and wide.

There’s no shame in asking people to like your status update – although don’t abuse this – and asking questions is more likely to get people to comment. Of course, getting your content mix right can be trial and error. You could consider a mix of content – such as videos, photos and text updates. Photos are especially good as the people in them, such as delegates or activists, may “tag” themselves.

You should also consider adding Facebook “like” buttons to your union’s website or campaign sites. This allows your supporters to promote your website and have it appear in the Facebook news-feed.

3. Reach out to like-minded groups and related pages

No Facebook page is an island, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t use your Facebook page to build relationships with like-minded organisations that also have Facebook pages.

For example, if you represent low-paid workers, then the Council of Social Services is a natural group to interact with. You can interact on Facebook using status updates using the “@” symbol. Promoting a related page to your union’s fans can create a sense of reciprocity with the other group who may then promote your page to their fans (although beware that you don’t abuse this). The new Facebook pages also allow you to “act” as your page (rather than your personal profile) – so you can leave comments on other pages.

This can be time consuming, but may be worth it down the line when you really need friends to promote a major event or initiative.

Do you have any additional tips for getting people to like your union’s Facebook page? Let me know in the comments.

Amazing social media campaign: “Iceland Wants to Be Your Friend”

Alex — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 07:06:33 +0000

Update: Takk Takk, the firm behind the Iceland Wants to Be Your Friend campaign has written a “behind the scenes” expose on their campaign.

I must confess that I know next to nothing about Iceland – I certainly never thought of it as an example of best practice social media campaigning – but after stumbling across this amazing campaign, I’m almost convinced that I should buy a plane ticket and visit its “forbidding interior” for myself.

The “Iceland Wants to Be Your Friend” campaign is the brain child of the “serious” folk at the Icelandic Tourist Board – and was created by Icelandic digital agency Takk Takk. It is a great example of a social media campaign because:

It is fairly unique – I haven’t seen any other tourism campaigns like this one
It engages across a range of platforms
It has a friendly, conversational and consistent tone that welcomes engagement, while not taking itself too seriously

The site invites you into find out more by means of connecting on its social platforms and signing up to an email list.

With its distinctive “hand-typed letter” Typekit fonts, the main campaign page has bold calls to action - be Iceland’s friend. The minimalist design ensures that there is no distraction for the visitor; no menus, side bars, feeds or popups. When you go to this site, you’re almost compelled to click on one or more of the links, because there’s nothing else to do!

Meanwhile, more details and information about Iceland are provided on the tongue-in-cheek blog.

This “Blog About Iceland” simultaneously uses third-party endorsements from tourists who’ve been to the island, but also gives the visitor a humourous glimpse into Iceland’s culture. The blog has a different visual feel to the main campaign site, but the conversational, quirky tone is still there. You really can believe it is the same, eccentric island writing on both websites.

Blogs are excellent tools for online campaigns, because most blogging software make it easy to add new content that is search-engine optimised. This means people searching on Google or Bing for Iceland are more likely to find posts from this blog.

Iceland’s Tumblr is similar in content and tone to the main site and the blog, while carrying across the visual design of the main site:

Just like the blog, the Icelandic Tumblr provides highlights of Iceland – although in a different way to the blog. Just as self-depricating, the Tumblr is less formal than the blog. Since many people use Tumblr (it is one of the more popular micro-blogging sites), it is a good choice by the Icelandic Tourist Board as a place to interact with people. You can see that many of the Tumblr posts have comments and notes.

Iceland’s Facebook page does two things: create a Facebook presence for people to “like” Iceland; and create a second opportunity for the campaign to get email subscriptions.

Again, the visual design is consistent across platforms, as is the tone. Facebook is a good place to encourage people to subscribe to your email list – you can then communicate with them via Facebook (which has its limitations) as well as by email. I’ve written about using Facebook to build your campaign list here. Like the Tumblr and main website, the Facebook page also promotes the other social media platforms that the Iceland campaign uses.

Where the biggest risk for the campaign lies is on its Twitter account – where the whimsical, self-depricating and friendly tone must be constantly on display to the many tweets directed towards it.

As you can see, the Icelandic Twitter account (@thisisiceland) has regular replies to people who have sent it an @ message, as well as links to its various online presences. Each of its tweets are in a consistent tone to its main campaign theme. This kind of engagement would probably be fairly labour intensive – especially since it purports not to be a ‘bot.

There are other sites as well – Vimeo (a video sharing site like YouTube) and Flickr (a photo sharing site) are both used, as they are two of the largest media sharing sites around. With photos and videos created to populate the other sites, locating all your photos and videos in a single location is a great idea, as well as providing an opportunity for the users of those sites to engage with you.

There are little surprises for people who look around at their sites. For example, their footer disclaimer sends you to an Icelandic music download.

The entire Iceland Wants to Be Your Friend campaign appears to be an “under the radar” social media campaign, riffing off the “Inspired by Iceland“campaign that is Iceland’s main pitch.

While this campaign obviously has a great deal of money and resources from the Icelandic Tourist Board, as well as a professional digital media firm doing the heavy lifting, it is a great case study of how to run a consistent theme, message and identity across multiple platforms – where they can all build upon each other, rather than be diluted. The one area that the campaign does seem to fall down on is in online advertising – I couldn’t find any Google ads for example.

The logic behind Iceland’s approach is worth considering – whether for political, union or NGO campaigns. Consistency, a range of social media channels, and an authentic voice are all reasons that this campaign stands out for me.

Social Media for Unions E-Book

Alex — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 03:43:33 +0000

I have released my first free e-book on Social Media for Unions.

Social Media for Unions

Like any endeavour, using social media effectively requires practice, trial-and-error, and some good advice.

That’s where this e-book comes in. I’ve put together some of the most popular and useful articles from my website into a single resource for unions to use.

Inside this 11 page free e-book, you will find:

An explanation of the principles of social media
Best practice use of Facebook for unions
Tips and techniques for unions to Twitter

Right now, I use the tips and techniques in this book in my job as the NTEU (VIC) Communications and Campaigns coordinator. The advice in this e-book is from tried-and-true from my own experience.

Learn how to get the most out of Facebook and Twitter for your union.

Get access to Social Media for Unions by clicking here.

Let me know in the comments what you think!

The rise of the US Right: “learning from the Left”

Alex — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 02:21:43 +0000

If you don’t read TechPresident regularly, you are missing out on a daily discussion of top quality political news and updates on the latest tech-trends in elections and political activism.

Micah Sifry has written a post asking whether the much-reported “rise of the Tea Party” in America – represented by the surge in Facebook “likes” and Twitter followers – is real.

According to the reports cited by Sifry:

Tea Party Patriots (TPP), one of the main umbrella groups, has almost four times as many Facebook supporters as the Democratic Party, and and almost five times as many as MoveOn.org.

Much of Sifry’s post tries to go deeper into the stats, looking at the various blog rankings for leading “liberal” and “conservative” sites, and examining who amongst the conservatives are getting all the fans and followers.

His conclusion is that the Tea Party and other conservative activists are more energised than their Democrat opponents, but that the reported Tea Party movement numbers are grossly overstated.

What I found interesting about his article – which is not delved into in any depth – is the growing political ecology of online tools and resources made available for online conservative activism. There is now a small but growing army of conservative coders, social media experts and designers who are making their services available to the many Tea Party groups and conservative Republican candidates.

Following the victory by Obama, successful exploitation of the Internet was made a major priority for the Republicans and for conservatives more widely. In particular, the ability to transform online supporters into real-world activists and donors was seen as key to Obama’s success.

The tools now being made available for conservative causes are quite sophisticated – they allow local Tea Party or other pro-Republican groups to quicky set up a professional-looking web presence at low cost, that is then focused on turning online supporters into donors and activists.

Rules for Patriots is a Tea Party version of Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals".

I’ve checked a range of Tea Party related sites, and most of them are very effective at harvesting email addresses of supporters. I’ve not ventured onto their Ning (or other) social networks, but as Sifry notes, they are utilising various social media hubs quite effectively.

The Tea Party are taking tried and true community organising priciples used by Obama’s campaign and applying them to growing their own movement. They even have a version of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals – called “Rules for Patriots” – designed to “help the Right learn from the Left”.

For the broader progressive movement, the energised conservative movement seems to be spreading out from the USA to other social democratic countries. Australia has its own “TEA Party” movement, the UK Conservatives scraped through in their election and other European countries have seen an upsurge in radical right-wing parties (who have always been present, but are now re-emerging).

Tony Abbott on Facebook

Alex — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 07:16:05 +0000

A quick search of Facebook reveals that Tony Abbott has a massive presence on Facebook. Tens of thousands of people are fans.

Unfortunately, most of those people aren’t fans of Tony’s, but of sanitary napkins or of leaving the country if he’s elected. The biggest fan page for Tony Abbott is “Friends don’t let friends vote for Tony Abbott” with over 27,800 people a fan. The official Tony Abbott page (which hasn’t been updated since June 30 as of the writing of this post) has a mere 8,900 fans – far fewer than the negative ones combined.

Like John Howard before him, Tony Abbott doesn’t really understand the Internet or social networking. The Facebook page is used as a repository for photos, and the Liberal Party’s new whizzbang web page is used for little more than showcasing Youtube ads and media releases.

Tony Abbott really is old fashioned.

Adding Twitter’s @Anywhere

Alex — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 11:44:07 +0000

Twitter has launched a new feature, called @Anywhere, for websites to integrate elements of Twitter onto their websites.

This allows you to use your Twitter login to join or log into their website, as well as add Twitter-style popups over names that are Twitter accounts (such as @alexanderwhite, @UKLabour, or @climateprogress). This means you can follow people directly from the website you are on.

This is a fairly simple feature to add, and I hope that it adds a bit of neat functionality. Let me know what you think. Worthwhile or annoying?

Connected candidates: Beyond Twitter

Alex — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 21:13:44 +0000

Most political candidates are on Twitter and Facebook – using these social media tools to reach out to younger voters, and instantly communicate with supporters, the public and the media.

I’ve written previously about how political candidates can use social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook, Google Apps and how campaigns have made use of mobile technology like SMS and iphone apps.

Lisa Johnston, Democrat candidate for Kansas Senator has put her Foursquare profile on her web page.

Now, iphone-enabled Democratic candidate Patrick Kennedy is using new social media tool Foursquare to let voters know his location.

Foursquare is a free iphone app (available on Android phones also) that lets you update your friends about your location. It’s designed to help friends meet up if they are nearby, such as at a cafe or bar. It can link into Twitter as well.

It is a little “weird” that people can follow a candidate’s every move, Kennedy admits. But he said it makes him stay active. “If I say I am going to be out there representing people this holds me to account. I can’t hide with this tool.” Kennedy said he was recently contacted by someone who saw he had checked in down the road and wanted to know why the candidate did not stop by his group. A visit was quickly arranged.

This example shows the potential usefulness of Foursquare, as it focuses in on one of the applications of Twitter for candidates: letting local constituents and media know about your attendance at community events. Candidates could easily use Foursquare like Kennedy has: to link in with locals, and promote their activities. Opportunities to get local media also arise, as local journalists can link in to the candidate’s activities (sometimes the sheer fact that the candidate is using social media is newsworthy).

Key to this social media tool is the smart phone – an iphone, android phone or Blackberry. Political candidates and their key campaign staff should all have smart phones of some kind that can easily update a variety of social media sites – Twitter, Facebook and others like Foursquare. There should also be the ability to take photos and videos.

Young people don’t blog

Alex — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 21:24:01 +0000

For my Project 52 post, I thought I’d comment about a recent Pew report has come to my attention via DownloadSquad that says that young people are blogging less:

Pew Internet released a report yesterday called Social Media and Young Adults that shows teen blogging down by 50% over the past four years, even as blogging increased among those over 30 years old.

The report also shows that teens are not very likely to be Twitter users (only 8% of internet users between the ages of 12 and 17 report using the service), even though they are heavy users of almost all other online applications; in fact, 73% of “wired American teens” are social networking website users. Twitter seems to stick out as a service that younger people are not as interested in.

The report is really talking about teens – 12 to 17 year olds – and I have to say that the conclusions follow my observations. While I grew up before the Internet and social networks became ubiquitous, I remember MSN and ICQ were used widely. With Facebook and MySpace (and their in-house chats), it seems to me that most young people are more interested in talking with each other.

DownloadSquad also concludes that young people aren’t “content creators”. I’m not sure I agree with that. Rather, I think young people only share their content – photos and videos – with their friends, rather than putting them on Flickr or a blog.

Seven online campaigning activities you should already be doing

Alex — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 21:33:24 +0000

In Australia, most elections take place during the normal, general election period. The accepted wisdom is that local campaigns make up, at most, 3 percent of a candidate’s primary vote. The rest comes from the central campaign from party head office: television ads, the leader’s personal appeal, the party’s policies and so on.

There are some simple things that local campaigns can do however to maximise their vote and try to reach that 3 percent boost.

Many of these ideas are more widely applicable for running online campaigns in general, and for unions in particular.

1. Have a presence on the main social networking sites

Set up a profile or page on Facebook, and depending on your campaign’s demographics, on MySpace, and Twitter.With over 6 million Australians on Facebook, 2.3 million on MySpace and around 670,000 Australians on Twitter, these are social networking sites you cannot afford to ignore. If you already have a profile on Facebook, consider setting up an official Facebook page, so you can benefit from the many extra features that pages have over groups or profiles (see here for an example of the benefits).

Just because Facebook and Twitter are the flavour of the month, don’t neglect MySpace. MySpace is still used by a large number of young people (high-schoolers), and it can be a way for you to build a longer-term relationship with teens, especially if that is a big demographic in your electorate.

If someone on your campaign team has a video camera and some experience, set up a YouTube and Vimeo channel (check here for how to do this on YouTube, and go here to set up a YouTube politician’s channel). Recording and broadcasting short campaign messages is a good way to directly talk with your electors, and sites like YouTube can be easily shared by your supporters on Facebook and Twitter. Make sure you have a call to action, such as donating, volunteering or joining your campaign mailing list.

2. Have a blog on your website

Get a campaign website if you don’t already have one. In addition to your policies, biography and how to subscribe to your mailing list, you should also make sure you have a blog. There are many easy options to install a blog on your website, and most of them are free. Using WordPress, Moveable Type or Google’s Blogger are easy to set up, and most offer a way to install or embed the blog into your own website. I personally prefer WordPress, but depending on what content management system your website uses, you may have to use another blogging platform.

Blogs are very important for search engine optimisation reasons. Blogs help you draw traffic to your site through online search engines. When most people want to find out information about a candidate, they got to their search engine (e.g. Google, Yahoo or Bing). Most blogging software is optimised for search engines, which means that it pushes your website higher up the search page. Blogs also give you an opportunity to engage with your electors and supporters. Many voters will appreciate the transparency – and you can use it to promote your events and activities.

You don’t need to personally update your blog every day. Get someone on your campaign to add blog posts – but make sure they don’t pretend to post as you. Keep your posts and the posts of your staff distinct.

Don’t expect to be getting hundreds or thousands of page views or visitors, or scores of comments on your website straight away. Promote your blog and your website in all your other communications – emails to supporters, ads in the local paper, on flyers you hand out while door-knocking. You can also advertise online…

3. Build a campaign email list

Email is still the most effective online campaigning tool. Having a large list of supporters and electors means you can directly communicate with them, without the filter of the local news. Email is very effective at building engagement and directing people to your website.

There are lots of email service providers that allow you to create email campaigns, and get data about opens. I’ve got a post here (Email is the “killer app” for online campaigns) that goes into some detail about using email.

Early in your campaign, you should be aiming to build your campaign email list – have a sign up form at all of your campaign events (fundraisers, street-stalls, etc). The people on your campaign list will be useful as volunteers, donors and of course, eventually they should vote for you.

4. Advertise online with Facebook and Google

Online advertising is an increasingly effective way to get your message to your target audience. Most online advertising lets you micro-target your ads using key words. Google Adsense and Facebook Ads are probably the most effective online advertising vehicles, although there are others (e.g. MySpace and Yahoo). Most of them allow you to set a daily, weekly or campaign budget, so you can carefully manage your advertising spend. Even a small budget of a few hundred dollars can pay big dividends. Google has a page especially for political ads – so they’ve made it easy for you.

Facebook ads can let you target people in your electorate, and also target people who share your values. Your ad can direct potential supporters to your Facebook page, or to your website.

Each ad should have a specific purpose (“call to action”), such as building your campaign email list, getting people to donate, or volunteer, or vote for you on election day.

You can also use online ads to respond to attacks against you by your opponent. By putting your response online (such as on your blog or as a YouTube video), you can use key words search terms on Google to make sure that when an elector looks for more information about the attack, they will see a link to your response. Generally, there is no more than a 3 day window for this kind of response, so act quickly.

5. Use Google Analytics or other analytics programs

There are lots of analytics programs out there, some free, some paid. The bench-mark is Google Analytics, a free service. By setting up a Google Analytics account, you can get detailed information about who comes to your website and how they use it. Google Analytics can be integrated with most email service providers, as well as Google Adsense. Google also offers other free services for websites, such as Website Optimizer, that allow you to experiment in changes to your website to make it easier to use.

UPDATE:

I should also mention a few useful resources for website testing and optimisation that can be used by relative novices. A useful tool that I’ve used on the Creative Unions website is Usabilla, an excellent free website usability testing service. They allow free testing for up to 25 users. Jackob Nielsen, the father of web usability, suggests that you only need 5 test subjects to find around 90% of the problems with your website. Testing your campaign website has never been easier (or cheaper). Just make sure you act on the findings.

6. Monitor the media and social networks

There are many free tools that allow you to track news stories about your candidate, opponent or other important topics. Google Alerts can give you immediate email notification of news stories based on key words you choose.You can also get alerts for blogs, allowing you to respond to criticisms online, reply to questions or thank supporters.

Twitter has excellent tools to allow you to monitor key words in people’s updates. Twitter Search is basic, but there are other tools, such as Twendz, which gives you more information about what people are saying about a key word. This can be very useful to get up to the minute information about what is happening locally, or what people are saying about your, your opponent or the election generally.

7. Make it easy for supporters to donate, volunteer online

Wherever your campaign is online, you need to make it easy for supporters to get involved and help your campaign. There should be a clear way for a supporter to offer to volunteer to help your campaign. You should set up an online donation account. Your communications, online and offline, should emphasise how people can get involved.

Beware and be careful

Everything you do and say online can be accessed by anyone with an Internet connection. Once the campaigning starts, be aware that your opponents will be scrutinising your online activities as well as everything you do and say on the campaign trail.

Something will go wrong. 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 this 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 by the local paper or news outlet.

Do not try to hide it. Don’t delete the comment or tweet and hope that no one will notice – there are several websites that scan web pages and cache them, allowing people to look at stored versions of your website days, weeks or even months after you have removed the content.

Google Alerts and similar services will allow you to monitor what is being said, so you can make further responses as time goes on. Internet advertising will also allow you to keep your message on the front page of searches.

Some good rules of thumb to help prepare you for a crisis are:

Brainstorm with your campaign team some worst-case scenarios: Sit down and think about the worst that could happen. Try to think of ten things that could go wrong – for example: accidentally “friending” a known criminal or other undesirable person; running foul of spam laws; running out of money or a problem with fundraising; accusations of hypocrisy in the campaign (such as having a policy of supporting local businesses, but getting material printed outside the electorate, or supporting strong environmental standards but using unrecyclable paper)
Make someone responsible for responding to a crisis: Whether it’s the campaign manager or someone else with media/PR/communications experience, make sure there is someone who’s job it is to get on top of a crisis if or when it arises. This will mean that if something does happen, you won’t waste time figuring out who should respond. This person should be responsible for having a plan to respond to campaign hiccups. They should know who to talk to about getting a response out as soon as possible, such as the campaign website maintainer, and the candidate to make a media comment.
Pre-prepare some online keywords: Think about what keywords people will use to search online for more information about the crisis. Use positive words as well as negative ones. Your press releases, blog posts and videos can be optimised for these search terms, and it will save you time when the crisis hits.
Have a design, mailer or other material ready: Ask your campaign designer and/or webmaster to have a template ready for you to respond online and offline to the crisis. Having half the work done will mean you can respond much more quickly.
Find allies: Finding a third party to stand up for you is essential to crisis management. For online mishaps, getting a blogger to comment positively on the crisis, and link to your online response is a good way of getting your message out. Having the third party gives your message increased credibility. Hopefully, through your online engagement, there will be several people you can rely on – even if they are not local constituents.

Remember, online campaigning is not a silver bullet

Just because you have set up a Facebook page or joined Twitter, don’t neglect all of the other important activities of campaigning. You still need to fundraise, door knock, make phone calls, hold street stalls, and engage your electors in the flesh.

Use your union’s Facebook page to build your email list

Alex — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:45:58 +0000

Facebook is a tremendous communications tool for unions – especially white-collar unions – and with only a small amount of technical know-how, it can also be super-charged for organising and campaigning.

If you haven’t already, check my earlier articles about unions using Facebook: Best practice use of Facebook for unions and Using Facebook as an organising tool.

Many unions now sporting a Facebook Group, Profile or Page. What few unions know however is that Facebook allows you to add HTML into a Page to embed mailing list applications.

Build your union’s email list with Facebook

There is no doubt that Facebook is an essential place for unions to be present. With over 100 million monthly users in the USA alone, there is little point for unions to try to recreate their own social networking site (although unions should of course be aware that different demographics use different sites). Many union members and potential members are already regular users of Facebook.

Similarly, email is the most cost-effective means to reach large numbers of people – whether they are members, supporters, non-members and the general community.

The screenshot above is from the Creative Unions Facebook page. With only around an hours worth of fiddling, we were able to add a sign up form from our MailChimp account, with a nifty little graphic. This means that anyone who fills out the form will be automatically added to our MailChimp database.

By no means are we the first to do this. The SEIU Facebook page has a splash sign up form – presumably attached to whatever email service provider they use.

Facebook fans can be passionate fans of their union. Facebook allows fans to easily interact with your union – through the “like” feature or comments. By cultivating these fans, you can build a group of passionate online advocates. By keeping a regular stream of content, events and activities for your fans, you can keep them engaged, and build relationships with them. Facebook users are far more likely to use the “like” function than leave a comment – so it’s a good idea to treat comments like you would an email.

By adding an online email sign up form to your Facebook page, you can start to turn your Facebook fans into real campaign assets. While many unions will already have email addresses for members, the Facebook page can attract supporters and non-members as well. These are crucial groups to have contact information for.

Facebook pages are also easy to promote online. Once a person becomes a fan, it is far easier to encourage them to sign up for emails than if they had no other contact with your union.

Tutorials

There are two great tutorials on how to set up an email sign up form on your Facebook page. The MailChimp one is obviously focused on how to add a MailChimp form, but the theory is the same.

Note: this only works for Facebook pages. It does not work (yet) for groups or profiles. If your union does not yet have a Facebook page, I suggest you set one up as soon as possible.

MailChimp: Adding a Newsletter Subscribe Form to Your Facebook Fan Page

Return on Subscriber: Add a Newsletter Opt-In Box to your Facebook Page