Alex White » Twitter

End of Year blogging and tweeting: how I went in 2011

Alex — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:24:22 +0000

Last year I wrote a post about how I’d gone with my blogging and tweeting. Given that I’ve been blogging here since 2008 and elsewhere since 2004, I thought I’d share a few insights as someone who operates a very, very niche blog about union campaigning and politics.

Blog

This graph shows monthly readership (each bar represents a month, the first is January and so on). As you can see, I’ve had a topsy turvy year. This is largely due to inconsistent blogging, and the very low month in September represents when I turned off the blog while electioneering. The low December reflects the fact that we’re only half way through this month.

So, what are the top posts for 2011?In order, they are:

These posts reflect only and new content. My Social Media for Unions e-book for example was released in December 2010, but continued to gain strong interest throughout most of this year. Similarly, What union members want from their union’s communications was written in February 2010 and Best practice use of Facebook for unions was from 2009, but were viewed many times each week this year. The high ranking of my book review The Whites of their Eyes by Jill Lepore gains number three ranking due to a few links at StumbleUpon.

Last year, a lot of my traffic came from the Federal Election. This year, most of my traffic seems to have come from long-tail search results. I also got a lot of traffic from my email newsletter, which has continued to grow (more on that later).

My top referrers are:

Google (organic search terms)
Email (my e-newsletter)
Direct (people writing in the URL directly)
Facebook
Twitter
StumbleUpon
Creative Unions

A few other interestings stats. People read an average of 3.7 pages when they visit and spend 2:31 minutes reading. 64.14% of my visitors are first-time visitors, and my bounce rate (the number of people who read just one page) is 3.37%.

Twitter

I can’t show you my entire 2011 Twitter growth, but I can do so for the last three months.

I started 2011 in January with about 510 followers and have grown now to 775, at a rate of about 1 subscriber a day. Again, I can’t pick a specific reason for growth, although I have been actively involved in several of the major Twitter hashtags of 2011, including the Qantas dispute and Occupy Melbourne. Looking around, I suspect that word-of-mouth and recommendations is very important — so when someone with lots more followers (in the thousands or tens of thousands) comments on what you’ve tweeted (or retweets you), you pick up followers.

My Klout has been a bit varied, which I think reflects periods of high activity and engagement, and periods of relative silence (September for example). Changes to the Klout algorithm is the cause of the large increase and fall in Klout.

Email

This year I have made an effort to continue my subscriber growth from the explosive growth from December 2010. The large growth has principally been in January through the release of my Social Media for Unions e-book, which required subscribing to my list to download. Since then, most of the growth has come from people wanting to download one or more of my three e-books. About 37 people subscribe each month, and 3 unsubscribe, so that’s a good growth rate. I’m now sitting just under 1000 subscribers, which for a niche blog about union campaigning and politics, is not too bad. My subscribers are also fairly diverse, with most coming from the USA, Australia, Canada and the UK (in that order).

2011 in a wrap

Last year, I said “content is key”. This year, I’d have to say “add value”. The e-books that I’ve written have been a key source of interest for my readers, subscribers and followers. I’ve focused on trying to provide useful resources that fill gaps for union communicators, focusing on social media, email and online campaigning. I’ve tried to highlight interesting research and promote best practice digital and social media communication techniques for unions. Moreso than 2010, this year has been about trying to provide that assistance to the union movement.

Social media and political news reporting

Alex — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 22:35:43 +0000

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.

Five reasons your union should fix its website before getting onto social media

Alex — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 02:37:24 +0000

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.

Nuts and Bolts: Creating a social media schedule

Alex — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 23:37:06 +0000

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.

Retweeting for fun and advocacy

Alex — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 23:41:55 +0000

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Go where the members are

Alex — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 08:27:26 +0000

Over at Cyber Unions (a website promoting new technology adoption by unions), there’s a post questioning whether unions should use Facebook. Author Walton Pantland has several reasons for suggesting that unions avoid Facebook, including (paraphrasing) “Facebook is not union friendly”, there are “privacy issues”, and “it encourages clicktivism”. He finishes by suggesting that unions promote alternative social networks or websites that are union friendly.

I’ve heard this view elsewhere and I completely disagree.

My comment over at Cyber Unions is here:

The reality is that unions need to go where members (and potential members) are. Unions don’t sign up new members or organise existing ones by insisting that the members come to them. They house visit. They site visit. They call them on the phone.

And yes, they use the social networks that members use.

We can’t insist (in fact, it would be a fundamental mistake) that union members should use small, insignificant and feature-poor social networks like Union Book on the grounds that Union Book (et al) are ideologically pure. Of course Facebook is a business. Of course they aren’t union friendly. But newsflash. Unions deal with non-union friendly businesses and environments all the time. We deal with it. We overcome hurdles. We don’t throw up our arms and say “its all too difficult” and try to set up something new.

I think its fairly clear that unions using social media need to consider why they are using it and what they hope to achieve.

The kind of straw man argument that Facebook promotes “clicktivism” or “slacktivism” is largely disproven by numerous non-profit organisations who successfully promote their activities using social networks (e.g. 350.org).

Ultimately however, it’s about simple numbers. In Australia, the majority of people in this Sunburned Country are now using Facebook on a regular basis. Workers are using the Internet and social media at work between 30 to 60 minutes per day. I’m sure you won’t be surprised to read that they are not spending all that time looking their union’s website. They’re visiting news websites, blogs, Aussie Rules forums, travel sites, and… Facebook.

Unions need to be where their members are. Simple.

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.

Five useful and free tools to measure your union’s social-media impact

Alex — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 02:21:07 +0000

After setting up your Facebook page, your Twitter account, your MailChimp (or Campaign Advantage) account and your campaign website, what next?

Knowing whether your online campaigning and social media efforts are succeeding is important for any organisation, no more so than unions, who need to ensure that scarce resources are put to best effect.

(You’ve set goals, right?)

Metrics is the way you can check whether your union’s social media is delivering. Many unions overlook this part of the equation. There is also no clear consensus on what to measure – or how. Pageviews, referrals, retweets, likes, followers, opens, clicks, conversions – the list goes on and on. This diversity is partly because social media metrics is still maturing, and partly because different campaigns will have different goals.

However, if, like many unions, you’re just dipping your toe in the social-media water, here’s five useful (and free) tools to help you measure your impact. Most of these I use regularly – and they help me get a snap-shot of how the various organisations and campaigns I run or help are travelling on the various social media platforms.

1. Klout

Klout is a fantastic little tool that measures your “influence” on Twitter and Facebook.There are many different variables that use, including followers, re-tweets, and “network. Here’s how they describe social-media influence:

We believe that influence is the ability to drive people to action — “action” might be defined as a reply, a retweet, a comment, or a click. We perform significant testing to ensure that the average click-through rate on links shared is highly correlated with a person’s Klout Score.

If you’ve read many of my earlier blog posts about online campaigning and social media, you’ll see why I like Klout. Social media and online campaign should be all about getting people to do something. While Klout can’t measure people doing things in the real world, it can measure people doing something on social networking sites.

2. Wildfire

Wildfire is a nifty little app that lets you compare the performance of several organisations on Facebook and Twitter. I really like it because, as it says “no company is an island” – and no union is an island. While there’s not much point in unions comparing themselves to each other, you can check how you are faring compared to an employer. For example, I could check the NTEU against the social media performance of a university.

Wildfire is also a good tool to create benchmarks for your campaign – for example looking at a union with a similar membership demographic or membership size. How are they doing? How long have they been on Facebook or Twitter? This then helps you set expectations and milestones.

3. Facebook Insights

If you’ve ever set up a Facebook page, you’ll be reasonably familiar with Facebook insights – which is like a simpler, friendlier version of Google Analytics for your page.

As a Page admin, your dashboard gives you access to a trove of data: daily active users, monthly active users, daily new likes, daily interactions such as comments, geographic location of your visitors (broken down by country, city and language), external referrals, internal link traffic and more. When you have spikes of user engagement, Insights will show you caused them.

There are limits to Facebook Insights and it can be unreliable sometimes, but it’s getting better.

4. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the indispensible tool for getting a comprehensive picture of your online campaigns. The Google API means that it integrates with a lot of other fantastic tools – like MailChimp (so you can also track the success of your email campaigns) or Google Ads (so you can measure that success of your online keyword advertising).

Unless you’re really into large-scale campaigns with a lot of resources, most of the tools offered by Google Analytics will probably be more than you need, but in the right hands, it can be one of the most powerful metric-measurement tools in your kit.

I find it useful to give my union leaders and other decision-makers a good understanding of the most important parts of a website and some important measures. For example, the bounce-rate, popular pages and exit pages are all important pieces of information. It can be tempting for unions to create mamoth websites with 100s of pages, but if 99% of the traffic goes to either the “Join” page and the “Contact” page then that tells you something about the interests of the site’s visitors. Similarly, if your bounce-rate is very high (the bounce-rate is the number of people who look at one page only, then leave the site), then you can consider how engaging or “user-friendly” your site is.

5. Postrank

I like Postrank because it easily integrates with WordPress and Google Analytics, and gives me a great snapshot of the engagement of my readership. As Postrank say “80% of the engagement with your content doesn’t happen on your site” it happens in social media. Postrank does a good job of finding most of the social-media commentary on your content – although it does miss one very important (but elusive) source of engagement: forums.

Nevertheless, Postrank is useful for campaigns – and lets you find where people are talking about your issue and engage with them. It comes with both a free and premium service, but unless you’ve got a lot of resources to devote to social media, the free version is good enough to provide you with a useful snapshot of what’s going on.

Any other great tools?

These are five tools I use regularly – and they are free. What are some other great tools out there that you use?

Social media and real political change

Alex — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 02:44:52 +0000

Clay Shirky, a Professor of New Media at New York University, has penned a fascinating article in the Foreign Affairs magazine about the political power of social media and its role in facilitating political change. This article is exceptionally interesting for anyone interested in the role of social media in the real world, and Prof. Lucas not only “gets” social media, but he clearly has done his research.

Lucas includes in his scope of social media the all important role of SMS text messaging, which is especially important in the developing world where access to smart phones and the Internet is less prevalent. For campaigners and social media enthusiasts, underestimating the importance of mobile phones is perilous.

On January 17, 2001, during the impeachment trial of Philippine President Joseph Estrada, loyalists in the Philippine Congress voted to set aside key evidence against him. Less than two hours after the decision was announced, thousands of Filipinos, angry that their corrupt president might be let off the hook, converged on Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, a major crossroads in Manila. The protest was arranged, in part, by forwarded text messages reading, “Go 2 EDSA. Wear blk.” The crowd quickly swelled, and in the next few days, over a million people arrived, choking traffic in downtown Manila.

The public’s ability to coordinate such a massive and rapid response — close to seven million text messages were sent that week — so alarmed the country’s legislators that they reversed course and allowed the evidence to be presented. Estrada’s fate was sealed; by January 20, he was gone. The event marked the first time that social media had helped force out a national leader. Estrada himself blamed “the text-messaging generation” for his downfall.

Lucas takes us through a number of revolutions and coups that involved wide-scale social protests that were aided through the coordination of social media. (Not all of them were successful.)

His conclusion is that hierarchical regimes, especially totalitarian, dictatorial regimes, are threatened by social media because they allow large groups of people to coordinate their activities. Social media is dangerous precisely because its normal use is innocuous and “safe” – most people use social media to tell the world about the grilled-cheese sandwich they had for lunch or to post photos of their pets. Social media – and mobile communications – becomes ubiquitous.

And that creates risk for those regimes. Risk because any clamp down can radicalise the majority of users who are not protesting against the regime. If the regime tries to shut down those social networks, lots of people notice and get upset. It can raise awareness amongst the disinterested, disengaged citizens about the injustices or crimes of the regime. Clamping down on social media more broadly, such as blocking the Internet or turning off mobile phones, can cause significant economic damage to the regime, as industries and economic sectors no longer function as efficiently (or at all).

Despite all of this, in my view – and something that Lucas discusses – social media is not itself a catalyst for social or political change. The mere presence of Facebook or Twitter-users amongst a regime’s populace will not result in unrest or demonstrations.

The social unrest in Egypt was bubbling away for years before 2011. A recent WikiLeak suggests that the seeds of the February 2011 revolution were already sown by late 2008, by activists called the April 6 Youth Movement who wanted to unseat Mubarak prior to the scheduled September 2011 elections.

Instead, social media allows dissatisfied citizens to do what they always did – but faster. Revolutions, uprising, revolts and coups in the past have built pressure through sharing of ideas that question the regime. In Europe during the Enlightenment, the bourgeoise demanded democracy from the aristocracy. They used the printing press to spread their ideas to a much larger audience than word of mouth could have. Of course, during this time, most printing presses were used for mundane things – more Europeans were reading bawdy Chaucerian tales than Luther’s 95 Theses. A crackdown on printing presses however, raised the consciousness of people who were otherwise uninterested in the democratic cause.

Social media helps spread those ideas much faster than ever before – and because most social media operates in real time, it allows large groups of people to develop a shared situational awareness. When large groups of people come together like we saw in Egypt, social media assists in that group coming to shared group decision making – often called distributed decision making. Distributed dicision making occurs in environments where the decision makers are physically separated, and where there are multiple agents, each responsible for a portion of the decision making effort.

Social media assists these semiautonomous decision makers to share information and coordinate their activities to arrive at decision that achieve the general objectives of the group. In an interconnected world, the Internet allows this to occur in real time. By tweeting, sharing status updates and sending text messages, the distributed groups of protesters can distribute information to each other quickly and personally. A bridge between previous isolated groups or individuals is formed.

Ultimately, social media does not in itself cause social or political change. If this were the case, then we would see a lot more unrest in the developed world. But totalitarian regimes will continue to struggle to match the pace that social media allows protests and unrest to develop. Each action they take – the crackdowns, censorship, mass-arrests or killling of protesting civilians – only risks radicalising a growing portion of the populace.

The key to the success of protests involving social media is not that they involve social media. As Lucas points out, for every successful revolution or coup involving Twitter or text messaging, there is one that failed. What is key is that social media helps those groups get oxygen, build momentum and coordinate their activities. For nations without a developed civil society, social media creates a virtual town square for these ideas to be shared.

Without the indivudals and groups taking action in the real world, nothing would change. Sending a tweet, updating Facebook or posting a photo to Flickr doesn’t substitute for real world action. It is only powerful to the extent it excites someone to do something real – attend the rally at Liberty Square, stand up to the secret police, engage in civil disobedience, etc.

Some thoughts about Egypt and social media

Alex — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 22:46:55 +0000

There’s been a lot written about the role that Facebook and Twitter has played in the overthrow of the Mubarak regime in Egypt – and also Ben Ali in Tunisia – so I thought I’d add my own thoughts.

There are two main things I want to focus on:

1. The power of weak ties

2. A virtual civil society

Egypt and the Middle East has a growing educated middle class. From what I’ve read, youth unemployment (and unemployment generally) was very high – in excess of 10 percent. This is a tinder-block for dissatisfaction and unrest. In a very simplified historical overview, revolutionary situations have mostly been led by the middle classes or educated groups demanding more rights and civil liberties (as well as reacting to economic woes, poverty and unemployment).

Firstly, weak ties. Social networking is an excellent medium to create scores, or hundreds, of weak ties. The friend of a friend, a distant relative, and acquaintance, so on. 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.

In Egypt, these weak ties meant that disaffected Egyptians were able to share their anger and desire for action with an audience far larger than just the people they knew personally. Their tweeting and Facebook updates were able to reach a large audience of like-minded, angry, disaffected, and educated Egyptians. With no single guiding force or organisation behind the uprising against Mubarak, the strength of weak ties meant that the independent fire-starters had their message shared widely. The “crowd” effect of social media aided this. As more and more people shared or re-tweeted the calls to action, it galvanised people who otherwise would never have heard of the uprising.

Secondly, a virtual civil society. Developing countries like Egypt – especially ones with totalitarian regimes – have a weak or thin civil society. Civil society is an essential pre-requisite for any social change. The metaphorical town square, it also includes the discourse and debates that occur between the technicians of the ruling classes – the lawyers, doctors, judges, teachers, and other educated professionals in the society.

Under a dictatorship, civil society is stunted and deformed: there is no space for the free debate that is characteristic of western liberal democracies. Social media allowed the middle classes of Egypt to create a virtual civil society in place of a physical one. These online tools created space for the growing educated middle class to air their dissatisfaction and anger with few of the repercussions of doing so “in the real world”.

Ultimately these two things converged in real world action. Twitter alone or Facebook alone would not have toppled Mubarak. By assisting real people to come together and take action in the real world, social networking aided the protesters in ways that have not existed before.

I’m no expert on Egyptian politics – and obviously I’m a long way away from Cairo, so I don’t have any special insights from the ground. These thoughts are based on watching and reading the constant news that has come out of Egypt over the last few weeks, and they are fairly brief. More could be written (and no doubt will be) about the role of online communication and social networking played in Egypt. (More could also be written about the role that mobile technology played.)

Spontaneous social action organised on Twitter to oppose cuts in UK

Alex — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 06:50:18 +0000

Imagine a parallel universe where the Great Crash of 2008 was followed by a Tea Party of a very different kind. Enraged citizens gather in every city, week after week—to demand the government finally regulate the behavior of corporations and the superrich, and force them to start paying taxes. The protesters shut down the shops and offices of the companies that have most aggressively ripped off the country. The swelling movement is made up of everyone from teenagers to pensioners. They surround branches of the banks that caused this crash and force them to close, with banners saying, You Caused This Crisis. Now YOU Pay.

This is exactly what is happening in the UK – where the UK Uncut movement started by targeting prominent and egregious corporate tax-evaders.

On October 27th 2010, just one week after Tory Chancellor George Osborne announced the deepest cuts to public services since the 1920s, around 70 people ran along Oxford Street, entered Vodafone’s flagship store and sat down.

The magazine Private Eye reported that one company alone—Vodafone, one of Britain’s leading cellphone firms—owed an outstanding bill of £6 billion to the British taxpayers. According to Private Eye, Vodaphone had been refusing to pay for years, claiming that a crucial part of its business ran through a post office box in ultra-low-tax Luxembourg. The last Labour government, for all its many flaws, had insisted it pay up.

But when the Conservatives came to power, David Hartnett, head of the British equivalent of the Internal Revenue Service, apologized to rich people for being “too black and white about the law.” Soon after, Vodafone’s bill was reported to be largely canceled, with just over £1 billion paid in the end. Days later George Osborne, the finance minister, was urging people to invest in Vodafone by taking representatives of the company with him on a taxpayer-funded trip to India—a country where that company is also being pursued for unpaid taxes. Vodafone and Hartnett deny this account, claiming it was simply a longstanding “dispute” over fees that ended with the company paying the correct amount. The government has been forced under pressure to order the independent National Audit Office to investigate the affair and to pore over every detail of the corporation’s tax deal.

“It was clear to us that if this one company had been made to pay its taxes, almost all these people could have been kept from being forced out of their homes,” says Sam Greene, another of the protesters. “We keep being told there’s no alternative to cutting services. This just showed it was rubbish. So we decided we had to do something.”

The message of UK Uncut is simple: if corporate tax dodgers pay the tax they owe, then the massive cuts to welfare, education and hospitals won’t be needed.

A sign of the partial success of UK Uncut already is the smear attempts by conservative news outlets and commentators, particularly the Murdoch tabloid The Sun. The UK Uncut movement was derided as anarchists and Christmas-spoilers. However it is notable that most conservatives in the UK kept silent or grudgingly admitted that something should be done about tax dodging.

Originally UK Uncut existed solely as a Twitter hashtag – #ukuncut – dreamed up the night before the protest. It tapped into something, an undercurrent of dissatisfaction with the Tories felt by many people in Britain. As it grew, it was organised entirely on Twitter. A Twitter account was established (@UKuncut), as was a website. Votes were taken on Twitter as to potential next targets.

The UK Uncut website give advice on how to organise actions; it’s opening gambit points to the nature of the movement:

UK Uncut is your movement. There are no centrally planned actions. If you have an idea for an action, or want one on your high street, it’s up to you to make it happen.

A key to the campaign was that it was spontaneous. There is no activist organisation resourcing the campaign or coordinating protesters. No one controls it, and it isn’t made up of “the usual suspects”. In fact, people joined the protests by staging their own local ones. Many of the people involved in the protests had never done so before.

As one UK Uncut participant, Becky Anadeche, explains, “So many campaigns rely on the premise that the less you ask somebody to do, the more likely they are to do it. This campaign has proved the opposite. People who have never even been on a protest before have been organizing them.”

For countries that have felt the brunt of the Global Financial Crisis, it could be easy to slide towards the Tea Party-style populist conservatism, with astro-turf campaigns bankrolled by billionaire Republicans (like the Koch Brothers have in Wisconsin). The voodoo economists of the World Bank and other right-wing economic institutions have proscribed “austerity” as the cure for Europe and America’s economic woes; using the crisis as an opportunity to dismantle the welfare state.

That’s why the UK Uncut movement is so intriguing. It has broken through the complacent (or complicit) media and is causing waves in the UK. It is starting to hold the Liberal Democrats (partners of the Tories) to account. It’s broken the frame that protests have typically used – a march down the main street organised by a left-wing group or two, followed by speeches and a slow dribble back home.

I’ll watch the UK Uncut movement a bit more closely in future. As the UK Uncut website says: Vodafone’s own slogan is “Power to You.” It couldn’t be more appropriate.