Finding the Right Message

I recently read Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations which is a study on how society's behaviors are changing to make use of new technology. I was excited to discover different ways the general public is using social media and how they like to be reached through it. Unfortunately, Shirky's book was more of a collection of case studies about how people are using social media with very little insight into how organizations can tap into those new behaviors.

There was one example I did find helpful though. It was a case study about how an ordinary citizen used social media to force the NYPD to take action. Evan Guttman's friend Ivanna lost her cell phone in cab. She asked him to help her find it by emailing the phone to see who had it. Turns out, the new owner of the phone was a teenage girl who was not about to give back the phone and had no problem taunting Evan and Ivanna. So, Evan started a blog with updates on the different things they tried to get the phone back and eventually received so many comments from empathetic people that he started a discussion forum as well.

After a few weeks, the media picked up this story as an extraordinary example of how social media could connect people. With the press coverage, the NYPD (who had originally dismissed Evan and Ivanna's pleas for help) actually helped them get the phone returned.

The key here is how powerful and engaged all of these strangers became in this event because of the way the message was framed. As Shirky puts it:

"Had [Evan] presented his mission in completely self-interested terms ("Help my friend save $300!) or in unattainably general ones ("Let's fight theft everywhere!"), the [social media] tools he chose wouldn't have mattered. What he did was to work out a message framed in big enough terms to inspire interest, yet achievable enough to inspire confidence."

This is the goal for all campaigns striving to use social media to unite and organize people. Tell an interesting story with a universal appeal and people will rally behind it.