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Advocacy

Lets Get Local: Using Social Media in State and Local Campaigns

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Earlier this week, Jacob and I were joined by a colleague, Karen Middleton of Emerge America, at the Nonprofit Technology Conference where the three of us spoke about the use of social media in state and local advocacy campaigns.

The three of us are longtime activists and advocacy campaigners. Jacob and Karen are both former elected officials (Jacob a city council member and mayor, Karen a state legislator and member of the state board of education). Having served, they bring a unique perspective to the discussion. We explored the challenges that elected officials face, particularly those at the state and local level where resources are highly constrained.

Saul Alinsky in Chicago, 1966. We may be communicating digitally but it's still about organizing relationships.

The framework of our presentation was tied together by the premise that while social media (and email and other online communications) are digital (or virtual, if you like), advocacy is local and, especially at the state and local level, the work of influencing local elected officials is all about relationships. Understanding how the people in your online networks know and relate to officials goes a long way towards using social media in a powerful and strategic way.

We had a great discussion with people in the room, many of whom are engaged in some strong campaigns. Nancy Marks from the Boston-based organization Health Resources in Action shared their Face Off Against Tobacco campaign which is a great use of personal messages and photos. The more personal you can make your messaging, the better, and this is very true at the local level.

We are sharing the slides from the session below. We’ll be sharing similar versions of this talk at some future events in Colorado and online. Stay tuned.

You might also want to check out the Digital Engagement Guide. I came across it recently and it looks to be a good new site tracking the use of digital tools and networks in the public sector.

The National Conference of State Legislatures has a page listing the social network links of the legislative leaders of all states.

If you have tips or other examples of local campaigns with great uses of social media we would love to hear from you. Share them in the comments.

Kony Part One – Invest in Your Network

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So. The Kony campaign from Invisible Children. Check it out if you haven’t yet.

This campaign didn’t just happen one week. Years of network building went into it (among other things). Years.

Our concern (as Bright+3, an organization that helps organizations understand and succeed in the digital/networked world) is how this campaign has become as powerful and visible (and controversial) as it has.

To that end we want to share two wonderful pieces written in the past 24 48 hours. First, Jason Mogus at Communicopia writes “Why your nonprofit won’t make a Kony 2012” (And it almost certainly won’t. So sorry.)

The second piece, “[Data Viz] KONY2012: See How Invisible Networks Helped a Campaign Capture the World’s Attention,” was written by Gilad Lotan at SocialFlow.

Kony Network map
Kony Network map via SocialFlow

Jason Mogus itemizes how many (most?) large nonprofit advocacy organizations fall short in key capacities that are needed to put together and implement a campaign such as this. Those capacities (where many are falling short) might be summed up as:

  • Weak network. Organizations haven’t engaged people directly in person and are not even talking with them online. We think this is the largest of the big kahunas in this story. More below.
  • Lack of focus. Programs and communications are all over the map. Organizations working on many campaigns likely have many audiences. They don’t have the communications resources to speak clearly to everyone.
  • Policy trumps people. This is a tough one (see Ethan Zuckerman’s piece on real questions about oversimplifying complexity). How does a policy and research driven organization write clearly, passionately, and understandably for large audiences that it wants to engage in action? Most don’t try or when they do it’s muddied by the policy wonks.
  • Social web. Huh? Organizations that build lists (even networks, which are different than lists!) aren’t aligned with social network principles – the sauce that is interaction and multi-channel communications. If you’re going to build networks (or at least tap into them) your organization needs to be comfortable with social from top to bottom.

Jason speaks to the power and value of Invisible Children’s online/offline network that was critical to spreading word of this campaign. Building and caring for this sort of network takes time, focus, and a style of constituent interaction that most advocacy organizations are not built for or interested in.

It is this direct network building offline (especially) and online that, like a massive holiday lighting display, was switched on when the most recent campaign began.

Network Dissected

Gilad Lotan dives into greater detail of how the Invisible Children network functioned to effectively spread word of the campaign. Sure, there was a great video with a fabulously told story (see this piece by Anna Keenan for more on the importance of story and shared values in the Kony campaign), but it was a 30 minute video about human rights issues. Boring.

The network had been primed to act. The people that Invisible Children had met, invited to participate, and continually engaged over the years understood the issues and have been trained to act and share. The pre-existing networks created by Invisible Children over time were, through social media connections, able (and willing) to rapidly (and strongly) share the video and its message.

Lotan also points out that the campaign designed and positioned itself well to tap into the online networks of celebrities that appealed to its core audience. Invisible Children made it easy for supporters to tweet Taylor Swift, Oprah, and others with their own large Twitter followings. This demonstrates comfort with and understanding of networks.

Some, including Lotan, point out that this network is decidedly young (which tracks with social media engagement in general) and skews towards evangelical Christians. The latter is a well-organized network in its own right, one built on personal relationships (see Movement Building and Deep Change: A Call to Mobilize Strong and Weak Ties from the Engage Network for more on this).

What of It?

Jason Mogus makes the point that most organizations do not run their communications, digital, and programs in a way that makes a Kony-esque campaign possible. They are neither network focused nor social. And, for many organizations, this is okay. Policy and political expertise, lobbying and legal capacity, and research expertise are all desperately needed in the advocacy community.

The conflict in organizations comes from the fact that policy and lobbying organizations relentlessly invest in building online and offline lists in email, social media and direct mail. The “list” is the mythical source of unrestricted funding. Much of this list building comes through advocacy actions: “sign this petition” and “write to your Senator” (what some label as slacktivism).

These lists are called upon to respond to get behind big events, actions, fundraising campaigns and videos that should “go viral.” Online teams in these organizations struggle to light a fire under their lists, go big, and make an impact that the size of the list would imply is possible.

A friend wrote in an email that network communications like that shown in the Kony campaign isn’t in the DNA of policy-oriented organizations. We agree but that’s too bad. Network building, engagement, and policy advocacy shouldn’t be mutually exclusive.

 

Storytelling + Video = Power to change behavior

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A common refrain: Our video has a great story, great message, and clear call to action. But only 350 people watched it. WTF?

Story of Sushi
The "Story of Sushi" by Portland's Bamboo Sushi tells the story of how industrial fishing is destroying ocean life and presents alternatives. Something to think about with your next sashimi.

There are no simple reasons to explain why some videos take off and others languish in the dustbin of irrelevancy.

How did you distribute it? What was the keyword strategy? What sharing tools were used? Did you use AdWords, Facebook ads, or other paid marketing? How big is your social media audience? How engaged are they? Was Will Ferrell in your video? Useful questions though maybe the answer is simpler: people just didn’t connect with the story.

Perhaps you’ve seen the story of sushi video created by Portland’s Bamboo Sushi. We’ve embedded it below. The video is both clever and lovely in its simplicity and clarity of message. There is a story here: bad guys that overfish the seas, good guys that do it right, and the hero is the viewer – the person that has the opportunity to ask questions, know what’s going on and force change to happen.

What’s missing? The 2 x 4 over the head that has “take action now by calling your Senator.” The action is the story itself and its ability to make the viewer think about their behavior.

We will be the first to tell you that if you’re in the advocacy business you need to know your call to action in every message be it email, video, blog post or presentation.

But there is often greater power in using story to lead people to act on their own. A good story guides the participant to their own conclusions and you need not hit people over the head with your advocacy. Sometimes a big stick just scares people away while a good story makes them think. Thinking is good.

Don’t phone in your social + weekly wrap

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Busy week so we’re going to wrap it by kinda sorta phoning it in. And there’s the theme for the main story here.

Puppy on the phone. Don't they have earbuds or something for dogs?Earlier this week I received an email of the “take action/write congress now” nature about an issue that to me seemed pretty intense, important and, well, worthy of stepping up and clicking that button to write my Congresswoman. All in all it was pretty well written and compelling.

A couple things struck me as odd.

The PS was a call to join the organization on Facebook and Twitter. The links went to the general Facebook wall and Twitter page. If taking a shot at clouding an advocacy action with a social media call to action then make the landing page relevant to the action at hand.

There should be one clear call to action and one clear goal in your message. If one clicks the Facebook link she’s not coming back to the email, especially if the content on Facebook at that moment has nothing to do with the issue.

At this point, folks, people know about Facebook, know your organization has a Facebook page, and they know how to find it and follow your organization. Why distract from your message with a confusing call to the obvious?

Focus. Drive towards a goal-oriented conversion or don’t bother. Don’t phone it in.

Second, the message was “signed” by the organization and not a person. Perhaps this has little or no impact on the number of respondents but it sends a message that there aren’t actual people there writing these messages, staying on top of the issue…someone that could tell me personally what the hell is happening. People connect with people. Not organizations.

Wrapping up the week

Some smart thinking on the Intertubes this week:

Punk views on social media writes about the brand army. A lot of smart organizations look to identify some of their most active social media followers and give them tools to spread the word. Many others just sorta hope that will happen. Instead, look at social media following as the start of the engagement process. Empower and enable everyone there to get involved, spread the word and speak on your behalf. Create an army.

Get a digital product manager for your nonprofit. WHAT? Daniel Atwood ran digital at the impressive Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Association for several years. He notes that digital has changed the nature of how many people view the role of nonprofit organizations. Increasingly,  folks want tools to make change directly. Heard of Change.org? Nonprofits know what’s going on in their field and are often creating tools for change. Why not think of these as products for people, not just staff?

Digital teams need to get a handle on how they position themselves in the organization if they want to stop underperforming. That’s part of the message from Jason Mogus over at Communicopia, a firm that’s been putting forth a ton of smart thinking lately about digital teams. Fact is most digital staff really need to build their leadership skills and take charge of their team’s destiny. It won’t be easy but is imperative for the team success (and the organization’s).

Lessons From the SOPA/PIPA Fight

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Wikipedia screenshot by Flickr user LoveNMoreLove.The Congressional fight over the SOPA and PIPA bills wasn’t a fight about whether intellectual property should be protected – virtually everyone agrees on this – but about how best to accomplish it. In fact, the most visible voices in the fight over SOPA/PIPA, on both sides, were people and industries with livelihoods based on creating or protecting intellectual property. But the substantive positions between proponents and opponents, and the implications of the legislation, were considerable nonetheless.

For nonprofits, the implications were substantial even if they weren’t generally highlighted. Making service providers fully liable for copyright violations occurring anywhere on their networks would almost certainly lead them – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social engagement platforms among them – to aggressively censor information before it is ever posted, erring on the side of expansive and overreaching prohibitions rather than risk liability. And it gives repressive governments, well-heeled corporations, and others a substantially enhanced ability quickly to shut down web sites and entire domains, a power easily applied to silence online speech they dislike for whatever reason. For nonprofits involved in supporting democracy or human rights movements around the world, these provisions were especially troubling. Ethan Zuckerman and Joi Ito of the MIT Media Lab have a good blog post (“MIT Media Lab Opposes SOPA, PIPA“) explaining some of this.

But the SOPA/PIPA fight was important for nonprofits in another way, as well: a technical, largely unreported, non-issue exploded into the popular consciousness in a matter of months, fundamentally changing the debate in Washington, D.C. In an incredibly short period of time, SOPA/PIPA opponents repeatedly made national and local press (local television stations were covering this!), compiled petitions signed by millions nationwide (Google says seven million signed its petition, and Fight for the Future reports ten million on another one), and produced a day-long Wikipedia blackout. I suspect there are a lot of lessons non-profit folks can learn from the SOPA/PIPA fight. Here are five:

1. Clear and Compelling Message
Opponents were able to take two very complex pieces of legislation and explain them in clear terms that spoke directly to the values and interests of their intended audiences. Tech people understood the implications of the DNS-blocking provisions, people whose livelihood depends on the ability to share information understood the implications of making social networking sites liable for copyright violations by people using the sites, and free-speech advocates understood the censorship implications.

2. Critical Mass
Opponents hit a critical mass, and their stories went viral, in part because everyone across key communities started talking about it about at the same time. Some of that was probably blind luck, but it was also because key opponents found ways to reach out aggressively across their networks more or less in unison. If you weren’t aware or engaged yet, but you were part of those networks, you heard about the issue a bunch of times within a short period, and then often you’d turn around and share the information with your networks, amplifying the viral effect. This was a real-time example of the “people have to hear something a dozen times before they notice it” marketing adage.

3. Calls to Action
Opponents, when reaching out to the not-yet-engaged, were able to offer a range of easy ways to express support. Calls to action included options like replacing your social networking profile photo with a “Stop SOPA” image, signing the national petition, adding your name to sign-on letters, and spreading the word about the blackouts by Wikipedia, Reddit, and others. Tons of individuals and individual companies created their own badges, images, and other easy-to-use tools. And many of these calls to action were themselves viral (or at least amplified the overall virality of the message). This was often organic … although there were people coordinating and collaborating (and some in prominent positions), there wasn’t, to my knowledge, a conventional campaign leadership team calling the shots, issuing assignments, and allocating resources. People across the networks felt empowered to contribute, and contribute they did.

4. Volume
We often argue that narrowly focused outreach strategies can have more impact than untargeted outreach strategies. Efforts that depend on numbers alone typically don’t cut through the noise or they fail to offset more targeted strategies by the other side (“another day, another 5,000 emails from some nonprofit advocating for something”). The SOPA/PIPA fight illustrates an exception, however: if you can push the volume level high enough, even a strategy largely dependent on numbers can have a real impact. The number of news stories, the number of emails and phone calls received by legislators, the number of people signed on to the petition, the significance of Wikipedia blacking out … all of this resulted in a volume level that was impossible for legislators to ignore, and many flipped from supporting SOPA/PIPA to advocating for a slowdown or even opposing it altogether.

5. Telling Concrete Stories
And, lest this get lost in the excitement of a quickly organized large-scale national campaign, it looks like concrete stories from real individuals who would be directly impacted by SOPA/PIPA were also really important to persuading legislators to shift their positions. The high volume efforts got their attention, but the legislators and staff I spoke with wanted to know – in very tangible terms – what the legislation would actually mean in specific instances for real people and real businesses. The large-scale outreach work created space, but from here it looks like the concrete stories were essential for closing the deal.

Although I don’t think the SOPA/PIPA fight is necessarily a good model for every advocacy campaign, it’s not difficult to predict that the so-called “internet community” will become increasingly political and increasingly sophisticated. There are plenty of lessons from this fight for other advocacy efforts, and lots of opportunity to collaborate with other constituencies as well as watch and learn as online advocacy strategies mature.

MacWorld just posted a interesting analysis, and we’d love to hear about the best analyses you’ve come across. We’d also love to hear your thoughts on the lessons to learn from the SOPA/PIPA fight.

What Nonprofits Can Learn From the YouTube Laugh Factory

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Wired Magazine shares lessons from Maker Studios.

Last month’s Wired magazine had a feature on Maker Studios and the rise of commercially viable independent web-based videos. Their takeaways on effectively using video online:

Rule 1: Make a lot of video content. A lot.
And if the video releases are regularly scheduled, all the better.

Rule 2: Target a niche.
Be really clear on what audience you are targeting and make sure you understand that audience really well.

Rule 3: Connect with your fans.
Olga Kay is sending a personal note to each of the 450,000 people subscribed to her YouTube channel. Nuff said.

Rule 4: Collaborate.
Collaborations can make for great content and introduce all of the folks to each other’s audiences.

Rule 5: Optimize for the algorithms.
One example: tagging, title, explain, and annotate your videos with as many specific and general descriptors as possible.

The goal for most nonprofits might focus more on engagement than ad revenue, but the lessons apply just as well.

Stopping SOPA

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UPDATE: Senator Mark Udall took a clear position opposing PIPA this weekend and Wikipedia is getting a lot of attention for its plan to “go black” on Wednesday in protest of PIPA and SOPA (along with a bunch of other sites, such as Reddit and Boing Boing.

I support sensible tools to limit internet piracy. While I think there is often much to gain by making your intellectual property as widely accessible as possible, I think people who create and own intellectual property – books, film, software code, technical innovations, and the like – deserve to have control over what happens to that property. As an author (my first book will be out next month) and the co-founder of a startup whose success will depend, in part, on building effective software, I believe I should have the right and ability to govern who else uses the intellectual property I create.

But it’s easy to craft anti-piracy tools that get it wrong, and two bills currently under consideration by the U.S. Congress fail miserably. Under the pretense of protecting intellectual property, and I say this as someone whose livelihood is now connected to the creation of intellectual property, both the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) overreach in very destructive ways. A bunch of folks have written thorough, cogent explanations of what the bills would do and why they are so harmful to innovation, free speech, and the security of the internet.

The most ominous of their many problems is the way in which they basically enable anyone to force web sites to remove access to other web sites simply by claiming piracy. The structure of intellectual property law in the U.S. is a mess, heavily privileging those with resources over those without, independent of the actual merits of a particular infringement claim. But SOPA and PIPA would actually make it worse by undermining the ability of entrepreneurs to create and protect intellectual property.

Critics span the political spectrum, from the Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation to the Electronic Frontier Foundation to MoveOn.org, and they include technology giants like Google and Facebook, entrepreneurs (e.g., a letter signed by 200 prominent entrepreneurs), publishers (e.g., O’Reilly Media), and investors (e.g., Brad Feld and Fred Wilson) alike. Nonprofit folks like Beth Kanter have been stepping up as well.

In a sense, the fight is about the old media (primarily Hollywood studios and record labels) trying to protect their incumbent but dying business models. Steve Blank has an interesting take on the refusal (inability?) of old media giants to innovate.

Thankfully, the White House is now saying it opposes both bills as well and the tide seems to be turning.

And while this is an important fight in its own right, it’s also a tremendous example of a smart political strategy married to a terrific organizing effort.

The power of quiet

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What’s the biggest communications innovation you can think of? How about Quiet. I doubt that’s the answer you were expecting. And it’s just one possible answer.

Quiet Room - Photo by Miranda Lichtenstein in Hirshhorn Museum
Quiet Room – Photo by Miranda Lichtenstein in Hirshhorn Museum

But ponder for a moment (if you have a moment to ponder, that is, amidst the likely crush of catching up, calls, meetings and emails this new year) the possibility that your constituents, readers and visitors (and colleagues) might enjoy some calm quiet to gather their thoughts. Quiet, solitude, focus, intention. Call it what you will but the ability for one to be present with a single thought is a rare gift.

Quiet, in fact, is something that many thinkers, innovators and (we suspect but can’t confirm as we haven’t polled for this on Facebook – ha) are proactively seeking. Soren Gordhammer and friends behind Wisdom 2.0 have created an event and community at the heart of Silicon Valley focused on “awareness, wisdom and compassion in the technology age.” Granted, this doesn’t specify quiet but is about the need for mindfulness in the face of changes wrought by new media and technology.

Books such as The Filter Bubble and The Information Diet (to name just a couple) touch on how people are buried in media and only seeing certain stories at Google, Facebook and other sources based on their browsing history and other actions. Basically, people are being overwhelmed. Whether this is by choice or incidental it makes our jobs as advocates, campaigners and nonprofit fundraisers more difficult.

So we ask you to think about quiet as an innovation. This doesn’t mean go away, stop writing, stop emailing, stop asking for help and support. Hardly. But it does mean communicating with real intention to make every word, post and request count for the reader.

Our sense is that the rise of “storytelling” in advocacy is indicative of an increased desire to focus on fewer and more important issues, to dive in, to be engaged and not just entertained, informed or talked to online. Test ongoing narratives in your campaigns. Focus on good stories, well told, that share values with your readers and relate directly to your cause. This gives people a place to put focused attention. Pay more attention to giving people email that relates to their interests and behaviors (and not just yours).

Admittedly, Quiet seems counterintuitive. After all, we need to get content out there, post to Facebook and Twitter, cover a wide range of issues, ask people repeatedly for donations, actions, and involvement. There is a lot to do. But we think the wisdom of quiet, kept at hand in planning your communications strategy, will come in handy this year.