How to navigate social media for social causes

In response to one of my anti-facebook rants back in its early days in 2006, a friend of mine converted me with just one analogy:

“Imagine your daily morning walk through a rural village in Senegal,” said A., a recently Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV), “it’s just like that.”

She went on with the analogy: there are some people you want to stop and talk to, and others you have to greet out of courtesy (though you may be able to get away with a quick handshake or a wave).

How is entering the world of social media similar to entering a village as a foreigner?

At the start, you generally want to be nice to everyone, slowly figure out who’s who, and introduce yourself properly. With time, maybe you’ll learn who to avoid, and how to do it gracefully. Eventually, when it comes time to look for work, start a village project, expand your garden, rebuild your house, you need to figure out who in the village can help you, and what terminology or animated hand signs to use to best get your point across. You’ll also soon realize it’s good etiquette to give something back in return.

On our recent BRACED online discussion forum on social media, it seemed many of the BRACED family members are new to the village, and need to figure out how to build social media presence.

We can learn a lot from other NGOs, but also from corporations – who are experts at building strong social media presence and using that presence to run marketing campaigns. So, too, can the humanitarian and development sector use social media to run campaigns and mobilize people. During the BRACED discussion forum, Nathalie Koffi of ENDA energie, expressed wanting to learn how to do just that.

What are some successful twitter campaigns for social causes?

Two examples of successful humanitarian and development twitter campaigns were the United Nation’s “#theworldneedsmore” and V-Day’s “#1billionrising.”

The #worldneedsmore campaign was to raise awareness about the annual World Humanitarian Day (August 19^th), and to gain the public’s buy-in by letting anyone have a say in how funds get allocated. How did it work? Based on how many people tweeted a particular idea, e.g. “I think the #worldneedsmore playgrounds”, then funding got allocated accordingly.

The #1billionrising campaign was to raise awareness and inspire people to peacefully demonstrate in the streets (e.g. flashmobs) to combat violence against women and children.

How to use twitter to its utmost potential

These campaigns worked so well not only because all UN agencies and major NGOs participated in the “tweetstorm”, but also well-known world figures such as Barack Obama and corporations such as Coca-Cola agreed to retweet the campaign message to all of their followers.

The first lesson the BRACED family can learn from these hugely successful twitter campaigns is to build our followings, and help one another do that. We also need to figure out how to focus and filter incoming and outgoing information. That is, how do we not fall down the black hole of twitter (lest two hours after your morning coffee, you’re still scrolling down for more information or figuring out who to tweet at!).

There are a plethora of resources out there for people just starting on twitter, I recommend this one for beginners, and this one for advanced twitter users.

Coming soon as well, is a “BRACED twitter target” guide which will be available to the BRACED family as a google shared document. It includes the twitter handles of BRACED members, and other twitter accounts considered key (which have huge followings or clout of some kind). The document also helps with basics like, “what kind of information do I post?” or “how do I create a shortened URL link so it looks cleaner in my tweet?” or “which hashtag should I use?”

What’s a hashtag, you ask?

A twitter hashtag combines the “#” sign with a word, numbers or combination thereof allowing information to be identifiable on twitter as belonging to a certain topic, event, campaign, etc.

Most planned events have a hashtag (such as the climate negotiations, #COP or this year, #COP21). If you wanted to see the latest news coming out of COP21, you can just search twitter for “#COP21”. Likewise, you can post relevant info using that hashtag.

Citizens across the globe have been spontaneously creating hashtags for causes or emergencies such as #Nairobifloods -- created when Kenya’s capital flooded in April and May 2015. By searching twitter for #Nairobifloods, people could quickly access photos and information, and hope the government heard their complaints.

When the “village” called Social Media starts feeling too big, a hashtag can help bring focus to your twitter usage – bring you back to who and what to pay attention to, and who and what to politely ignore. No pressure to always use a hashtag, though, and usually 1-2 hashtags per tweet is plenty. Also, any noun such as “climate” is easily searchable without a “#” sign, so keep your tweets “cleaner” and easier to read by reserving the “#” for unique hashtags.

How will BRACED use hashtags?

Some standard hashtags will be shared via the BRACED twitter target guide, but it’s also a good idea to periodically google search “twitter”, “hashtag” and the subject matter you’re interesting in posting or learning about to see what hashtags may be in use and/or trending.

In some cases, BRACED projects may be instrumental in creating or feeding into trending hashtags, especially during and immediately following a climate event. If every BRACED member – both organizational and individual accounts – participated in a “tweetstorm” using a particular hashtag and/or a standard tweet, the impact could be enormous! (Catholic Relief Service twitter account has 56,000 followers alone!)

Social media is not just all about twitter

“Facebook might be the way forward for Africa,” said Lucille Robinson of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) during the BRACED online discussion forum.

Ms. Robinson may right. Considering the global facebook “heatmap” (which shows users and activity per country) and the global twitter heatmap it’s clear that Africa uses twitter much less than other continents, though many Northern African countries are avid facebook users (no surprise since during several of the “Arab springs” in Egypt and Tunisia, facebook was a means by which people connected and allegedly planned and mobilized).

 “In Africa, everyone’s on facebook” a popular radio journalist said to me last week at Burkina Faso’s most popular broadcasting station.

What can facebook bring to BRACED’s work?

Most large organizations already have facebook community pages (which allow “likes”), and it may help us to create individual project pages – or even use facebook to help launch campaigns, mobilize people or create a community of practice. This list of ten creative and inspirational facebook campaigns from the corporate sector, and this list of the best 30 facebook campaigns ever can help inform our work as well and inspire us to organize and mobilize in creative, engaging ways with our audience. That is, how do we move beyond just getting more “likes”?

Why social media strategies are a good idea

With facebook as with all social media -- and just like in a small village -- we need to use discretion about who we align ourselves with, who we promote, where our information is coming from, and targeting the information we want to get across. Are we speaking to the right crowd, using the right language and symbols?

BRACED has a social media strategy (available to anyone interested), and I would encourage each of you to put down in writing some goals and benchmarks concerning how and why you’re using social media.

Ask yourself: Do you want visibility? Do you want to become known for contributing information in a certain subject matter? Do you want to be known for mobilizing people via social media? Are you trying to push a message across? Are you trying to influence, and get others to influence, policy-makers?

Much like we would not want to spend our entire day aimlessly wandering around the village (or at least, not most days), we do not want to find ourselves aimlessly wandering around social media too often, either. So mold your twitter and facebook strategy!

Of course, there are plenty of other social media platforms and their apps to get lost in beyond facebook and twitter. One must find the balance between being multimodal within social media, and as mentioned in the BRACED forum, also rely on more traditional communication strategies such as newsletters.

As already obvious to all of us already working on social media, managing our following, our presence and usage is easily a full-time job in and of itself. If we start working together more on social media, it will propel all of us forward.

As the old African proverb goes, “if you want to go fast – go alone, if you want to go far – go together.” This applies to real - and virtual - village life. So if you’re not in the BRACED village yet, come by and at least wave at us or give us a quick handshake on twitter at @bebraced or BRACED’s facebook community page.