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Stop Kony - what can e-campaigners learn?

Jess Day — Tue, 08 May 2012 15:12:19 -0500

To get up to speed about the campaign, check some of the links at http://www.delicious.com/day_jess/ecampaigning+Kony2012+narrative

With over 100 posts on the subject I won't try and fully summarise the discussion, which centred on three themes:

1/ The video is a remarkably effective piece of storytelling, aimed to convince a specific audience to take a set of specific actions. There is plenty for us to learn here.

2/ Many people expressed considerable anger at the way that Ugandans' experience is shown wholly through the lens of Western interest and Western power to act, and the gross simplification of the situation to create a compelling narrative.

3/ What are the wider implications for digital campaigning? Does this set the numbers bar so high nothing else can compete? Will it put people off participating in online action in future, or prompt them to inform themselves better before they do so? Is there a need for a stronger code of ethics for campaigning? Or for 'minimum standards'?

This link stack profiles some links on the subject, mostly drawn from those posted to the list – thanks to all who shared. Do continue to add to the stack.

Delicious link stack: Kony 2012

You can also use the tags to dig into particular themes:

http://www.delicious.com/day_jess/ecampaigning+Kony2012+narrative

http://www.delicious.com/day_jess/ecampaigning+Kony2012+lessons

http://www.delicious.com/day_jess/ecampaigning+kony2012+ugandan

http://www.delicious.com/day_jess/ecampaigning+kony2012+defence

http://www.delicious.com/day_jess/ecampaigning+kony2012+education

http://www.delicious.com/day_jess/ecampaigning+kony2012+information

http://www.delicious.com/day_jess/ecampaigning+kony2012+storytelling

What makes it so successful?

– “In my opinion the film takes the viewer in because the story starts very close to the daily life of the audience. right at the beginning it even talkes about the very situation most viewers are in, right the moment of watching, which is "being on facebook". This way the content of the story is very relevant to most viewers - which makes them keep watching. Later on the story becomes more general - talking about love and birth and relatives. but these topics are still very relevant to most viewers - and they lay a very emotional ground for the rest of the story - and frame the content of the story as something personal. If viewers have a conception of personal relevance of something - they keep watching. Later on then the directors use ...suspense to make people keep watching: they keep a little secret viewers want to know. In this case the secret is: how are they planning to stop kony? what is it that I can do to help? They don't tell the viewers until the end. Every thriller works like that.”

– “

It's very heavy on empowering digital zeitgeist rhetoric from the outset, telling a grand story about how society has changed to enable this kind of action it directly addresses the context that the video is being experienced in - ie facebook, social media.
its very personal - very much from the campiagners point of view, not so much the "victim's" - though there is a clear victim.
We are encouraged to empathise with the activist, as much as the victim
The campaign has a visionary activist leader - The narrator describes a sudden vision where the solution becomes clear
its unusually long, and self consciously so. The meta-message in the length is "I am confident that this is important", it is unashamedly grand and ambitious in its aims.
it invokes celebrity throughout, a shortlist of celebrities and policy makers is drawn up. The theory of change more or less stops here (presumably because that is where it gets messy!)
It is not that heavy on the issue. This has been widely criticised. The issue is framed to highlight the injustice in the most basic terms - ie bad guy narrative
It uses questions throughout - Who is kony? What are we going to do to stop him? - to keep viewer interest
It contains a mixture of trendy visual elements and more traditional documentary footage to good effect
There are several "heart" moments, there are emotional highs and lows throughout.
It is very heavy on organisational detail (the last third) - It launches suddenly from a personal story to a dubstep driven plan of global action, delivered in prophetic terms.
From a values perspective, the rationale for focussing on visible activities (ie postering, tweeting) and stuff/action packs, is that with these things/actions come "cool" and social prestige. Their merchandise page says" People will think you’re an advocate of awesome"
Judging by the music and the medium the targeting is clearly at teens to mid twenties.
I'm guessing the PR on this was heavy. It is obvious that celebrity outreach work was done before the video, since George Clooney is in the video already talking about it.
the organisation has been around for some time, and was active on social media since myspace. Similar organising tactics may have been employed to launch the video.”

– “I think that one of the primary reasons for the video's success was that the Theory of Change (TOC) and stated goals of the video ("make Kony famous") were explicitly designed to make sharing the single number one thing you could do to accomplish that goal. We all try to say things like "the more people who see this the better" or "share this with your friends so that they can take action too" -- but I've never seen any advocacy media where sharing and community and collective efficacy were so explicitly woven into the fabric of the TOC.”

– “Above all else, it shows that in the many different contexts of the new media economy community is an essential concept for all. Far from simply being the poster child for a new generation of social media activism that overtakes and replaces more conventional campaign strategies, the Kony2o12 campaign collapses boundary between new/old modes of activism.” http://www.david-campbell.org/2012/03/16/kony2012-networks-activism-community/

– “OK, a lot of it made me feel a bit nauseous but seriously people, that is little short of a masterclass in campaign storytelling and movement building. Ignore the issue for a second and you can't fail to be impressed, can you? Even when you consider the issue and its bland western-centric oversimplifications it's still got a compelling human message at its centre, that all kids are born equal. As a parent of a young kid that talks to me. ”

What's wrong with it?

--“OMG. Please. A piece of pernicious propaganda and "badvocacy" - worst I have seen in a long time... propaganda and poor, unknowing, condescending, and ultimately harmful 'advocacy"...”

– “I’m interested in hearing how this film and associated wristbands etc increases the chance of Kony appearing before the ICC (leaving aside the whole ‘justice vs peace and reconciliation’ debate!) or child soldiers being released and reintegrated etc. Does it really put ‘victims’ (although many will not like that term) at the centre? Does it respect the agency and leadership of those on the ground struggling with this? …It occupies the space that could instead be used to develop intelligent advocacy as well as perpetuating damaging stereotypes. … if we drop our principles, or our strategic nous, to get viewers (or a higher click-through rate) then what have we achieved? I hope that’s a false dichotomy and we don’t need to. But it’s not easy!”

– “Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it” – I want to replace “Geniuses” with “good campaigns”. But be careful that’s what we are and not the fools.”

– “I feel like this is doing what 'An Inconvenient Truth' did for climate change. It glossed over the complexities. Everybody got it, though, and everybody started talking about climate change, whereas for the previous 30 years there was precious little movement. BUT when the watercooler chatter turned from 'we've got to do something' to 'hmmm, this is more complex than I thought' the public lost hope, and the hunger for change died a little.

I don't know what is better - having Kony off the world news radar and letting grassroots tackle him (too) slowly, or having Kony on the radar, tackled faster, but with the potential for yet another foreign interventionist cock-up.”

– “ For x million people to be badly informed is more damaging than for 100,000 people to know what the real situation is. As mass communicators we have a responsibility to frame things right and also to be able to communicate complex issues in an understandable way. Invisible Children have failed to do this - they managed to communicate hardly anything accurate at all about this situation apart from "Kony Bad, YOU can stop it" and "poor Africans really need your help".”

http://www.delicious.com/day_jess/ecampaigning+kony2012+critical

What can we learn from this?

“- attention spans for online content are about 17x longer than we thought;
- the Kony video shares and justifies on detail the strategy and theory of change behind the actions, including Facebook sharing -- we don't do nearly enough, not nearly enough, of that in most of our campaigns;
- we should give our constituencies far more credit for their attention to strategy, and explain to them from the beginning of a campaign the higher barrier asks we will make later; and
- although the bloke in the video is an insufferably earnest wanker, the personal narrative about his journey inspires people to want to be more like him and change their lives - in our efforts to be the invisible stewards o our online movements (many of us actually ban certain pronouns in our email communication) we miss this important opportunity for leadership.”

– “yes, the video is massively neo-colonial, lacks nuance, self-aggrandizing, and has all the messaging bugbears about international involvement in African issues good globalists love to hate. [But] I'm sure the folks at Invisible Children would look at lots of NGO videos and say they are un-engaging, overly complex, and not empowering to the primary audience of the video. Rather than diminish their efforts - I'd prefer to recognise that the video does exactly what they wanted it to do (make Kony famous), and it is doing it exceedingly well. ”

– “I still think the video is efficient in mobilizing the desired audience to help the campaign, by getting people involved in spreading the word online and offline. It's not like we can find campaigning videos as popular as this one every day. I also think that in matters of life, death and extreme suffering the victim's urgent problem comes first. Being inefficient and fail to obtain results as quickly as possible in those cases is also very very wrong, and it can cost human lives. And I've seen too many campaigns with extremely important causes and well explained issues be ignored by "the masses" (and the politicians) that could make a difference by supporting them with their voice. And in some cases I've heard communicators blaming their audiences for "not getting it", which does not help at all.”

– “I'm proud. Simply, someone has put all our continued procrastination aside and taken an action to a situation that has been going on silently for the past 24 year out to the public. We must learn the lessons from this. Those of us on this list that have commented that this is undermining what is being done on the ground. Let me ask you. What exactly is that? Cause I've not heard about it.”

– “If people refuse to learn broader lessons - about "story of self" approaches, issues framing, values based mobilisation, word of mouth tactics for example - because they disagree with the detail, then that is their loss!

– "Regarding the theory of change (ToC) - the issue of whether it is good or not or even accurate or not may be less relevant than the fact they have one and it looks/sounds convincing to someone who doesn't know much about the issue (99.9% of people). It reminds me of one social psychology experiment I remember reading about. The researchers were trying to test people's tolerance to queue-jumping (a line or line-up for fellow North Americans). At the university where the experiment was conducted, " students would queue to photocopy books and other documents. They instructed experiment volunteers to attempt to jump the queue in a variety of specific scripted ways. Some just moved to the front without asking, others had a variety of reasons they used to ask to jump the queue. Volunteers who gave a compelling reason (e.g. in a hurry) were, unsurprisingly, most likely to be allowed to queue-jump. Yet even the ones who gave meaningless reasons (e.g. "can I go in front because I have to make a copy" or "can I go in front because I need to") were still allowed to queue jump almost as much as the ones with a convincing reason. Essentially as long as people gave a reason, regardless of how compelling, they were more likely to be allowed to queue-jump. So in the Kony 2012 video, the fact that they have a theory of change, regardless of how realistic or compelling may be the most important factor. The fact that so many campaigning actions do NOT have any explicit theory of change should perhaps be more worrying and this is a powerful demonstration of the value of articulating an explicit simplified theory of change - and ideally one that is also justified :-)”

What should we do differently?

“There is a longer term issue of enforcing harmful stereotypes, and we should seek to avoid this. But equally there is a reason why texts throughout the ages have resorted to archetypes of one kind or another - because they are easily understood, and because people do (for better or for worse) identify with them, and face cognitive dissonance and comprehension difficulties if they are challenged.

– “The whole video would have looked pretty silly if it *hadn't* gone viral -- precisely because the TOC was so centered around it being something huge that everyone was going to do together -- but on the other hand that wouldn't have mattered because no one would have seen it to know that it looked silly :-) So one lesson to take away might be: Be willing to try things that might fail and that will look kind of silly of they do.”

– “It is a truism that the world is complex. But as communicators, it is not our job to enforce that perception. There is evidence that perceived complexity may actually decrease agency ..."education" is sometimes not only ineffective, but actually counterproductive.

– “In terms of dumb vs smart, It is up to campaigners to ensure that the strengths of 'dumb' campaigning approaches for reaching some audiences are used to complement smarter policy based work or education done to reach others - practically that involves differentiated messaging and a strategy for sharing "campaign space". This is possibly where KONY 2012 falls short (though experiencing this campigin as "consumers" do we know for sure that smarter work isn't being done behind the scenes?)”

– "I would just like to point out that even if you put $200K in (the rough guesstimate I've heard for how much the video cost) and included every trick in the book, including the lessons we learned from this video, the odds that you're going to have something anywhere near as successful as this are extremely low. I'm not saying it's worth trying, but don't let people in your office say "hey we shoudl do this!" and then get upset with you when your video only gets 1 million views. Super-virality is essentially impossible to distinguish from just plain virality in advance, unless the video was made by Lady Gaga.

– And what about an Online Advocacy Code of Ethics.

http://www.delicious.com/day_jess/ecampaigning+kony2012+lessons

This article summarises a discussion on the eCampaigning Forum email list. Thanks to everyone who contributed.

Campaigning with UK local councils

Jess Day — Tue, 01 May 2012 17:25:52 -0500

A local council may be the right target for some issues. But consider your targeting carefully before you begin. Says one councillor:

“... the standard of campaigning to me is poor. I've had disability charities angry with me for cutting social care, when my council isn't responsible for social care; lobbying that thought I represented a rural area (nope); lobbying that was insulting about councillors’ workrate (picking that one up at ten to midnight was a joy)..."

“Please please think about the recipient: they are not going to be a full-time politician; they are probably picking your email up after a day at work or an evening meeting; they are most likely to be far more interested in their ward than in any city-wide or national issue; and the route to influence in that area is more likely to be the leader or chief exec of the council rather than a backbencher."

Emailing councillors

Getting wholesale access to contact details for UK local councillors is a challenge: there are over 20,000 of them, for a start, and changes are constant.

You could send people off your site to the free www.TheyWorkForYou.com service, or decide you'll have people emailing the leader of their council (rather than their councillor) only, and ask them to choose their council from a drop-down box. This relies on people knowing the name of their council.

But if you want to provide a tool which allows supporters to email their councillors by putting in a postcode, then you'll have to pay for the data. Matching the postcodes, which change frequently, to the current councillor(s) for that ward is an enormous job, and it'll go out-of-date in days.

You could buy a campaigning tool with this functionality (most of the big ones will have it as one of the modules) or go to a data supplier and buy the data outright on a rolling contract. Most of the suppliers you will find are brokers for exactly the same data - so push them hard to win your business.

The crucial question is how often they will push updates to you - and how quickly they update their records after an election. So, for example, if there are elections in May; if you want to email all newly-elected and re-elected councillors in June, how quickly will the supplier compile, check and get you that info? Three months is the standard - but is pretty rubbish for responsive campaigning. Also, what about segmentation? Can you get by party, geography, position (e.g. Leader, lead member for housing, chair of scrutiny etc.)?

Look at the cash cost for an annual contract - don't pay more than a couple of grand, and consider sharing the cost between two organisations and alternating mailings/campaigns.

Suppliers

GovEval
Data Response
Oscar Research
Keystroke
DeHavilland (currently covers only executive / cabinet / committee chair-level councillors (3500 of the total 20,000+).
Openly local is free open data, so avoids a high subscription cost, and their API means you can stay up to date with changes.

Local petitions

Since 2009, local councils have been obliged to provide facilities for petitions to be debated by councillors, so petitions can be a useful tool for a genuinely local campaign. At the very least, the petitioner would usually have the chance to address the council and have the issue debated.

But before you set up an online petition, check out the relevant council's rules and procedures, and find out whether it has its own petition tool. Most standard online petition tools won't be compliant, and you don't want to find out your petition is invalid after collecting hundreds of signatures.

There will be rules about the information that needs to be in the petition (e.g. all signers have to give their address to prove they live in the council area) which vary council-to-council (here are the rules in Redcar, for example ) and it will need to be checked by the council officers before the petition is declared valid.

It would be wise to take advice from the democratic or committee services at the council before you start. A petition to a local council is much more likely to get the right response if it's carefully targeted and either in on the e-petitions site of that local authority (check the Petition your Council site to see if they have one ) or on paper, so the addresses and numbers can be verified by the council officers.

Local authority petition case study: Ramblers

Rachel Alcock, former Campaigns Officer at the Ramblers

At the Ramblers we conducted the majority of campaigns at a local level. Warwickshire Council announced that they were planning to cut funding from their Rights of Way team, responsible for the protection and preservation of footpaths, bridleways and cycle paths etc. This would have had a hugely detrimental effect for local walkers, as well as having a knock-on effect for the tourism industry.

The main campaigns team at the Ramblers supported the local Ramblers Warwickshire volunteers to set up their own petition to ask for the cuts to be reconsidered.

Most councils now stipulate the number of signatures needed and where the people signing need to be located. Warwickshire applies the following rules:

Type of meeting	Min signatures to present petition	Min signatures to debate petition
County Council	1000	5000
Area meeting	100	1200
Community Forum	20	150

The local Ramblers volunteers managed to gather enough signatures for the petition to be presented at a meeting of the County Council – and together with meetings held with councillors the Ramblers were successful in halting the worst of the cuts.

There is often a Democratic Officer in place who can help you ensure that your petition is well structured and properly received when submitted, but we discovered that petitioning councils in this way is often an underused resource. For example, Warwickshire Council currently does not have any open petitions on their website, and the most recently closed petition received only 42 signatures.

At the Ramblers I also campaigned on issues in London. We asked people to directly email their council, but the responses received were nowhere near as positive as the reception of the petition. More often than not they were dealt with by someone from the Customer Services team, without ever being seen by a councillor or someone more senior. I would strongly recommend using these petition facilities, especially if you have a group of local people who can sign up quickly, and encourage their friends to do the same.

This article summarises a discussion on the eCampaigning Forum email list. Thanks to everyone who contributed.

Organisational and personal on Twitter

Jess Day — Tue, 01 May 2012 16:48:41 -0500

Including initials or names in organisational tweets can help some personality come through, but could be a waste of precious characters, and may not mean anything at all to your audience.

Organisations handle this in different ways.

Save the personal for when it matters

“What's the thinking behind personalising the tweets? If they're from the organisation, it strikes me that they should be from the organisation in an organisational sort of voice. If there's a reason why a specific tweet should be more personal, say a staff member is tweeting from a key event, then I think prefacing with a name is better than initials which'll be meaningless to most folk anyway.”

“We share our account between several people but only name tweets if they are from someone notable - e.g. our CEO or refugees attending party conferences. Firstly we want a consistent voice, secondly we assumed that most of our supporters wouldn't know whose the initials were, & thirdly of course, every character counts!”

“we personalise the Bio (so 'X, Y and Z are tweeting for @Org') but don't personalise individual tweets. If we're helping a specific person with a question we'd put a first name at the end, but would never personalise a broadcast tweet.

"If referring to a blog post that someone from our organisation has written we'd say "Our Brian has written X." That way we keep it friendly (i.e. people know that there are real human beings tweeting and producing the content) without coming across as too distant. But it also means that our overall voice is that of the organisation. It also makes it easier to train staff to tweet from the account and keep them all on message - you don't get different styles coming in as different individuals take the reins.”

Corporate account 'clearing house'

“We encourage all staff to tweet and RT on their personal accounts (which then all appear on our website homepage. This works really well in helping people to get to know the personalities behind the work. We’re a small organisation though so it’s easy to manage, and we have some staff who are based all around the country so it means we can stay in communication with each other better too!”

“If your main account, with all of its followers, is regularly Tweeting and RTing your staff (rather than primarily vice versa), it channels people who are interested in what you do direct to the people who are, quite frankly, much more interesting to follow, can more easily engage, and still have all of the knowledge and expertise that the org account does.”

Given how many orgs have several different streams of work, this also makes sense in terms of using Twitter as a way of guiding supporters directly to the people working on the campaign, programme or service that they are most interested in. It also allows the organisation to give the more emotive and opinionated content (which works best on Twitter), a bit of distance, while still allowing it to be a part of a loser communications plan. Which can help with satisfying the managers who don't want any personality slipping through 'the brand'.”

This article summarises a discussion on the eCampaigning Forum email list. Thanks to everyone who contributed.

Getting staff engaged with a campaign

Jess Day — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 17:29:10 -0500

A great response from ECFers on this topic, so a massive thanks to everyone who added their ideas. Below are some of the best, along with a few thoughts of my own.

1. Find your loud voices

Survey staff to find out who has a direct connection to your cause through family and friends and who might be willing to speak out about it. You may only get one or two, but as with external campaigning, your campaigners can 'be the story' and inspire others.

Identify people who are already 'flag-bearers' for campaigning in the organisation. Work out your approach and then ask them to ask their colleagues at a team meeting, to all sign your petition / take action / brainstorm for an idea / etc.

Get information out about the activities through the best networks. Have a think about who is most talked about or even gossips the most - it could be your facilities staff. If you can get them involved in activities, you can be sure that they will tell everyone about it. Also, strategic placing of posters to promote activities, e.g. above urinals with a cheeky message, gets people talking.

Don’t forget to make use of your interns and volunteers. The are often among the most passionate, working for free on an issue they care about!

2. Make yourself seen as well as heard

Fun and visual, physical activities are always popular – perhaps create a campaign stunt prop outside the front entrance to your building, and ask staff arriving at work to have their photo taken with it as part of a visual petition. This has been tried and tested - once people could see their managers getting involved, they often then decided to do so too.

Things like a cake sale worked really well for some people, helping bring people together informally and raise awareness of their campaign.

3. Do your homework

Send staff a survey to find out their level of knowledge of your campaign, get a sense of the level of interest, find out how you can involve them more and what they would like from you.

4. Make it irresistible

Incentivising action is a good idea. Perhaps prizes for the team or floor that collects most petition signatures / tweets out to the most followers / produces the best piece of artwork or letter, or the floor with the most staff who meet with their MP.

If you don’t want to go with prizes try and show people the value of campaigning to their own work by running a lunchtime session or workshop. Bring in inspiring speakers that will guarantee lots of people show up.

5. First steps can make all the difference

Do you need volunteers for anything? An event you may be holding? Things like this can be great opportunities to get people engaged, and their first step to becoming more actively involved.

6. Take an integrated approach

As with best practice for your campaigning work generally, the more you work cross-departmentally, the more successful you will be. Do you have a cross-organisational campaign working group? It’s a good idea to get key people from other departments involved in brainstorming and involved in the creative work to get them interested and enthused…this will hopefully then spread within their teams.

How is your campaign currently featured in the inductions for new staff? on your intranet? your internal comms outlets generally? Make sure you make your mark in as many places as possible.

One way could be asking all staff members to think about steps they take to help which are individual to them (i.e. “I am helping to end rough sleeping by…”) – make sure that everyone’s individual step appears in their email signature with the campaign branding and a call to action for others.

Always reflect what you’re doing with your supporters, with your staff so any activities you run externally, ensure there is also a staff push

7. Remember not everyone is a campaigner!

Get staff across the organisation to be ambassadors for the campaign, but recognise that they might not be that confident in representing it accurately. Give them the resources they need to gain that confidence, eg a pocket-sized fact card with relevant information about the campaign, including facts and figures, campaign asks, etc

8. Instil a sense of authority

Create a real sense that your staff are your experts, have the most knowledge and are exactly the sort of people you need to drive this. This should help motivate them and create a sense of duty.

9. Don’t be shy about blowing your own trumpet

Make sure you send regular updates and news on successes to all staff (often best coming from senior staff). This will increase people’s awareness and help them see how they can make a difference.

10. Get senior staff on board

Key to all of this is ensuring senior level staff across the organisation get involved and encourage people in their teams to do so. Without leadership you’ll struggle to get your ideas turned into action.

Lotte Deckers Dowber is Campaigns Officer at Barnardo's in the UK.

Targeting tweeting MPs

Jess Day — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 17:13:27 -0500

As part of an action week on the campaign we wanted to ask some of our campaigners to tweet @ their MP to ask them to push David Cameron to sign our Charter to End Extreme Hunger.

We wanted to be able to just send to subscribers whose MP is on twitter and send them each a link to tweet directly at their own MP's handle, so we needed a list of MPs on twitter with their handles and ideally their constituency .

Getting the data

We used Tweetminster's list of Tweeting MPs, turned into an XML feed using the twitter API (data lists the list members not tweets)

Then there was some leg work turning this XML into a coherent list and come up with an appropriate match field so that we can match MP's to our subscribers.

What we did

We sent 8000 emails to a segment of our campaigns list that had recently taken an online action (East Africa - email your MP to ask David Cameron a question at PMQs) with this Twitter follow up.

We appended MP data to the data-set so that we could send different messages to subscribers whose MP is on twitter and those that weren't, and a subset of those whose MP was tabled to ask a question.

We pre-filled a tweet using Twitter's web intents interface with a message @ the campaigner's own MP to those whose MP was on Twitter and @ number10gov to those whose MP wasn't.

Results

Over 350 tweets were sent. Our social media person reckons that about 160 were uniques excluding staff and other organisations.

Mark Lazarowicz MP was contacted by at least 8 of our campaigners. He did ask the PM the question in the session - though I'm sure that wasn't just down to our little email!

In future It'd be great if we could buy in social intelligence data so that we could only send to subscribers who are on twitter which should improve the click to open rate - and would be great to give the rest of the list a call your MP ask with a call-link with their MP's phone number and a short script directly in the email.

MP list – community resource

This is what we came up with, which we're happy to share as a useful resource for the ECF community. It's open for edits so please feel free to update it - add new columns for phone numbers etc. as you want. If you use it, please add information about who you are and what you used it for, and explain any additions, updates or other changes you've made. UK MPs on Twitter by constituency

Jana Mills is Email Marketing Executive at Save the Children UK.

Should I include a budget in my RFP?

Jess Day — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 04:19:41 -0600

Yes, do give a budget...

“Always state the budget along with your RFP because if you don't agencies will:

1) submit a proposal because they are desperate, work really hard for nothing, get frustrated, etc.

2) ask for the budget because they don't have time for a poker game”

...but you might be better off indicating a range

"My advice from trying it all possible ways on different developments is give a range, but not an exact figure. Say 'I have up to 15k' and it's just plain eerie how every developer will come back with a £14,999 quote."

"Give no guidance at all, and the developer might either not bother, or spend an unreasonable amount of time creating a quote which is completely unaffordable."

"If you give a window of about 5k range (more, obviously, if it's a hugely expensive project) and sincerely say that you won't just go with the cheapest, you get quite useful responses."

"This is always tricky whichever approach you take. My preference would be to give the potential suppliers a budget range so that they have some idea what sort of budget you're thinking about, but don't be exact or you risk people simply padding out to reach the target. So in your head you have £10K, you might suggest a range of £8-12.”

You don't have to fix a figure upfront though

"It also rather depends on the process you want to follow for procurement. Given that you say there's scope for what can be done, I would be tempted to invite indicative broad responses from interested parties and then shortlist 2-3 to pitch in more detail."

"I think a better approach is to be clear in your tender about the different elements and how much you need them. Building websites is like software development, with all the stages involved. You are at the requirements stage. I've tendered for projects where the decision was only made after the "implementation stage" (we had to build half the site as prototype before we didn't get it)."

"If you make clear in your tender which bits are essential, which would be nice to have, and which would be some icing on the cake, that will really make a difference. Then instead of having a cost for the entire project, you get them to outline the costs for each of those, which will give a better idea of what you can achieve with your money. You can then always decide to only do the essentials, or maybe a few of the "nice to have" and drop the icing on the cake or any other combination. "

If you do it like that, there's no need to give them any indication of budget. You can just say, between 5 and 50, as long as the essentials are within your budget, you'll be fine."

"Make sure to include training, documentation, and keep a bit of your budget for a continued relationship.”

Focus on requirements at each stage

"The next trick is controlling costs so it doesn't end up being hugely more expensive when you get to the actual development - clear tick list of functionality that will be delivered and a good contract are always a good idea and give focus on both sides."

Quality is harder to compare than price

But there's a big difference in the quality of what's on offer, and this can be hard for a client to evaluate.

"Building websites can be extremely open ended. In fact, who can say that their website is finished? Eventually it's all about how much time you spend on it, and that time is generally restricted by budgets. If the budget is bigger, you spend more time. That's the reason developers often just tender for the budget available.

"How much can be achieved with that budget generally depends on how efficient developers are with their time. So, in a way the tender process needs to identify the efficiency of the developer. Those who can do more with the money available are the ones that are (or should be) most attractive."

"If websites were cars, as web agencies we often receive briefs that are the equivalent of this:

We would like a new car please. The car should have:

An engine
4 wheels
4 doors
1 steering wheel
40-CD changer in-car MP3 compatible digital radio stereo with Bluetooth and GPS

Can you tell us how much it will cost?

"To which our response is: how much do you want to spend? Don't you need brakes on your car as well, and windows and lights and a boot? What sort of journeys will you be doing in this car? How many people is it for? How long will you run it for? When do you need it delivered by? (And we'd also be tempted to ask, why are you being so weirdly specific about something that's quite a luxury?)

"That tells us the level of attention you want paying to the design and quality of build (for example, is it a Vauxhall or a Bentley?)

"It tells us whether the features you're asking for suit the purpose (whether you need a 2-seater for city driving or a multi-purpose vehicle with lots of storage space for long journeys).

"It also allows us to check whether there are any things you haven't thought about and we might need to make allowances for in the budget (like ABS or airbags for example).

"There is a lot of difference between a Vauxhall and a Bentley but they both make drivable cars that work for a lot of people. It does bother me that often charities make decisions on cost alone without considering quality of build. So there are a lot of people who have Vauxhall budgets going to Bentley agencies and expecting Toyota Priuses (should that be Prii?) - and everybody is disappointed.

"You can only really tell whether you're getting good value for money by balancing deliverables against quality of design and good references.”

"To further elaborate on the car comparison. When buying a car you might visit two or three different shops and compare the prices of the models, see how trust-worthy they seem and try to get a good overview of how much all those lovely extra features (like the golden ashtray and the fur on your steering wheel) might cost.

"Something you'll have a hard time checking on is the actual quality of the engine itself. Even if you bring your in-house expert along to the sales pitch she/he won't be able to test and check out every single part of the engine in a few hours. If you go out and yell "who can sell me a car for 5.000.- bucks instead of the usual 10.000.-" someone will probably say 'sure, I have one that's just perfect for you. It's been used before but it's just like a new one!'.

"The outside of the car will look super shiny and it seems to be able to do exactly what you want. But when the engine breaks down after the first trip you'll know where the other 5,000 you didn't want to spend might have been well invested.

The same point in non-car-speak:

"Websites have qualities that are quite hard to test if you are not an expert. Therefore it frequently happens that cheap websites are compared to expensive websites as if they were the same. They aren't.

"Just because one car salesman tells you that you get a Mercedes Benz for the same price it doesn't mean it's true."

For more useful advice see Rachel Collinson's article on writing a great web design brief.

This article summarises a discussion on the eCampaigning Forum email list. Thanks to everyone who contributed.

Am I following too many people on Twitter?

Jess Day — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 03:30:42 -0600

It doesn't matter...

"Looking at this as purely an external facing pseudo metric seems hugely unauthentic. The only time it affects your credibility is when you follow no one (or a very, very few) that just shouts out ‘I’m not listening’! "

"The only people who really care about that ratio of followers to followed are people who treat Twitter as an 'I've got more followers than you' competition. They regard following lots of people as 'cheating' in the game they imagine we're all playing against them.

"If you are trying to make those people think of you as important and influential (and they do include quite a lot of bloggers and journos), then you need to trim your following list. Otherwise, follow back. It's polite."

“The only time the ratio and score mentality comes into play is when you start looking at tools like Klout, which are often now built into other tools, like Cotweet. I think ratio plays a part in your Klout score, but there are so many other factors such as whether you're being retweeted by people who are influential, how much engagement you get with your tweets, etc... It's probably worth being aware that you shouldn't follow everyone who follows you (unless you actually want the cheap US pharmaceuticals), but following a lot of people definitely isn't a problem."

"Of course, it looks good to be following the other biggies in our sector – organizations, charities, celebs, MPs etc. But the ratio thing – I would only worry about that if our followers really cared (and I’m not convinced they do)."

And has benefits

"Also worth keeping in mind that that the more people you follow, the more likely you are of being 'found' in their lists of followers. I'd say trying to keep the ration 1/1 all the time is the way to go."

"My personal policy is to follow anyone who follows us, and seems a valid user (whenever I get the time to) - that way, they can at least DM us if needs be. Of course, I'll enter into discussion with anyone who @s us."

"the 'I'm not listening' Twitter accounts are the ones I regularly cull from who I'm following. Tools like Formulists even create simple to manage lists of accounts that don't follow you back that you can then cull. [Ed note - formulists is no more, but the site lists out some alternative tools.] Twittiquette has moved on since 2006, but on the simplest level if someone / some organisation doesn't want to engage with me socially, then I'll drop 'em."

“I tend to view people/orgs that don't bother to follow back as, at best, displaying their ignorance of the ethos behind Twitter and, at worse, their arrogance. I remember sitting in a twitter training session a few years back where small NFPs were advised to adopt an organisational, broadcast approach - inject no personality, using it to broadcast messages only and not enter into discussion (I disagreed, quite vocally, along with a couple of others in the session).”

Supporters like to be followed back

"I think – ignore it! People have responded so well to us when they see we’re following them back – because they are real people behind the twitter avatar after all. It helps them see that we care about their support, they’re important to us and surely that will encourage them to RT, share info from us with their friends, and really feel a part of our social movement."

But it does affect what you can take in

"The practicality of the matter, though, is that you clearly can't read your twitterstream in any meaningful way once you're following more than a few hundred accounts."

"...lists have to be the only way of setting up a meaningful two-way relationship while still tuning out the noise”

And beyond a certain list size – a follow-back is meaningless

"I might be a bit of an exception here, because my colleagues and I manage a pretty big twitter account (we currently have over 390,000 followers), but I think at some point, people realise that a follow back is a bit meaningless. This is why we stopped automatically following back people.

"I don't think it's ignoring the ethos of twitter, quite the opposite. A lot of people will find it way more meaningful if our account answers one of their questions with a DM or an @ reply than if we start following them and then never see any of their updates in our stream. A 1:1 ratio for us wouldn't mean much."

"Not sure where that magical number of following too many people is (10,000? 100,000?) but I'm pretty sure our account is beyond it."

Engagement is the important thing, not Big Numbers

"Forget the numbers and ratios as an end in themselves, focus instead on engagement and attracting your target audience. A year ago we had 16 followers and we're now up to 973, but the majority are exactly the target audience we wanted - the community, local media and bloggers, historians, people interested in architecture and windmills - so we're always directly talking to the people we want to talk to."

This article summarises a discussion on the eCampaigning Forum email list. Thanks to everyone who contributed.

Reactivating inactive supporters

Duane Raymond — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:15:00 -0600

In the various e-campaigning reviews (e-campaigning data analysis and qualitative review), I have (over the last two years) defined a 'status-spectrum' of supporters (subscribers and participants) to identify were they are on the spectrum from new to active and inactive including what 'inactive' state they are in.

In this analysis, it consistently (100% of the time so far) comes up that lapsed/inactive supporters consist of 70-90% of all campaigning supporters, but also that most of them lapse within days/weeks of 'joining'.

In fact, from a measurement point of view, most lapse within minutes of 'joining' although this is an unrealistic view because it is likely people are still 'warm' to re-engaging for a few days after joining.

Step 1: Defining and identifying 'inactive'

I use a spectrum for identifying the

different 'segments' of new/active/lapsed supporters,
the 'size' of the problem (the number/ proportion of supporters in each segment) and
to help decide where to intervene first.

Usually, the biggest segment is 'inactive subscribers' (joined over 15 days ago, emailed 3 or more times, never clicked, never participated).

Definitions

subscriber = someone emailings are sent to
participant = someone who has completed a campaigning action. For the purposes below only, a 'subscriber' is someone who has not completed a campaigning action, otherwise they become a 'participant'.

Segments

Legend:
j=joined; e=emailed; c=clicked; p=participated; d=days ago; x = times

New subscriber: j < 15d; p = 0
Warm subscriber: j > 15d, e < 3x; p = 0
Inactive subscriber: j > 15d, e 3x +, c = 0, p = 0
Sceptic subscriber: j > 15d, e 3x +, c > 0, p = 0
New participant: j < 15d; p > 0
Warm participant: j > 15d; e < 3x, p > 0
Lapsed participant: j > 15d; e > 3x, c = 0 or c > 120d; p > 0; p > 120d
Sceptic participant: j > 15d; e > 3x, c < 120d; p > 0; p > 120d
Occasional participant: j > 15d; e > 3x, p > 1; p > 60d and < 120d
Regular participant: j > 15d; e > 3x, p > 2; p < 60d

You can adjust the above criteria for your own uses and capabilities, but ultimately most supporters' last activity is their first activity, so it is critical to act quickly.

Step 2: Reactivation / removal

I also usually suggest a 3-step re-activation / removal process which differs for each segment, for example:

An email explicitly acknowledging they have been inactive/have lapsed, what active people have helpedactivein the past and what they can do to get active.
For anyone who didn't respond to (1), an email acknowledging they are inactive, the lack of response to email (1) and asking them to tell you (via a non-anonymous survey) what YOU can do to get them back involved
For anyone who didn't responde to (2),an emailacknowledging they are inactive and emails (1) and (2) saying that they will be automaticallyremovedfrom the email list (e.g. within 30 days) unless they click a special link to indicate they wish to remain on the list

It could be a four step process but a 2-step process seems too abrupt since people don't ready every email and may often be too busy one week or on vacation - so while cleaning is good, 'sterilising' the list is bad!

What you will likely find from the survey in (2) is that people want to do more than you are asking and they are not convinced that an easy action will have much impact. But you aren't giving them a more compelling (for them) way to be involved!

Step 3: Prevention

Once you have re-activated or removed inactive supporters, you never want to be in a position again to accumulate 70-90% of your supporter base as inactive. To prevent this you need to:

Have a welcome route for new supporters (and improve it over time based on monitoring).
Run the reactivation plan regularly - ideally every week based on the segment definitions.
Ensure every step of the engagement process is best practice - and continually test and improve it.
Monitor your results and use feedback from the monitoring, testing and supporter feedback to fine-tune the experience (including how compelling the campaigning is!).

Having a majority of supporters is not only a wasted opportunity, it is a waste of time and money to attract new supporters and it has the potential to undermine the perception of your organisation and campaigning in the very people (and their friends) who are most likely to be supporters.

The integration imperative: Tiananmen mothers case study

Jess Day — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 17:16:18 -0600

Back in May of 2008, Amnesty UK had just over twice as many "donors" as "activists". Like most major NGO's in those days, they almost never sent action alerts to the donors, and never asked their activists for money.

Integration didn't alienate the donors or the activists. We got more donations and activism from both groups than we ever had before.

Coming from my work with dedicated online organizing groups (MoveOn.org, Avaaz.org etc.) I proposed a concept I called the "Integration imperative". You don't have "donors" and "activists", you have supporters, who like to support in different ways at different times, but all of whom are far more concerned with making a difference than with what they're labelled. You serve your supporters by giving them every reasonable chance to convey any of their various assets into social and political change. You do them a disservice by deciding in advance that donors never get to use their voice, and activists never get to use their wallet.

Amnesty agreed to the experiment to test the principle and to doing the first ever outreach to the combined list of all supporters with an integrated series of asks.

The online staff there had been making similar points for a while (I find quite frequently that shmancy-pants consultants frequently just give more voice to what hardworking teams have been saying for years.)

Bringing activity together

At the time, there was already an activist campaign in the works to leverage the upcoming Bejing Olympics to get China to agree to the demands of a group called the "Tienanmen Mothers,". These families had been lobbying the Chinese authorities for 19 years for the right to publicly mourn, and for an official investigation into the deaths of their children in the massacre.

There was also a separate plan to ask the donors to "support the China campaign." And a third, separate plan to hold a rally outside the Chinese embassy around the anniversary of the massacre. So basically, we just pulled it all together.

Here's how it went:

Email 1: Send a Mothers day card to the Tiananmen mothers on Chinese Mothers' day, letting them know you support their struggle.

This message introduced the characters and the overall narrative, and gave the UK members a strong emotional hook to engage in the rest of the campaign.

Email 2: Sign the petition to the Chinese government asking them to grant the Tiananmen mothers' request.

This highlighted the Chinese government's vulnerability to public pressure in the lead up to the Olympics. For every signature we collected, we would place a rose outside of the Chinese embassy in London at the rally on the anniversary of the massacre.

If you donated 20 pounds, we'd place in your name a full bouquet (the official symbol of the Tiananmen Mothers group). On the landing page you also had the option of giving a smaller donation to support the free rose distribution, after you signed the petition.

Email 3: Follow up on the petition/roses ask, closing in our goal of 5000.

Email 4: Turnout for the rally in London to help with the delivery of the roses, or host/attend separate rallies in local areas across the UK

Email 5: Report back on the rose delivery, with ask to join Amnesty as a monthly contributor to support similar campaigns in the future.

Outcomes

All in all, the campaign garnered record breaking results, both in terms of absolute numbers and in terms of percentage yields of actions and donations from email campaigns to those respective groups.

The vast bulk of fundraising yield came without ever focusing on a fundraising ask.

And that was true before email 5, so the vast bulk of fundraising yield came without ever focusing on a fundraising ask. In other words, by integrating tactics, asks, and supporters, we didn't alienate the donors or the activists, we got more donations and activism from both groups than we ever had before.

Email content

The content of four of the five emails is reproduced below (without unsubscribe options etc)

Email 1

(Note the unusual structure here, a long body with no link until the bottom. That's because unlike a classic action email, this email

a) makes a high-bar ask, rooted in emotional engagement, so you really need more content before you take the leap, and

b) serves a broader goal in the overall sequence of introducing folks to the characters and the story - if the reader clicked through without absorbing that it wouldn't really serve the purpose.

I think this is a great example of why the email "formula" I teach should always be subject to review and abandoned entirely when it's strategically appropriate.)

It's Mothers' Day in Tiananmen Square

Dear friend of Amnesty,

This Sunday, 11 May, is Mothers' Day in China. Just like here, it's a day for families to celebrate the strength and love that mothers bring into our lives.

And this year, it's a chance for us to reach out to some particular mothers in Beijing who have experienced the worst thing a mother could endure - the death of their own children, at the hands of their own government.

They call themselves the Tiananmen Mothers. They are a group of predominantly Chinese women who never wanted to be activists. But when their children were killed in the violent military crackdown on the Chinese pro-democracy movement in 1989, everything changed.

All they ask is the freedom to publicly mourn without harassment, the release all those who remain in prison in connection with the 1989 protests, full public debate about the events and an independent inquiry into what happened on those dark days almost 19 years ago.

All they want is justice. Led by Ding Zilin (who was nominated for a Nobel peace prize), they face great personal risk every time they speak out. They've suffered detentions, repeated interrogations, and prolonged house arrest. It's a long, dangerous, and all too lonely campaign.

We can never restore what they've lost. But this Mothers' Day in China, we can show these brave women just how big their global family really is, and how much we appreciate their courageous stand for justice.

If you take a moment to fill out a Mothers' Day card online, we'll deliver your comments directly to the Tiananmen Mothers by Chinese Mothers' Day. Just click below to complete and send your card:

Click here to send your card

This Mothers' day in China, let's take a moment to show the Tiananmen mothers that on this day -- which has become so bitter sweet for them - they are not forgotten. They are never alone.

Please fill out your card today.

Thank you,

Kate Allen

Director, Amnesty International UK

Email 2

Show your support for the Tiananmen Mothers

Dear friend of Amnesty,

On May 11, Mothers' Day in China, we delivered over 5000 Mothers' Day messages from Amnesty supporters across the UK to the Tiananmen Mothers – a group of predominately Chinese women whose children were killed in the military crackdown of June 3-4,1989 in Beijing. Your kind words touched their hearts; thank you for your solidarity. Now we must speak up for justice and take the next step.

For 19 years, the Mothers' pleas for justice have been ignored or repressed by the Chinese authorities. But the Beijing Olympics are shining a historic spotlight on China and international pressure can really get results.

So today, we're launching an urgent new petition to the Chinese government supporting the Tiananmen Mothers' simple demands – like the freedom to publicly mourn for their children without harassment, and a fair investigation of the military's actions. Please click below to add your name to the petition right now:

Click here to sign our petition

This is no ordinary petition. First, we'll collect signatures every way we can until 4th June, the 19th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown. That Wednesday, we'll gather outside the Chinese Embassy in London, with the international press looking on. For the first 5000 signatures we receive, we'll place a rose on our unofficial memorial by the Chinese Embassy.

And, if you can contribute £20 to help fund this effort, we'll add a full 10 rose bouquet – a symbol of the Tiananmen Mothers ongoing struggle for justice – to symbolise your strong support.

This is a huge opportunity to show the Chinese government, the Olympic movement, and people all over the world just how much support the Tiananmen Mothers really have. They have waited 19 years for justice – haven't they waited long enough?

We can help end the wait. Please sign the petition today, and then forward this note to your friends and family so they can sign as well.

Click here to sign our petition

Thank you, as always, for defending what's right.

Sincerely,

Kate Allen

Amnesty International

P.S. I wanted to share with you just a couple of the 5000+ Mothers Day messages we passed on from the Amnesty UK community. Sometimes, there's nothing more important than simply knowing you're not alone. And for the Tiananmen Mothers, your words left no doubt. Thank you again. (And don't forget to sign the petition defending their rights.)

“I remember your children and now I have a daughter who is politically active and carries banners, just like them. I don't know how you find the strength to bear your loss - you have my deep admiration and sympathy. May your efforts bring the justice you seek. I am standing shoulder to shoulder with you all, mindful that you are the best and strongest mothers on our earth. Anne”

“As a mother and a grandmother, my heart goes out to you for your loss, all of my thoughts and hopes are with you as you seek justice. I admire your courage. In solidarity, Audrey”

Email 4

Over 10,000 roses. Come demonstrate on 4th June

Join our demonstration

Make your voices heard, in London and across the UK.

Dear friend,

The Amnesty UK community has blown away all expectations. Together, we've gathered well over 10,000 petition signatures for the Tiananmen Mothers and chipped in for hundreds of bouquets -simply amazing. Now it's time to take our message straight to the Chinese Authorities, and we need your help.

Please join us this Wednesday, 4th June to deliver our petition and place over 10,000 roses outside the Chinese embassy-each one representing another Amnesty supporter standing up for justice with the Tiananmen mothers. The international press will be on hand and the Chinese government will be watching closely, so we need a big crowd to show overwhelming public support. Can you join us this Wednesday evening in London?

WHAT: Demonstration for the Tiananmen Mothers and human rights in China

WHEN: Wednesday, June 4th. 6:00 - 7:00 PM.

WHERE: Chinese Embassy, 49-51 Portland Place, London W1B 1JL. Click here for map.

(Near the Regents Park & Great Portland St. Tubes on the Bakerloo, Circle, Metropolitan, and Hammersmith & City lines)

MAJOR SPEAKERS: Wei Jingsheng, Overseas Chinese Democracy Coalition; Xie Ze, Director, Friends of Tiananmen Mothers in the UK; and Shao Jiang, former student leader from Tiananmen Square 1989.

Please join us to add your voice to this crucial event. You're also encouraged to bring a rose, and make a flag, a headband or a t-shirt, instructions and templates are available for download here. And don't forget to forward the invitation to your friends and family who might also be interested in standing in solidarity with the Tiananmen Mothers.

Can't make it to London? Click here to see a list of local demos planned in other cities across the UK.

This Wednesday is the 19-year anniversary of the brutal crackdown in Tiananmen Square. We gather on this day to appeal for justice for the Tiananmen mothers and all the Chinese people whose human rights are in jeopardy. The Director of Friends of the Tiananmen Mothers UK, Xie Ze, describes it below:

"In 1989 hundreds of people, including my cousin Wang Nan, were killed because they stood up for justice and equality. Every day since, their families have sought justice. We are still waiting...

What we have lost can never be restored. But this gathering today shows that we are not alone."

This is a huge opportunity for people all over the world to show just how much support the Tiananmen Mothers really have. They have waited 19 years for justice - we want that wait to end. Please join us on Wednesday evening, in London or at a city near you.

Together, we can begin to transform this day from a tragic anniversary into a historic step forward for human rights in China, in Britain and around the world.

I hope to see you there.

Sincerely,

Kate Allen

P.S. If you haven't signed the petition or contributed for a bouquet, there's still time to be counted before Wednesday's big demonstration. But you have to act fast. You can still add your name here, or follow this link if you have already signed but wish to make a donation.

Email 5

Tiananmen crackdown - the struggle for justice continues

Thank you

Your interest and support has proved the Tiananmen Mothers are not alone

Dear friend of Amnesty,

Last Wednesday, the Tiananmen Mothers were yet again denied the freedom to mourn for their children on the 19th anniversary of the brutal Tiananmen Square military crackdown - the day their children died. But this year, we stood strong in support of the Tiananmen Mothers.

On 4th June, nearly 2,000 Amnesty UK supporters gathered to lay thousands of roses in solidarity with the Tiananmen Mothers outside the Chinese Embassy in London. There were also simultaneous local demonstrations across the UK; all carrying the simple message: Justice for the Tiananmen Mothers and human rights for all the people of China. And we were heard -- by governments, the media and people throughout the UK and across the world. To continue this fight for the Tiananmen Mothers - and for human rights around the world-- we need your help.

Please join Amnesty International today - let's keep up the fight

On 30th May, Ding Zilin managed to get a letter out to all the supporters of the Tiananmen Mothers around the world. She stated "In the passing of time, such gathering is gaining significance not only as respect for the dead but also as hope for the future. I would like to thank you all for this, again on behalf of every member of the Tiananmen Mothers." See the impact of our strong united voice, watch footage of the poignant London demonstration (video courtesy of Friction.tv, Flash required)

So what's next? We're going to keep campaigning for justice for the Tiananmen Mothers, and for human rights for all the people of China. Your support will enable us to rapidly mobilise in the event of domestic Chinese protests being prevented or violently suppressed by the Chinese Authorities, in the count-down to the Olympics, during or after the games.

AIUK's Human Rights for China campaign will continue until mid June 2009 and beyond the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Crackdown. But our impact depends on contributions from people like you.

It's been an amazing month for the Amnesty UK community -- you have so much to be proud of. Here's a quick summary of what we did together:

- We wrote and delivered over 5,000 Mothers Day cards to the Tiananmen Mothers, offering vital solidarity at a difficult time.

- We collected over 13,000 signatures (blowing away our goal) supporting the Tiananmen Mothers' simple demands, like the freedom to publicly mourn and a fair investigation into 1989's violent military crackdown on peaceful protestors.

- We gathered over 2,000 supporters in London and hundreds more in towns & cities across the UK to lay down solidarity roses.

-We made our voices heard, speaking directly to the Chinese authorities and generating media stories in the UK, Europe, the United States, Hong Kong and across the globe.

This is what the Amnesty UK community is capable of in just a few short weeks. If you believe in this kind of action, please make a small online contribution, it costs as little as £2 per month to become a full member of Amnesty International.

Click here to join

Thank you, so much, for being part of the team.

Sincerely,

Kate Allen

Amnesty International.

Ben Brandzel is a leading international practitioner, trainer and writer in the field of progressive online organizing. He is currently the Director of Incubation and International Programs at Citizen Engagement Lab.

Making the most of Facebook insights

Jess Day — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 05:05:00 -0600

Facebook released a preview version of Facebook insights – its reporting package - in November 2011.

I’ve digested some of the things I’ve read over the past few weeks to pick out the main differences – largely two new stats: 'people talking about' and 'virality'.

This 3-minute video gives a good explanation of the updates.

New dashboard

The dashboard details your:

total likes - people who have liked your page
friends of fans - your potential reach
people talking about this - unique people who have created content relating to your page such as a comment, 'like' or photo tag
weekly total reach – the total number of people who have seen content relating to your page (includes ads/sponsored stories)

This is an example of Which? Action’s dashboard. (You're stuck with the date range Facebook chooses to show you – usually the current week.)

Viral reach

This new stat allows you to see the number of people who saw a story and interacted with it and, as a result, the number of their friends it reached, expanding awareness of your page and organisation.

This allows you to tailor your activity by learning which posts get the most people talking about issues, or have the greatest virality stats.

For example, pictures of our cupcake delivery to the Treasury went down a treat:

Pros:

Focus on engagement - The data allows you to move on from a concern just with the number of people liking your page, to the quality of your content and user engagement.

Better feedback on content – You get information which helps you work out what works and what doesn't with your posts.

Cons:

3 months data only - Facebook can only report on the past 3 months of data so you have to be disciplined in keeping an external record of the data so you don’t lose anything.

Need 30+ people - You need over 30 people to interact with your page that week to pull any engagement stats, so pages with just a few fans will struggle to get stats.

Charlotte Slayford is Consumer Action Editor at Which?

Joining a conversation on twitter

Jess Day — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 15:11:33 -0600

Twitter is becoming a way for people to discuss programmes as they're broadcast, and broadcasters on both sides of the Atlantic are tapping into it. As you'll have seen – many shows broadcast a suggested hashtag for viewers to use to share comments and thoughts.

At Greenpeace, we've done a small amount of live tweeting during TV shows to join in the discussions happening on social media and hopefully capitalise in a small way on interest generated by the show.

Make sure it's relevant

It's worth choosing the programmes or events you want to jump on with some care - not just to avoid the appearance of bandwagon jumping but also to keep it novel and fresh for your followers.

The shows we've chosen have all been relevant to our key campaign topics - such as Channel 4's Fish Fight and the BBC's Frozen Planet and that's vital in making it worthwhile. Forcing a campaign message into a discussion that isn't relevant is going to turn more people off than it attracts, and will be blatantly opportunistic, like jumping on an irrelevant trending topic. (Ok, it's opportunistic anyway!)

You can see a selection of our tweets in this #frozenplanet Storify.

Bring something to the conversation

We've learnt to avoid having campaign messages or links in every message. Instead, talk about what's going on on-screen, respond to comments made by others, be part of the audience. Humour works well, and links to related content can also be well received - links to Greenpeace images from the Arctic went down very well during Frozen Planet. Perhaps leave your campaign ask until the end of the programme - 'if this has made you think, why not do something about it?'

For Frozen Planet we were lucky enough to have two activists involved who had just returned from an expedition to the Arctic. This meant they had fresh information to contribute, and could tweet with real authority.

Make sure you're well-resourced

It's surprisingly difficult to watch TV and maintain a Twitter presence at the same time. You don't really get to see much of the show, so it might be an idea to watch with someone else who can fill you in on the bits you miss.

Plan ahead

Lining up a few messages or links to push out is very useful, so you're not scrabbling around for them during the live tweeting. It also gives you more space to think about what would be most useful or popular.

Getting in early is also a good tactic. Just before the final episode of Frozen Planet, we posted "We <3 #FrozenPlanet (and Sir David Attenborough) RT if you agree" which got over 400 retweets, placing it in the top tweets for the hashtag and making Greenpeace a prominent voice in the discussion. Cheesy, but it worked.

Think about records

Twitter is ephemeral by nature, but if you want to keep some information about what you've done, for internal reports for example, you might want to use a service like Storify to allow you to take note of the highlights.

Jamie Woolley is Web Producer at Greenpeace UK.

Developing your 'super-activists'

Jess Day — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 04:57:41 -0600

At Concern Worldwide UK, we are looking to deepen engagement with a small group of campaigners. Our Unheard Voices campaign currently only engages through e-actions and sporadic invitations to attend events, but we’d like people to be more involved. This will be a big challenge as we have limited resources.

Planning will be a long process and won’t begin until 2012, but to inform our thinking, we did a small survey to look at how other UK organisations engage their campaigners. A big thank you to staff from ActionAid UK, Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), Cancer Research UK, CARE International UK, Greenpeace UK and Results UK who gave up time to help us out. Here is some of what we learned from them.

: Concern staff at the ‘Put People First’ march in 2009, at the time of the G20 summit.

Engagement

Most of the organisations surveyed engaged campaigners in quick campaigning activities, as well as offering deeper engagement to more dedicated activists. Generally they all try to keep focused by only pushing on one campaign at a time.

‘Super-activists’

Organisations all aspired to segment their campaigner into different categories but none did this as well as they would like. Organisations defined 'active' in different ways. For example, one divided campaigners into Level 1 (taking 1-2 campaign actions a year), Level 2 (more active, plus on email) and Level 3 (most engaged). Another organisation’s ‘least engaged’ campaigners don't take actions regularly at all.

Of the four organisations that did have existing ‘super-activist networks’ of engaged campaigners, two began these through training and preparation in the run up to a large event. Several organisations acknowledged that it would be desirable to recruit engaged campaigners in relevant Ministerial constituencies, but have had very little success – targeting to this extent is obviously very difficult!

Recruitment

Those with higher brand awareness amongst the general public are regularly approached by campaigners asking for ways to get more involved. Several organisations commonly email their supporter base to ask campaigners to become more engaged, or they ask their existing groups to recruit through stalls at appropriate events.

Organisations had emailed the supporter base specifically about becoming more involved, had offered this in place of a campaign action, or included it as a question in a survey. The ask was generally something along the lines of ‘do you want to become more involved in our campaigns?’

Staffing and support

Looking after more engaged campaigners in a structured way took up a lot of staff time for those organisations that did this. All had at least the equivalent of 1 full time staff member looking after these campaigners, and some had several.

Most staff support is provided by phone calls and emails, but one organisation holds regular monthly teleconferences with their groups to discuss that month’s action.

All organisations with more engaged campaigners provide some form of training. This varies from just providing training materials to organising training events and national or regional gatherings which include training.

Inside or out?

It is generally seen as good practice for campaigns to adopt a mixture of insider and outsider tactics, analogous to a ‘carrot and stick’ strategic approach. Insider lobbying meetings, which seek to build relationships, offer ‘carrot’ incentives to decision makers, while large scale protest and direct action seek less to persuade and more to try and force, hence the ‘stick’ analogy.

All the organisations we spoke to supported their campaigners to engage directly with their MPs, ranging from sending emails to organising mass parliamentary lobbies. Some complement this approach with demonstrations, stunts and/or direct action.

Thanks again to all those who helped with the survey. I hope this information is useful to other organisations in a similar position.

Natasha Adams is Campaigns and Parliamentary Officer at Concern Worldwide, UK

Using facebook for a live Q and A session

Jess Day — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 15:45:02 -0500

Mental illness will affect so many in their lifetime (the stats are as high as one in four), yet often people feel they can’t admit they’re affected by it, let alone talk openly about their mental health. Time to Change campaigns to change attitudes to mental health problems.

The campaign is supported by a social marketing strategy, which has periodic campaign ‘bursts’, using different approaches to help effect public behavioural change.

Last year, we focused on how many people behave in ways that could inadvertently be hurtful to people with mental illness. We set up a social experiment to see how many people would positively respond to a flatshare advert with Erik, once he disclosed that he had depression.

It was a controversial yet successful campaign, and raised many issues with our vocal Facebook followers which they wanted to talk about.

Time to Change on facebook

Facebook has turned out to be a wonderful way of bringing people together and giving them the space to talk with people who all have something in common. A vibrant community has gradually built up on the Time to Change Facebook page, with people who are keen to share their experiences, offer advice to others and who want to debate mental health and discrimination issues.

Working with a subject like mental illness and stigma means that we can have a lot of live, emotional content, but we’ve learned not to be afraid of this, rather to embrace it! If we need to remind people of the community guidelines, we do that publically (it’s on the info section of the Facebook page too). We find that if someone steps out of line, someone else in the community will pick them up on it - great peer-moderation!

Because Erik is a real person with a real-life experience of depression, it put the campaign into a context which people could recognise in their own lives. We decided that rather than Time to Change responding to the many queries and conversations, we should ask Erik himself to give an account of what it was like to take part in this experiment and advertising campaign. So we decided to do a Q&A on the Facebook page.

How we prepared

We prepped our followers by trailing the Q&A on Twitter and on Facebook in the weeks before, encouraging people to leave their questions in the comments section of the post.

We also set up a profile for Erik, so he didn’t have to speak as Time to Change, and so we could help direct the conversation if it strayed off track, or moderate people’s comments if necessary. We almost never delete people’s comments, and make a point of responding openly and honestly to criticism, only deleting posts which are damaging to the other users.

Managing the Q&A

On the day of the live Facebook Q&A, Erik came into the office and sat next to me using a laptop, so I could moderate whilst he was focussed on responding to the questions. Having questions in advance gave him the chance to prepare, and also let us know the kinds of things people were interested in and the volume of responses. We then asked Erik to reference those questions in his responses – and mix these in with live questions people asked as the Q&A took place.

I kicked it off with a welcome to Erik, and from that post (which went into all our followers’ newsfeeds), people started to leave their comments and questions underneath. And from there, Erik posted up his responses all on the same ‘thread’. (Visitors to the Time to Change page can view posts from Time to Change or posts from everyone else. This helped the Q&A to all remain in one place, making it easy to read and follow.)

Part way through, we put up a fresh post, as the previous thread was getting really long – but also so that people would be reminded that the Q&A was taking place, as it would appear in their news feeds and remind them. (It was at lunch time, so people joined us when they could).

We linked through to our twitter feed as well, with excerpts from the Q&A, so people could join us from there – or not miss out if they couldn’t make it onto Facebook. And as is the nature with Facebook, the Q&A remained up on the wall, so if people had missed it, they could go back to read it and add comments when they had the time.

What happened

As you can see from the comments, people were keen to ask Erik about the social experiment and why he wanted to take part, but they also asked him advice about how to manage depression and the resulting stigma. Erik could speak honestly and knowledgably, and made a powerful impact.

Erik’s response took me by surprise. I was concerned that he may have felt under pressure to defend the social experiment, and be anxious about how public it was (by then we had over 30 thousand followers). But he was so supportive of what we were trying to achieve, and enthused by the tangible, positive difference he was making to people’s lives that he couldn’t have been a better advocate for Time to Change.

He said he actually found the whole Q&A experience very helpful, because he realised he was really connecting with people (albeit keyboard to keyboard, not face to face) and talking with the campaign, which is essentially a large group of people all wanting to end discrimination.

Outcomes

I was so happy at how positive and encouraging the live chat was, and how tangible it made this social movement. The public nature of Facebook meant that our followers were able to share it with their friends, spreading the message to people we couldn’t reach alone.

We’ve repeated the same format for live Q&A chats since, and it’s great to know we can use this model again and again to bring the different voices of the campaign together, breaking down the ‘them and us’ into a united ‘we’.

Abigail MacDougall is Digital Manager for Time to Change.

How do I get more people to sign my petition?

Jess Day — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 05:05:00 -0500

Getting people to sign your petition

“Make the impact and theory of change clear. IE:
1.Outline the current problem/issue
2.Illuminate the current opportunity
3.Explain how the individual's involvement will clearly contribute to a winnable success"

"Make sure your goals are winnable; otherwise they (and subsequently the legitimacy of your ask of the supporter) will ring hollow.”

“Say what you will do with the signatures (when, how and to whom will you deliver the signatures)”

"Just copy Avaaz, they're great at this!
Test, tweak and optimize the layout, text and image (using something like google optimizer, watching people try to sign the petition is also good)
Progress bar showing how close to goal
Limit the amount of information people need to provide
Give it urgency - why do they need to act now?
Give it an image - so people can picture the change
Have a genuine reason - people can tell if signing will make an impact or if you're just collecting email data"

"Try and keep everything above the fold on an average sized screen
Have the form on the top right (again this is where people's eyes
are drawn to)
Don't have any outbound links (you probably have to have privacy policy, but have only that), no link to donate or to your homepage. You want people to take action, so don't distract them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice:_Why_More_Is_Less
Keep your petition short - one sentence if possible - don't give
people a list of things they can disagree with
Have Facebook and Twitter share buttons on the page
Make your submit button big and bright
Have the minimum number of fields on your form possible (think what you want to do with the data after)
After submitting, take people to a page where you encourage them to email their friends asking them to take action with either a form or
an address book importer."

Comments and counters – social proof

"People are sociable and want to be part of a movement, so... “20,000 have already signed.. .you still have time to add your name...”

“1) The signer's comments constitute a unique message that can be delivered, via email and other ways, to the petition's target(s). This increases the likelihood that the target(s) may actually pay attention to the signer's personal viewpoint; and

2) If your petition tool allows prior signers' comments to be displayed on the petition landing page, then these comments will inspire subsequent signers to follow through and join in signing the petition -- reducing the abandonment rate of the petition.”

Spreading the word

"email - your list, list buys, partnerships, etc
tweeting / facebook / other (can be useful if your audience has a specific site or place online they gather)
advertising - google, facebook
viral - video or some other thing on the petition that gets people to pass it around
follow up ask - "spread the word", on the thank you page
coalitions - change.org and care2 are good, can also involve other groups"

“Might be obvious, but I usually start off by writing a blog post which I link with the action and then spread the word on Facebook, Care2 and Twitter. ...targeting groups has worked very well for me. I post a few lines and the link on FB (in my case animal) groups or pages. On good days I get about 50 percent of the hits through these links - this might be down to the issue, (bullfighting), though.”

“ Making use of high profile supporters who tweet is always good too! And targeting key online groups/networks who have an interest in the subject your campaigning on (eg medical groups, student nurses etc)
“Mini challenges like forward to 10 friends/re-tweet/re-post etc can work too.”

Your emails

Some advice on your emails (with the caveat that what works for one audience may not work for another – test!)

"Do subject line tests (for some reason shorter ones tend to work better, with one word seeming to do the best - it seems counter-intuitive but we've been testing it for a couple of years every week and one word almost always wins, we think it's because they stand out visually in your inbox)
Keep your email as short as possible, and then try and make it shorter again
Have one simple ask
Make your ask bold
Try a box in the top right of the email with the ask also in it as this is where people's eyes are drawn to on a screen
Use persuasive words in your ask "You should do xxx because yyy"
Clearly explain what the problem is and why now is the time to act
Explain why the action you are proposing will make a difference. If it's a petition how will it be delivered? How will you make sure the target actually sees it? Can you give examples of this working in the past?
After a few days send the email again to those who didn't open it but with a different subject line and to those who did open it tell them how successful it has been and that if they can "just forward the email" to their contacts it will be even more successful
In the from name of the email use a person's name and not just the name of the organisation as it makes it seem more personal and less like advertising"

Urgency can help you

“Deadlines are always good – “... just two days left to....” “

“Using key countdown dates as moments to push for signatures can create more of a sense of urgency around it.”

TEST

"Split test your emails and use website optimizer on your landing page, 'best practices' don't always work for every audience."

This article summarises a discussion on the eCampaigning Forum email list. Thanks to everyone who contributed.

Using a Google+ hangout for an online press conference

Jess Day — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 17:25:00 -0500

On 15 July, campaigners from the worldwide Tibet movement became the first activists to use Google+ hangout as a platform for a press conference. The occasion was the visit of China's future President, Xi Jinping, to Lhasa for galas and grand speeches to mark a major propaganda event - the 60th Anniversary of what China likes to call the "Peaceful Liberation of Tibet". The Tibet Autonomous region was closed for over a month so that China could make sure nothing would mar these events, with no foreign journalists permitted to go to Lhasa.

The International Tibet Network, a global coordinating body for campaigns on behalf of the Tibetan people, had been talking to some of its most prominent Members for a couple of weeks about an appropriate response. Given the impossibility of being either in Tibet or China in person, and the uncertainty about what was actually going to happen in Lhasa, an online press conference seemed the most practical and flexible way to ensure the media knew about our perspectives on the anniversary and on Xi Jinping as China's future leader.

With participants in India (Tibetan Women's Association), the United States (Students for a Free Tibet) and the UK (the Network Secretariat), we needed to practice both the technicalities and our message delivery at some length.

Our first thought was to use Skype video calling between the participants, and to broadcast it simultaneously using Livestream or Ustream. We tested it repeatedly but the video frequently froze. Bandwidth was our main enemy....as much a challenge in rural Suffolk as in India!

Our technically-savvy colleague Nathan Freitas of the Tibet Action Institute was the one who hit on the idea of trying Google+ Hangout. Most of us were only just responding to invitations for Google+ and hadn't experimented with its features before.

Early tests were very positive. The platform was more stable, and there were a number of features, such as being able to mute both microphone and video, and the automatic selection of the person speaking to occupy the main screen, that seemed pretty attractive. Juggling everyone's schedules, it took about a fortnight to get ourselves to the point where we felt ready.

As rumours of Xi's visit began to circulate in Lhasa, we felt confident enough to start sending Google+ invitations to key journalists in Beijing. News of the proposed "hangout" was received pretty enthusiastically. A few journalists were as intrigued about our choice of platform as about the subject matter of Tibet, and China's propaganda. One struggled to get to grips with Google+ and told us we were trying to be too clever for our own good!

We accepted journalists on a first come, first served basis to join us in the hangout, and when we were "full' (capacity being 10), we told others to watch a live broadcast on UStream, asking questions by email or Twitter. This latter ingredient was key to the success of the whole exercise. Without Nathan's technical expertise, using his computer to bridge between the hangout and the UStream public channel, it would have been a very select event. Nathan tells me that Google and YouTube are working on combining this all into one service, so at some point in the near future it will be much easier.

For us, a major advantage was being able to share the hangout space with journalists in Beijing, without being troubled by the "Great Firewall". We told those joining us in the hangout that we would be re-broadcasting, and gave them the option of muting their video cameras if they preferred to be anonymous. Some did, but others were happy to be seen to be part of this "event".

We were very satisfied with the outcome of the event (Press Release). With good press participation, our coverage was fairly strong (notably a Reuters piece that went everywhere), and the novelty of the event got us some write-ups in the "techie" press which were re-tweeted numerous times.

Over 50 people watched the broadcast on UStream live, which considering we didn't publicise the event widely (lacking some confidence in how the technical aspects would work out), was excellent. There have been over 2,000 views of extracts of the broadcast since, and an archive of the whole press conference is still available to view.

And the technical aspects? With boosted bandwidth in India, and good protocols, such as muting our videos when our participant in India was speaking, so her internet connection was not trying to stream our video as well as her own, it was virtually flawless.

We'll definitely be using Google+ hangout again, and are planning on sharing the experience with our 180+ Member groups at forthcoming conferences, to try and encourage them to try it too.

Alison Reynolds is Executive Director of the International Tibet Network.

Blog

Stop Kony - what can e-campaigners learn?

What makes it so successful?

What's wrong with it?

What can we learn from this?

What should we do differently?

Campaigning with UK local councils

Emailing councillors

Suppliers

Local petitions

Local authority petition case study: Ramblers

Organisational and personal on Twitter

Save the personal for when it matters

Corporate account 'clearing house'

Getting staff engaged with a campaign

1. Find your loud voices

2. Make yourself seen as well as heard

3. Do your homework

4. Make it irresistible

5. First steps can make all the difference

6. Take an integrated approach

7. Remember not everyone is a campaigner!

8. Instil a sense of authority

9. Don’t be shy about blowing your own trumpet

10. Get senior staff on board

Targeting tweeting MPs

Getting the data

What we did

Results

MP list – community resource

Should I include a budget in my RFP?

Yes, do give a budget...

...but you might be better off indicating a range

You don't have to fix a figure upfront though

Focus on requirements at each stage

Quality is harder to compare than price

Am I following too many people on Twitter?

It doesn't matter...

And has benefits

Supporters like to be followed back

But it does affect what you can take in

And beyond a certain list size – a follow-back is meaningless

Engagement is the important thing, not Big Numbers

Reactivating inactive supporters

Step 1: Defining and identifying 'inactive'

Definitions

Segments

Step 2: Reactivation / removal

Step 3: Prevention

More Reading

The integration imperative: Tiananmen mothers case study

Bringing activity together

Outcomes

Email content

It's Mothers' Day in Tiananmen Square

Show your support for the Tiananmen Mothers

Over 10,000 roses. Come demonstrate on 4th June

Tiananmen crackdown - the struggle for justice continues

Making the most of Facebook insights

New dashboard

Viral reach

Pros:

Cons:

Joining a conversation on twitter

Make sure it's relevant

Bring something to the conversation

Make sure you're well-resourced

Plan ahead

Think about records

Developing your 'super-activists'

Engagement

‘Super-activists’

Recruitment

Staffing and support

Inside or out?

Using facebook for a live Q and A session

Time to Change on facebook

How we prepared

Managing the Q&A

What happened