Using Web 2.0 in Issue Campaigns

Everyone is talking about it. And it doesn't seem that hard, "All we need is a Facebook page and a Twitter account, right?" Of course not. Like any other public relations campaign, organizations need to carefully plan a strategy for using these new mediums to get their message out.

For beginners, Online Politics 101: http://www.epolitics.com/onlinepolitics101.pdf lists a lot of ways to use online media in an issue or political campaign. This is a great resource to quickly scroll through a list of new media and try to identify which one will best work with your budget and organizational message.

If you want more in-depth coverage on what kind of media actually works in a campaign and why, Ben Rigby's Mobilizing Generation 2.0: A Practical Guide to Using Web 2.0 serves as a step-by-step guide on how to utilize online media to perfect and spread an organizational message. Chock full of insightful case studies and articles written by experts, Rigby doesn't espouse to know what kind of media work best for issue campaigns, he shows countless examples of online campaigns that succeeded or failed.

The best advice I could gather from Rigby's book and Online Politics 101 was the following:
1. Develop a strategy that integrates online media as a fluid branch of your campaign. Maintain the same message throughout.
2. Online media can be used to reach more people and increase the amount of people who are actually engaged in a campaign. But the campaign will only succeed in doing this if it uses online media to allow the audience to interact and participate. For ex: Don't post a video that echoes your campaign flyer. Post a video that answers audience questions or starts a dialogue. Always allow comments, and if you can allow users to post photos and videos you should.
3. Give people a reason to participate. Offer a reward like the possibility of winning a contest. Or better yet, get people excited about participating by showing them the outcome of what they can do. For ex: Let them know that texting SAVE WHALES to your short code will put their name on an electronic petition sent to Congress or let them see a map on your Web site that is layered with beautiful pictures of whales in the locations where those whales are being mistreated or killed.
4. Tell a story with every campaign. Storytelling is one of the oldest and most universal traditions, and it never fails to make people listen. Stories also tug at a person's emotions, and if you can get someone emotionally attached to your issue, you've immediately got a participant.

There are so many inspiring, creative ways people have thought to use social media and new technologies to promote their campaigns. And no non-profit wants to invest precious funds and man hours into a project that will seem like old news by the time it is launched. How can we ever keep up?

http://www.mobileactive.org/ is one resource that lists innovative internet media campaigns on a regular basis. Are there any other resources we can use to stay up-to-date?

One other fear that I'm sure many campaigns have is the fear of losing control of their social media. Rigby mentions a few wikis that got out of control because the organizations gave users too much power, and wiki pages were vandalized and deleted. When using these new online tools how does an organization make sure they're not taken advantage of?

I stumbled upon a Facebook group the other day for my high school's upcoming reunion. The page was unsurprisingly dull, but I noticed there were over 100 photos on the group page. Intrigued, I clicked on the link. Usually over 100 photos on a page, would be a great indicator that the group was alive and well. But upon a quick glance at the photos, I found that after a few people had posted 1 or 2 cute "now and then" photos of themselves and their friends, one user had posted over 100 pictures that were all essentially the same photo with a few different people from our high school.

How does an organization respond to these over-posters without alienating potential supporters? Any ideas?

Until next time...