Social Media Primer

Mike Dean

Tipping Point Strategies

Agenda for Today

Level Setting• Social Media Tools• Communicating Along Social Media Channels• Why Social Media Matters

Discussion - How to Use Social Media• Anatomy of an Advocacy Campaign• Advocacy Case Studies Advocacy

Everything Changed

The Twitter Revolution

• A THOUSAND WORDS Tweets stop at 140 characters. A tweeted picture can have a fuller impact.

The Future is Now

• Americans spend more time on the Internet than any other activity

Number of hours Americans spend on these media activities:

3.6 – Internet, 2.5 - TV, 1.3 – Radio, 1.3 - Telephone

OMD, a New York based media services company, November 2006

• An increasing number of people now believe that the web can give them more political power

USC Annenberg School, December 2005

SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS

• Social Networks

• News & Bookmarking

• Blogs

• Microblogging

• Video Sharing

• Photo Sharing

• Message boards

• Wikis

• Podcasts

• RSS Feeds

SOCIAL NETWORKING

• People and organizations connect and interact with friends, colleagues and fans.

• Facebook and MySpace pages provide a micro site within the social framework.

SOCIAL NETWORKING

• Schools and other public institutions benefit from immediate recognition, pre-existing affinity

• Helps you humanize the organization

• Makes your professional message seem personal

• People who don’t attend meetings can still feel like participants

Examples:• Americans for the Arts has raised 4k+

with their “cause”• MA PTA posts updates, photos,

encourages activism

SOCIAL NETWORKING

SOCIAL NETWORKING

SOCIAL NEWS & BOOKMARKING

• Social bookmarking sites allow users to save, share, organize, comment on and search webpage bookmarks

• Community voting helps you determine the popularity of certain info among certain demographics

BLOGGING

– Blogs encourage conversation, add context and color to data

– Blogs serve to establish your organization as transparent, relevant, active, and expert

– Listen to the conversation that’s going on and join in

BLOGGING

WHY BLOG?

• Every demographic is now turning to the Internet for information

• Improve your search engine visibility

• Promote initiatives and events

Photo: magia3e on Flickr

Be sure to:o Post on a regular

schedule

o Respond to questions and concerns posted in comments and on other blogs

o Use keywords in your titles (SEO)

o Microblogs are blogs limited to a sentence or two (about 140 characters)

o People use microblogging to follow their friends

o Organizations use it to:o Monitor and address

customer concernso Get the word outo Alert Supporters of news

MICROBLOGGING

TIPS:• Use a friendly voice• Post relevant news &

information• Seek out your audience• Announce updates and other

news• Don’t sound like a press

release

MICROBLOGGING

MICROBLOGGING

MICROBLOGGING

State Leaders on Twitter• @epmurphy -- DFL Rep. Erin Murphy• @Gardner53A -- DFL Rep. Paul Gardner• @johnlesch  --  DFL Rep. John Lesch• @JohnMarty -- DFL Minnesota Sen. and 2010

gubernatorial candidate John Marty• @karlabigham -- DFL Rep. Karla Bigham• @kurtzellers -- Republican Rep. Kurt Zellers• @LauraBrod -- Republican Rep. Laura Brod• @ljhosch -- DFL Rep. Larry Hosch• @MAKMinnesota -- Minnesota House Speaker Margaret

Anderson Kelliher, DFL• @MattEntenza -- DFL 2010 gubenatorial candidate Matt

Entenza• @mritchie -- DFL Secretary of State Mark Ritchie

(locked)• @PatGarofalo -- Republican Rep. Pat Garofalo

• @PaulKohls -- Republican Rep. Paul Kohls• @pawlenty -- Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty• @paulthissen -- DFL Rep. and 2010

gubernatorial candidate Paul Thissen• @repmattdean --  Republican Rep. Matt Dean• @RepTerryMorrow -- DFL Representative Terry

Morrow• @seifertmn -- House Minority Leader Marty

Seifert, Republican• @steve_gottwalt -- Republican Rep. Steve

Gottwalt  (3 updates)• @swailsie -- DFL Rep. Marsha Swails• @tinaliebling -- DFL Rep. Tina Liebling• @tarrylclark -- Asst. Senate Majority Leader

Tarryl Clark, DFL• @tonysertich -- Minnesota House Majority

Leader Tony Sertich, DFL

o Video sharing web sites let you upload videos and share them with an audience.

o Repository for video blogs, seminars, how-to’s and a behind-the-scenes looks at your organization.

o Videos can be cheap to produce & turn-around quickly.

o Posting to outposts increases exposure & push traffic to your website

o Video connects because it feels more real

o LAUSD posts videos of candidates for school board to YouTube

o Photo sharing provide a place to upload and organize photos

o People search for photos using keywords or tags that you use to describe them

o Enables you to provide an inside look at your work

o A webpage that anyone can edit

o Think about wikipedia

o A great tool for collaboration

o A podcast is a series of audio or video files, which is distributed by syndicated download to your computer, for use on an MP3 player or computer

o Podcasts can be simple recordings of conversations, presentations, or interviews

o They’re a chance to provide build an audience around your organization or message

RSS FEEDS

• Provide RSS feeds for your web site’s blog, news, events, and other frequently updated media

• An effective way to distribute your content and lead users back to your web site

MORE TIPSFOR COMMUNICATING ALONG

SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS

o Find where your audience is participating and indentify the influencers

o Read industry blogs (including comments)

o Google your organization name, name of officials, & related terms

o Find tools that can help you listen

o Think like a contributor, not a PR person

o Consider what is relevant to the community before contributing

o Don’t promote your own content all the time

o Enable and feed the conversation

o Be human – give people something they can relate to.

o Build relationships with your audience

o You need buy in from everyone in the organization

o Convince your colleagues and bosses that social media is relevant

o Get your communications team together, discuss the options, then divide and conquer

o Develop metrics, but understand that some benefits are qualitative.

SOCIAL MEDIA METRICS

Reach

– Website visits / views– volume of

reviews/comments– Incoming links

Engagement & Influence– Sentiment of

reviews/comments– Brand affinity– Commenter

authority/influence– Time spent– Favorites/ Friends /

Fans– Viral forwards– Number of

downloadsSource: The Digital Influence Group, Measuring the Influence of Social Media

HOW TO NAVIGATETHIS CHANGING MEDIA LANDSCAPE

Reshaping Public Affairsand Public Relations

• Increased speed and ability to spread information

• More information to watch out for

• Anyone can be an evangelist or vigilante — no longer a cost barrier

• Fragmentation of the media

• “The people formally known as the audience” have become the media

Old vs. New Media

• Impact of online activity comes from crossing over to mainstream media

• Groups will often focus on gaining media attention

• This is how they legitimize their issue and it forces decision-makers to take notice

• Groups get the mainstream media to covertheir issue by:

• Demonstrate wide support for the issue• Developing an interesting hook that will entertain the audience• No matter how little support a group has, the media they will

cover the issue if it is interesting

Mainstream Media

User Comments

Impact of the New Alignment

• Individuals with very little resourcesor credibility can get covered overnight

• Force transparency upon all organizations

• Going to have to give some power up

• No such thing as privacy

Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project

1. People go to the Internet to get information2. Becoming harder to reach out to people through

traditional means3. It is more interactive 4. Can get involved anytime and anyplace 5. It is proven to work

Why Social Media

It’s where people go…

It’s where people go…

Everyone is active online

It’s the messenger…

• Integrate social media with:– Traditional grassroots– Member communication– Public Relations/Media outreach– Fundraising

• This ensures that the message is reinforced• Don’t compete against each other

Can’t Exist in a Silo

Creating Buy-in

• Improves the speed and efficiency that you can get information out

• Your messages can spread to a wider audience

• Save time and money

• Advocates expect it

• Can evaluate and target impact

Questions

HOW TO NAVIGATETHIS CHANGING MEDIA LANDSCAPE

1. Be Interactive and Empowering2. Create Engagement Pathways3. Develop and Nurture Evangelists4. Integrate! Integrate! Integrate!5. Create Community6. Provide a Service

Key Principles of Success

Gopher Football Stadium – Challenge

• Gopher Stadium last on priority list at the Legislature

• Strong opposition to public funding of stadiums

• Concern that the request would pull money from academic requests

• Frustration from Memorial Stadium decision

Gopher Football Stadium – Strategy

• Build grassroots organization to educate legislators about U’s proposal– Use passion of alumni and boosters to build

support.– Created contests to encourage people to

spread the message – free things.• Spoke to them in their language • Empowered them to become political

Gopher Football Stadium

• Recruitment Campaign

• Develop a theme

• Make it fun

• Give away free things

Step 1

Gopher Football Stadium

• Contact Legislators

• Create urgency

• Make it easy

• Give them the tools

Step 2

Gopher Football Stadium

• Victory

• After 2 ½ years

• We sent out over 40 e-mails to supporters

Gopher Football Stadium – Results

• Quickly built a list of 15,000 advocates in six months

• Sent thousands of letters to legislators • Moved from last to first in legislators’ and the

public’s mind • Passed the stadium legislation• Excited big and small donors

Gopher Football Stadium – Results

• "I guess grass-roots advocacy really works. This is something so close to our hearts, bringing Gopher football back to campus."

- Margaret Sughrue Carlson, Chief Executive Officer

University of Minnesota Alumni Association

Star Tribune Newspaper

• Send your message from an individual, not from an organization

• Address the person by name

• Include personal data and legislator contact information in the body of the email

• Sign the message with your name and organization

Personalize and Customize

Sample emails from their 3 year campaign

UMN’s Successful “Bring Gopher

Football Back to Campus” Campaign

Victory!!

Create a Theme

Integrate Online and Offline

1. Website2. E-mail3. Testing 1.2.34. Use Multiple Mediums5. Segmentation6. Develop Evangelists7. Micro-Organzing

Anatomy of an social media campaign

Step 1 - Website

Step 2 – E-mail

Step 3 – Advocacy Activities

3. Test

Step 4 – Testing 1…2…3…

• Targeted messages• Create manageable chunks

Step 5 – Segmentation

Step 6 – Multiple Mediums

YouTube

• Obama 14,548,809.05 hours • McCain 488,093.01 hours

Online Advertising

Tools

• Give supporters the tools to organize themselves – “In some primary and caucus states, volunteers used the Internet to start organizing themselves months before the campaign staff arrived.”

• Use Social Networks to create conversations

Training

Tools – Tax Calculator

Tools – Text Messaging

• Use different mediums to reach different audiences

• Text messaging is a very democratic medium because of the low cost of cell phones

• A new online political elite is emerging as 23% of campaign internet users, or 14 million people, became online political activists.• 8% of campaign internet users posted their own

political commentary to a newsgroup, website or blog.

• 13% of them forwarded or posted someone else’s political commentary.

• 1% of them created political audio or video recordings.

• 8% of them forwarded or posted someone else’s political audio or video recordings.

Step 7 – Develop Evangelists

Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project

Step 7 – Develop Evangelists

• Recruit them• Split them apart from you regular list• Communicate on a regular basis• Engage them – survey them, ask for feedback• Develop tools for them to use

– Include key messages– Tips on organizing– List of potential activities

• Elevate them• Develop a relationship

Step 7 – Develop Evangelists

• Ask for feedback regularly• Incorporate their feedback• Make it easy to participate• Be able to act quickly and jump on issues as they

develop• Integrate, integrate, integrate • Give up the control and empower supporters• Personalize and customize communication

Step 7 – Develop Evangelists

Step 8 – Micro-Organizing

Fight the Smear

Lessons Learned

• Have a balanced approach• Technology makes it much easier• Quality vs. Quantity• Use a theme to build excitement and support• Provide “inside information”• Engage supporters year-round• The more you put in the more you will get out

• What sort of an impression are you making on the Internet?

• How well are you leveraging your web site to engage visitors vs simply giving information about you?

• How can you create and empower your evangelists?

Things to Think About

• How can you integrate this into your work?

• Where do we go from here?

Things to Think About

More Information

Visit – www.TippingPointStrategies.org

Mike@TippingPointStrategies.org