I recently stumbled across the website of Illinois Education Association (Regions 14 & 62) which I think is an excellent example of a union using an inexpensive Premium WordPress Theme to create a professional, feature rich website.

It’s worth highlighting this website to give union communicators and officials an example of what can be achieved using WordPress, a free, open-source content management system, combined with an off-the-shelf professional template.

As you can see, the site has a nice, modern professional appearance. It includes a scrolling carousel for featured content, and further down, there are social media links, a way to sign up to the union’s email updates, and an event calendar. What’s more, because it is built using WordPress, and the theme has been developed by a professional design firm (Studio Press), it will continue to get security updates for the foreseeable future (and Studio Press also provides ongoing, free support). It also comes with built-in search engine optimisation (from WordPress, and the theme), which is an important feature.

If I were to make any recommendations for improvement, it would be: get a custom favicon, and include an online joining page. I also hope that the email subscription uses MailChimp or another professional email marketing service, and that they have Google Analytics installed.

On the right, you can see the screenshot of the original, generic theme (and here’s the link to where you can buy it). Clearly, the IEA haven’t customised the theme much, but let’s be honest: they don’t need to. The default theme looks nice and professional — so all the union needed to do was add their own content and plonk on their logo.

Choosing to go the WordPress road is good for a lot of things, but isn’t necessarily the answer for every union website.

WordPress is excellent for getting up professional websites that are inexpensive and fast. WordPress can be deployed in just a few days or a weeks (depending on how much content is needed). It is very flexible, and in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing, it will look great and have a lot of useful features. New content can be easily added, including pages, blogs, and with proper plugins, events and more. Many of the “features” spruiked by design agencies and in-house CMSs come standard with WordPress, like drop down menus, customisable URLs/permalinks, blogs, page templates, comments and threaded comments, built-in SEO, built-in RSS feeds, and so on.

However, it does have limitations. For very complex websites, or unions with a desire to integrate their membership database with their website, WordPress may not be the best solution. Most of the reasons that you wouldn’t choose WordPress are technical ones relating to your specific needs or existing infrastructure. Other reasons include the federated/local/branch nature of unions, creating expansive hierarchies of editors and users (for example, layers of editorial control across state, national and local levels, etc), something that WordPress doesn’t handle very well out of the box.

Your choice of CMS for union website should be based on the goals of the website, and your union’s budget.

Related posts:

1. Why using free web services for your union campaign website is a bad move
2. Setting up a website for your union campaign
3. The mining-tax scare website is an excellent case study

Some very interesting research by the GfK Roper Group into what reasons were important when deciding to buy a brand may be of some use for unions thinking about recruitment.

The research (from 1992) looked at the reasons that people bought brands, and according to the report, “knowing what to expect from a product because of past experience was the most common reason for buying a particular brand.”

Roper Report - Consumer Reasons for Brand Choice (1992)

The next strongest associations are likely to be formed on the basis of word-of-mouth (friends, family, colleagues, etc) or other non-commercial sources of information (consumer groups, media, etc). The report notes that word of mouth is likely to be particularly important for service organisations. “Company-influenced sources of information such as advertising are often likely to create the weakest associations and thus may be the most easily changed.”

What does this mean for unions?

Brand associations are critical determinants of what information will be recalled by someone, and therefore affects their “brand decisions” — that is, their choices to buy a product or service, or join a union. The strength of an association depends on how the information is initially processed as it enters someone’s memory and where it is actually locarted as a result. There are two ways to build “brand association” — commonly known as encoding and storage.

Encoding is two things: the quantity of information a person receives and the quality of their processing that information. Simply, this means the more times a person is exposed to a brand, the more likely they are to recall it, and likewise, the more they focus their attention on a brand, the more likely they are to recall it (and vice versa, exposure when the person is distracted means they are less likely to recall the brand). Other factors like consistency and congruity come into play as well (for example, the ease at which new information can be integrated with existing perceptions, or the brand’s inherent simplicity or vividness).

Storage is affected by a range of things, like the presence of other brand information, exposure time and “retrieval cues” (when a brand name is on the tip of the tongue).

Simply put, the more a union symbol is present in the workplace, the more it is encoded — similarly, positive word of mouth from colleagues improves the quality of the encoding.

For unions there are two take-aways from this research:

1. Someone’s past experience with a union is likely to be the most important determinant of whether they will join a union. This means that unions should think carefully about non-member outreach, how non-members are treated and referred to, and how the union is generally perceived. For an organiser, it may mean that a non-member with a “bad union experience” may not be worth trying to join up, whereas former members (even from other unions) should be prime targets. For lead organisers and union communicators, it is worth remembering that non-member “experience” the union even when they are not members — and even this second-hand experience can be important.

More generally, it suggests that peak bodies like the ACTU or trades halls should try to keep a record of past-members that can be accessed by union growth-teams. Knowing that someone has previously been a union member from another sector may dramatically increase their likelihood of joining a new union. When someone resigns from a union, their name could be passed on to the ACTU register. Unions undertaking a recruitment drive could enter in names of prospects or non-member lists into the database and see who was previous a union member.

2. Building a union’s presence in the workplace is important in shaping experience and fostering word of mouth. I’ve written before about the power of social proof and endorsements. With a growing number of people in Australia (and the world) never having a direct experience of joining a union, unions must increasingly shape second-hand experience to build positive engagement with future members. Of course, the most powerful brand advocates for unions are existing members and delegates, who should be encouraged to display union signs and symbols to create social norms.

The final, less important, take-away is that media exposure and the attitudes of political leaders is much less important than union leaders and organisers often think it is. Although Howard and the News Ltd media demonised unions, what is more important is personal experience, word of mouth and things in the union’s own control (price, quality).

Addendum

What is obviously not covered in this research is the question of union brands themselves. Do unions have their own individual (“corporate”) brands? Is there just a single “Brand Union”? Do people see the difference between one union and another at a brand level?

The ACTU did a lot of work creating the campaign brand “Your Rights at Work” — but four years on from the defeat of the Howard Government, how many people outside of the union movement and politics remember the brand or the campaign? The ACTU unsuccessfully tried to create a “Australian Unions” meta-brand to sit across individual union brands. But without the money to spend on seriously creating brand equity, the project was never going to succeed.

For individual unions, the answer will influence how much a union may decide to try to create their own brand. Some unions may have very high brand recall — like the teachers union (AEU) or construction union (CFMEU). For those unions, high investment in branding exercises is probably appropriate. For smaller unions though… are the efforts of the broader movement likely to overwhelm their individual efforts? A topic for future research.

Related posts:

1. Using endorsements for your union recruitment
2. Lessons from Museum Exhibit Labels for Union Communications
3. What union members want from their union's communications

In Australia, around 2 million working people are members of a union. Across the world, tens of millions more have joined their union. With the myriad public campaigns, collective bargaining, and workplace activity that unions engage in competing for attention from workers and the community, it is essential that unions effectively community and market their activities. We need to be able to cut through the noise and congestion.

This survey is aimed at understanding what kinds of marketing and communications activities take place within unions, what our strengths and weaknesses are, what our priorities are and where the gaps are. It is primarily aimed at communications and marketing, rather than the organising or industrial support work that unions undertake.

Although I’m in Australia and my experience with unions is Australian, I have tried to make this survey as “international” as possible.

Related posts:

1. Top social media tips for unions – UNI Global Union Communications talk
2. Best practice use of Facebook for unions
3. What union members want from their union's communications

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

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

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

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

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

And the main take aways:

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

Read the entire Wildfire post here.

Related posts:

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

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

Top Social Media Tips for Unions

Basis of my views are the Creative Unions manifesto.

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

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

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

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

My top tips

1. Social media is about conversation

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

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

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

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

2. Ownership and relationships

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

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

3. Make your social media purpose driven

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

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

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

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

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

4. Track your progress, set goals

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

5. Don’t forget the basics

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

Caveats

There is no silver bullet

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

Don’t expect millions of followers overnight

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

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

It takes time and resources to do properly

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

There needs to be a purpose

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

Go where the members are (aka, why Facebook)

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

Design is important – even in social media

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

Everything is archived and public

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

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

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

Website References

www.creativeunions.org

www.alexwhite.org

www.mortartown.com

Related posts:

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

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.

Related posts:

1. Communicate, don’t sell
2. Four pillars of social networking
3. Five reasons your union should fix its website before getting onto social media

Research conducted by Swinburne Universityprofessor Dr Rajesh Vasa and internet firm MailGuard into social media habits of 50,000 workers has revealed that the average worker spends between 30 to 60 minutes online for personal reasons each day.

While other studies have drawn on consumer data and qualitative research, this is the first to scrutinise individual behaviour over an extended period.

The uses of internet for personal reasons tend to be comparatively banal: people check the news, weather and transport timetables. Sports news sites are particularly popular and online shopping is rising.

Only 20 per cent of staff were classified by the researchers as ‘heavy explorers’, exceeding a baseline of ‘normal’ that was set at 200 websites a month. It’s at this level that staff productivity is considered to deteriorate.

This information is especially interesting for unions who are considering engaging in social media as a serious, ongoing concern.

Why?

Because so many workers are online during work hours, on social networks like Facebook, this presents avenues for unions to communicate with members and potential members.

There are also avenues for unions to examine targeted online advertising, using Google Adwords and other services, to get messages onto the sites where potential members spend their time.

Related posts:

1. Why unions should embrace social media
2. Five reasons your union should fix its website before getting onto social media
3. Top social media tips for unions – UNI Global Union Communications talk

Deloitte’s third annual State of the Media Democracy report was recently released and it has some interesting reading for union communication professionals.

Within that decision-making process, recommendations continue to be a powerful influence. Overall, 53% of respondents said they had decided against making a purchase based on an online recommendation, but among 18-24- and 25-34-year-olds this proportion was much higher (see graph). Clearly, as consumers research products online, negative recommendations can have a substantial impact on them.

In fact, half of respondents agreed that online reviews and ratings influenced their buying decisions more than any other form of online advertising, while only 26% disagreed (the rest had no strong opinion).

Recommendations from people who have already used the product or service. Outside of the commercial mind-space, there remains a large knowledge-gap amongst unions about the willingness or otherwise of union members to recommend to their friends and colleagues that they also join a union. There is only one piece of research that I have seen (an ACTU report) that suggests that unions could do a lot better on this front.

And yet, unions have intuitively known that recommendations and third-party endorsements are powerful. The axiom that “like recruits like” readily springs to the lips of many an organiser who relies on their delegates and activists to sign up new members, rather than doing it themselves. We know that members in the workplace have more credibility in encouraging new members to join their union than an organiser who only visits the site once every few weeks.

Somehow, this truism has not necessarily translated into a more systematic approach to recommendations in many unions.

The advertising industry has long understood the power of third-party endorsements – as have our political parties.

During the 2008 election and the primaries before it, Barack Obama relied heavily on third party endorsements – including celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and (pictured above) Bill Clinton. Building on the trust and credibility that the endorser has with the audience, the endorsee (Obama) benefits from the pre-existing relationship.

Obama’s campaign also relied on normal Obama for America volunteers sharing their stories about why they would vote for him. By talking to their friends and family, these OFA volunteers were able to help sweep Obama to victory in 2008.

Unions do use recommendations – member-organisers for example, or by putting their members’ faces on promotional material and membership forms.

But there surely is a lot more that we can do.

Online campaigning for example could include an effort to get existing union members to “review” their union – and encourage members to share positive stories.

With more and more potential members doing “research” about unions online, it’s important that unions engage more thoroughly in countering negative – and anti-union – stories. Sites that denigrate or attack unions are especially dangerous – as the Deloitte report shows. People are very likely to be influenced by negative “reviews” – and anti-union sites more often than not portray themselves as disinterested or neutral, rather than partisan.

Related posts:

1. Lessons for union recruitment: brand choice research
2. What union members want from their union's communications
3. Use your union’s Facebook page to build your email list

Museums face a profound challenge – explaining potentially very complicated exhibits to diverse audiences that are both accessible and accurate. There is a growing field of study focusing on how to make exhibit labels as effectively as possible without “dumbing down” the information.

Recently I read an interesting article by Jennifer Blunden – Dumbing down for museum audiences–necessity or myth (link to pdf) – that examines this challenge – which I think contains important principles that are more generally useful in good communications.

What other situation attempts to convey information in written, narrative form, intermixed with objects, images and often multimedia, in a relatively non-sequential, three-dimensional space, to an audience that is simultaneously negotiating all kinds of obstacles, browsing and often socialising? However, in many ways also exhibitions share characteristics with other texts which are written by experts but intended for non-specialists — brochures, books, educational materials, websites, multimedia and the like.

Doesn’t that sound like something union communicators have to face all the time?

A challenge constantly facing communications professionals is how to write for an audience that is not necessarily made up of experts in your field. For example, industrial relations for unions is a very specialised field with lots of jargon – and the temptation for unions is to fill leaflets, posters, newsletters and emails with jargon, too much detail and dry information. Similarly, the places where union information is displayed is often mixed up with other material – employer bulletins, old union posters, or in the case of email, 100s of other emails. What’s more, our audience is often under pressure – from their work and life generally – but also from information overload or the physical space.

The tips below are for communicating scholarly information – but could be broadly applicable for any specialised information.

Checklist for creating accessible, scholarly texts

The following checklist summarises strategies that can help create texts which succeed in engaging a broad public audience without sacrificing scholarship:

• if the content is unfamiliar, use everyday language and take the space to explain your ideas properly. When a text has dense content you need to lighten its physical and linguistic density so the reader’s conceptual space is not overloaded
• simulate the elements of spoken language Use pauses, questions and variations in speed, volume, stress and rhythm to create a conversational style, echo the text and enhance meaning
• use familiar words If less familiar or technical terms are important, take the time and space to dei ne them properly. Use the more familiar term first, and then assist learning by repeating the new term in context, for example, ‘smell (olfactory) receptors’ and ‘cocoa butter has to be specially cooled and reheated (tempered) during the process. Tempering maintains a high fat content …’
• introduce your characters A few extra words can include rather than exclude your readers: , for example, ‘convict architect Francis Greenway’, ‘critic and writer Robert Hughes’ and ‘American minimalist painter Barnett Newman’
• relate unfamiliar/complex ideas to the experience of the reader. This may require stretching your imagination, for example, ‘Like people at parties, galaxies are found in groups …’
• maintain a clear thematic structure in your paragraphs, even if this means using the passive voice. In English, the theme is always located at the start of the sentence or its principal clause
• use descriptive adjectives and adverbs to help make information/people more memorable and multi-dimensional, for example, ‘the peppery Frederick McCoy’ and ‘clubs were enthusiastically established across Australia’.
• keep your principal clauses intact Don’t fragment the main idea with subordinate ideas/clauses, for example,

born in Scotland in 1826, Marion Smith made this quilt from fabrics given to her by family and friends. After decades of loving use, she gave the quilt to her eldest granddaughter.

not

Marion Smith, who was born in Scotland in 1826, made this quilt, which she gave to her eldest granddaughter after decades of loving
use, from fabrics given to her by family and friends.

• include the footnotes You don’t need to leave them out. You can also use footnotes as a way of layering information for ‘mixed’ audiences.

Writing for a museum is a fairly unique thing to do. For example, most union communications wouldn’t need footnotes.

Nevertheless, the advice from Blunden is, in my view, worth keeping in mind when you try to explain complex information about industrial or other specialised issues to non-specialists.

Related posts:

1. Six effective print communications tips for union campaigns
2. Lessons for union recruitment: brand choice research
3. What union members want from their union's communications

As membership based organisations, unions regularly send emails to their members. Most members accept – and even expect – regular email updates from their union.

By following good email etiquette, unions can ensure their emails are less likely to be junked.

Despite this, unions should still respect the principles of good email etiquette when it comes to unsubscribing and permission-based sending. This is especially the case when your union is running a campaign that sends emails to people who are not members but support the union’s campaign.

Most professional email services (such as Mailchimp, or my own Campaign Advantage) have these principles hard-wired into them. So it can be a good idea to review what good email etiquette is.

When someone gives their email address to your union, they are generally entrusting you with a responsibility to not misuse that information.

Get permission

Make sure the people you’re sending emails to have given you permission to send them emails.

This may seem obvious – especially since union members “opt in” when they join your union. If you can, you should try to add a note on your membership form that specifically states that they will receive emails from the union – this makes it absolutely clear for the member, and you, that they will receive emails.

If you’re running a campaign and are collecting email addresses, make sure you also include a specific opt in tick box or clause on the petition or form you are using.

By not getting permission, you also run the risk of your emails being marked as spam. Most large organisations (where your members likely work) use spam-blocking services. If a significant number of people mark your emails as spam, it can get you, your host or your service black-listed, which means that lots of your emails will never reach their intended recipient (this is the case for using third-party lists below).

Don’t use third-party lists

This is the simple exension of the first point. Don’t use emails you get from someone else. In most cases, it is against spam laws, and even if it’s not, the people whose emails you are being given or (hopefully not) have purchased are not expecting emails from you.

This is even the case if you get emails from another union or peak body. If you are running a campaign in a sector with another union or group, rather than get their list to send emails to, ask that organisation to send an email from them on your behalf.

Also, this almost goes without saying, don’t buy lists. I’ve received emails from businesses offering lists of emails of people associated with the sector my union works in. Bought email lists are bad news – they are rarely accurate, and the people whose emails you are being offered have not opted in to get your emails.

What’s more, most professional email services won’t allow them.

Remove unsubscribes as soon as possible

Most spam laws require bulk emails to include a “one click” unsubscribe method at the end of the email. It is your responsibility as a good email-citizen to remove the email addresses of people who no longer want to receive your emails from your list.

Professional email services will do this automatically, but some people reply to emails they receive asking to be removed manually. Make sure you check your manual unsubscribe before sending any bulk-emails.

For emails of non-members – gained for a campaign – this is a no-brainer. The person who wants to unsubscribe simply doesn’t want to receive your campaign emails any more.

When members want to unsubscribe, it’s a bit more complicated. Obviously as a union, you have the right to communicate with your members. You may have an obligation to send them information regarding their rights to attend Annual General Meetings or similar events.

However, a member who wants to unsubscribe from your bulk-emails is basically telling you that they don’t read your emails anyway. Is it really worth sending them emails they won’t read – and that may annoy them when they keep receiving them?

Stay on topic

This isn’t that hard for a union – but it’s worth keeping in mind. If someone has subscribed to campaign updates about your issue – such as industrial action or wage case – then all your emails should be about that issue. You shouldn’t send them, out of the blue, an offer about cheap homeloans from Members Equity, or deals from Union Shopper – or updates about an unrelated campaign issue.

Similarly for members, it’s a good idea in the first email to a new member, to set out what kind of updates they can expect from you. You may send out periodic e-newsletters, campaign updates, messages from the Secretary or media releases – so you should let your new member know to expect those in their inbox.

If your email service can handle it, you could set up groups or segments – which cover the various types of topics you’re likely to send emails about. This can let your members decide what kinds of emails they want to recieve.

The bonus is that if you stay on topic, and give some of this power back to your members, they’re far more likely to remain interested and engaged with your emails, rather than just hitting “spam” or “delete”.

Related posts:

1. Five reasons why unions should care about email
2. Email tip for unions: don’t overload your members
3. Use your union’s Facebook page to build your email list

I’ve had a recent surge in traffic from an interesting website, HR Communicator, pointing to my article showcasing union websites.

This should be a salutarywarning that as unions become more active, management of the companies where your members work will be checking your website.

Of course, this shouldn’t scare you – just be aware of it.

Be careful about what you put on the site, but don’t live in fear that your every word will cause a libel courtcase. The last thing you want happening is that your website never gets updated or has no content because you’re affraid that the bosses will read it and “uncover” your strategy, download special “delegate only” material or read training manuals for activists. Most employers don’t give a damn, and those that do are unlikely to use what they find on your site effectively.

Related posts:

1. Four harsh truths about union websites
2. The 10 second rule for website usability
3. If you manage your union’s website, this is required reading

Google has updated its Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) guide – two years after it first published it.

Search engine optimisation is very important for all websites – but union websites are serial offenders when it comes to SEO.

Simply put, SEO is about making your website easy for search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo to find and categorise your content. If you want your campaign web page, blog post or media release to be easily found by people on the internet, then SEO is essential.

If your website is optimised for search engines, then your site will rank highly when people search for your “key words” – the search terms that people look for.

If a web development company has created your website for you, then make sure they’re on to SEO.

Afterall, there’s no point in spending a lot of time and money creating a site that no one can find.

(This is also required reading for local political campaigns who manage their own candidate website.)

Related posts:

1. Thoughts on website development for unions
2. Five reasons your union should fix its website before getting onto social media
3. Use A/B split-testing for your union website