A presentation on how to mobilize your cause, whether you work at a nonprofit, business or social change organization. Included: a look at successful advocacy campaigns; a 12-step guide to mobilizing support, and a look at some useful tools.

1. Move the needle!
How to activate your supporters
Part of the Mobilize Your Cause bootcamp series
The Hub SoMa
Aug. 24, 2010
JD Lasica
Founder, Socialbrite.org
jd@socialbrite.org
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2. Tonight’s agenda
6:30 Introductions
6:40 Social media overview
6:50 What drives your organization?
7:05 Campaigns with impact
7:25 12 steps to activate your supporters
8:00 Tools & action hubs for social change
8:25 Summary & next steps
8:30 Reception & spread your message
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3. Relax!
Creative Commons
BY photo on Flickr
by Tom@HK
resources: http://bit.ly/mobilize
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4. Today’s hashtag
Creative Commons
photo on Flickr
by Prakhar
Tweet this talk! Hashtag: #hubsoma
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5. Handouts! Be happy!
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6. Social media by the numbers
77% US adults are frequent social media users.*
141 million active blogs (vs. 12,000 in 2000); almost 1 million blog
posts created per day; over 346 million people globally read blogs
6 of top 10 websites in US are social sites (YouTube, Facebook,
Wikipedia, Blogger, Craigslist, MySpace)
Twitter: 120 million registered users; 300,000 new users a day;
180 million unique visitors a month
Flickr: 35 million people have posted tagged
4 billion-plus photos
Wikipedia: 10 million users have contributed
YouTube: 2 billion videos streamed per day
Text messages per day: 4.5 billion (vs. 400,000 in 2000)
*source: Nielsen Online, spring 2010
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7. Facebook: Freaky growth
500+ million members worldwide —
62% of US Internet users are on Facebook
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8. Tweets in real time
popacular.com/gigatweet/
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9. Twitter fun facts
Twitter growth rate: 295% annual increase in U.S.
Highest # of tweets, May 16, 2010 compared with May 16, 2009
*source: http://bit.ly/tweetspercapita
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10. What drives your organization?
Before we talk tools,
technology or
campaigns, what is
the animating force
behind your actions?
Pamela Hawley
Founder/CEO, UniversalGiving.org
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11. Types of campaigns
1. Raise awareness for your cause or
enterprise, build authority
2. Sign up new members
3. Raise funds
4. Advocacy: sign petitions
5. Take an action: micro-loans, enlist
people to attend an event
6. Find new volunteers or advocates
7. Grow a mailing/newsletter list
8. Attract new Facebook or Twitter
followers
9. Ask people to create content on
your behalf
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12. Care2 (if you have $$)
Effective advocacy campaigns
Matt Shepard Act Protecting Oregon’s Starbucks helps Ethiopian
to prevent hate crimes forests coffee farmers
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13. Campaigns with impact
Equality California: Wedding registry
SMA: Tweet for a Cure
Grassrootsmapping & BP oil spill
charity:water: Website, blog, Twitter,
video updates, Google Earth
Greenpeace & Nestlé Ric O’Barry, “The Cove”
Visual storytelling in Middle East
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14. CASE STUDY
No on 8 Wedding Registry
1,700 couples raised $1 million+ for Equality California
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15. CASE STUDY
Spinal Muscular Atrophy
Slide show on Photobucket
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16. CASE STUDY
Tweet for a Cure
2,867 people have tweeted reaching 1.6 million followers
http://gwendolynstrongfoundation.org/twitter
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17. CASE STUDY
Grassroots Mapping
Balloon aerial images of Gulf Oil Spill funded by Kickstarter
grassrootsmapping.org
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18. CASE STUDY
charity:water & Twestival
http://www.charitywater.org/projects/map/
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19. CASE STUDY
Greenpeace & Nestlé
Nestlé’s Facebook Page, March 17, 2010
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20. CASE STUDY
Greenpeace & Nestlé
Nestlé Killer microsite
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21. CASE STUDY
Greenpeace & Nestlé
Boycott Nestlé pages on Facebook
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22. CASE STUDY
Greenpeace & Nestlé
Greenpeace bought Google AdWords for Nestle & Greenpeace
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23. CASE STUDY
Greenpeace & Nestlé
Nestlé partners with Forest Trust
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24. CASE STUDY
Visual storytelling campaigns
Women & Memory Forum (Egypt) / Nawaa (Tunisia)
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25. Other campaigns with impact
National Wildlife Federation raised $100,000
using social media after Gulf Oil Spill.
Red Cross’s Text Haiti campaign raised $32
million. Oxfam UK received $50,000 via link in
YouTube video posted day after Haiti quake.
Visible Children Scholarship Program: 700 kids
in Uganda receiving scholarships & mentoring.
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26. 12 steps to mobilize your cause
1. First, listen and observe. Engage
before the Ask.
2. Set clear goals & define metrics
3. Define a clear theme
4. Frame it with a personal story
5. Create a simple call to action
6. Create a conversation hub for participants
7. Give your campaign social love handles
8. Consider a mobile component
9. Identify & enlist evangelists
10. Create ongoing mini-actions & provide updates
11. Use immediacy: Headlines & deadlines
12. Create real-world events
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27. 1. Create a listening post
Set up a listening post
(monitoring dashboard)
to track what’s being
said about your cause.
Choose from Google
Reader, Feedly (left) or
Netvibes, supplemented
by a Twitter monitoring
service.
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28. 2. Set goals, map metrics
Goals Metrics to measure
Grow email list of supporters # newsletter, RSS subscribers
Solicit micro-loans Initial, repeat loan rates
Increase comments on blog avg. # comments/post
Increase website visibility increase in traffic or linkback #s
Increase positive mentions mentions in social networks
of brand or campaign
Have visitors stick around stick rate
Make our content more viral # of shares
Get people to take action # of petition signatures
Attend an event # of registrants, year over year
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29. 3. Define a clear theme
Boil down your cause to a strong, single sentence
Vittana:
Help anyone go to college
Alter Eco:
Support fair trade
ActBlue:
Elect progressive candidates
DonorsChoose:
Support public classrooms in need
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30. 4. Tell a personal story
Use videos or photos — make us feel
invisiblepeople.tv
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31. 5. Create a call to action
Inspire people to act with clear, motivating steps
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32. 6. Create conversation hub
Where will you engage with supporters?
Your blog Community site (WiserEarth)
Facebook Social hub (Change.org)
Twitter Contest site (Giving Challenge)
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33. 7. Social love handles
Socialize your campaign with plug-ins, widgets
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34. 8. Consider mobile
GoodGuide.com:
Users can use iPhone app
to see if a product is healthy,
environmentally friendly &
socially responsible.
This American Life:
Facebook widget & text to give
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35. 9. Enlist evangelists
Use your listening post to identify high-value influencers in
your subject area
Establish a rapport and only then reach out
Scope out Twitter Lists that intersect with your company or
social cause
Connect with other social media influencers through their
blogs and other networks
Twitter followings: @adventuregirl 1.4m @garyvee 853,854
@TOMSshoes 487,109 @AmeriCares 6,380
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36. 10. Create mini-actions
America’s Giving Challenge: Daily winners
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37. 11. Use immediacy
Headlines & deadlines: Play off the news & use a hard stop date
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38. 12. Create offline events
Contests, tweet-ups, fund-raisers to propel real-world gatherings
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39. Then: Measure, refine, refresh
Measure results, follow up, recalibrate, relaunch
http://dashboard.imamuseum.org/
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40. Build an active community
here’s an amazing
difference between building
an audience and building a
community. An audience
will watch you fall on a
sword. A community will fall
on a sword for you.
— Chris Brogan
Author,“Trust Agents”
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41. Social action hubs
Care2 TakePart
Change.org WiserEarth
Causes Amazee
Idealist
Causecast
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42. Use the Sharing Economy
Free content! Free resources!
Free photos Socialbrite.org/sharing-center
Free videos Creativecommons.org
Free music & audio Techsoup
Free software & platforms! Free expertise!
WordPress & its plug-ins BarCamp
Open Office 3.0 PodCamp
Drupal, Joomla & other WordCamp
open source platforms Social Media
Ubuntu Linux OS Club
Kaltura for video
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43. T O O L S
Creative Commons
Creativecommons.org
• Rich source of free
commercial & noncommercial
images
• Flickr: 156 million Attribution,
Noncommercial, No Derivatives
& ShareAlike licenses
• Use them for your blog,
website, email or print
newsletter, presentations, etc.
• Don’t just take. Share!
flickr.com/creativecommons
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44. T O O L S
Darfur & Google Earth
Crisis in Darfur: Using Google Earth
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45. T O O L S
Google Earth’s historical layers
Historic Centre of Warsaw, 1945 & today
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46. T O O L S
Google Sidewiki
Google Sidewiki at Apple.com
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47. T O O L S
Do-good widgets
Create a widget on Causes.com or create your own
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48. T O O L S
Word clouds
Wordle.net word cloud of JD Lasica’s tweets
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49. T O O L S
Online visualizations
Tea Party’s ‘Contract From America’
word cloud on manyeyes
manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com
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50. T O O L S
Online visualizations
manyeyes
Make your story
more visual: Former
Attorney General
Alberto Gonzales’
testimony before
Congress.
manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com
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51. Other tools & platforms
Social Actions: Open API enables organizations & bloggers
to volunteer or take action on the causes they support, can
tailor it to your cause.
The Extraordinaries: Use the power of community for micro-
volunteerism in people’s spare time.
OpenStreetMap: Open source “Wikipedia of maps”;
community builds own maps using GPS & donated satellite
imagery.
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52. Warning: Gatekeepers
The danger of closed platforms
Exhibit 1: Facebook
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53. Warning: Gatekeepers
Exhibit 2: Apple
Political satirist Mark Fiore was ‘invited to reapply’
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54. Tools & resources
What you’ll find at bit.ly/mobilize
24 online fundraising sites
Top cause organizations
Free reports
Free photo, music, video directories
Collaboration & project management tools
Geolocation tools
Free tutorials on the best way to use
Facebook, Twitter & blogs
How to use mobile strategically
Tons more. All free & shareable.
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55. Biggest resource: Your supporters
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56. Let’s keep talking
JD Lasica, Socialbrite.org
email: jd@socialbrite.org
Twitter: @jdlasica
Pamela Hawley, UniversalGiving
email: phawley@universalgiving.org
Twitter: @pamelahawley
Resources at bit.ly/mobilize
Bookmarks at delicious.com/socialmediacamp/mobilize
Presentation at slideshare.net/jdlasica
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