A talk to the Long Beach Advanced Organizing Institute (@OrgInst) about how social media can be used in campaigns and has been used to great influence / change. Meant for an interactive discussion / audience participation.

1. Influence in Social Media
Aaron Coleman
@aarondcoleman
aaron@smallstepslabs.com
www.aaroncoleman.net

2. Goals for Tonight
• Tools - Expanding your digital organizing
tool belt.
• Narrative – the story is more interesting
than the campaign.
• Influence – how to affect the social graph
• Conflict – how conflict is at the center of
digital organizing

4. Twitter.com
Please Create a Twitter Account Now.
(try to get a twitter name that is short, and close to your own real name)

5. Twitter in 60 seconds
• A Tweet: 140 character thought.
• A re-tweet: something you saw that others
following you need to see.
• A reply: first character is “@” followed by
their account name. Click the “reply”
button to thread replies together as a
conversation.

6. Twitter in 60 seconds
• A mention: a tweet with “@” and the
person‟s username. This will alert them
you have said something about them.
• A hashtag: a tweet containing the “#”
character followed by an existing or new
non-spaced theme. Like “#fridays” or
“#gettingThingsDone” – powerful. Others
can search on this.

7. Twitter in 60 seconds
• Let‟s try this out tonight!
• Please follow: @orgInst
• Please mention @orgInst tonight!
• Please tweet about what you see and
what you think. Your opinion is part of the
conversation!
• Please tweet about other
“tweeple”, mentioned or that you know of.

8. Twitter in 60 seconds
• Please follow or mention me:
@aarondcoleman
• Please respond to one another.
• Please re-tweet one another if you find a
tweet particularly interesting or well
composed.

9. … another goal
http://visual.ly/sitting-killing-you
By medicalbillingandcoding.org

20. Dr. Neville Owen: “All these agencies are interested in this …. strange
people on the internet are saying this now.”

21. How was this story first told?
Healy, G.N., Wijndaele, K., Dunstan, D.W., Shaw, J.E., Salmon, J, Zimmet, P.Z. and Owen, N.
(2008). Objectively-measured sedentary time, physical activity and metabolic risk: the AusDiab
study. Diabetes Care, 31, 369-71
http://sma.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/pres-4.pdf

25. Infographic vs Research
Why wasn’t the research PDF, with the same
info, shared in 2008 the same way?
• Personalized the message
• Simple, shareable.
• Rapid digestion of data.
• Aesthetic – it‟s important!

26. Influence

27. Measuring Social Networks

28. Clusters of Influence

29. James Fowler
@James_H_Fowler
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMkr0ZvgW9U#!

30. Facebook – 2010 Voter Turnout

31. Facebook – 2010 Voter Turnout

32. Facebook – 2010 Voter Turnout
About 600,000 people, or one percent, were randomly assigned to see a
modified “informational message,” identical in all respects to the social
message except for pictures of friends. An additional 600,000 served as the
control group and received no Election Day message from Facebook at all.
Fowler and colleagues then compared the behavior of recipients of the social
message, recipients of the informational message, and those who saw
nothing.
Users who had received the social message were more likely than the others
both to look for a polling place and to click on the “I Voted” button.
http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/facebook_fuels_the_friend_vote

33. Conflict

34. Why do we love it?
http://xkcd.com/386/

35. Man vs „the Machine‟ Conflicts
@DaveCarroll
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

36. What Happened?
• Near immediate viral success.
• Millions of hits in first few days
• @United twitter account bombarded with
travelers re-booking or making new trips on
other airlines
• CNN and major networks picked up the story.
• United slow to respond.
• United stock dropped 10% - $180 MILLION

37. What Happened?
• Rob Bradford, United managing director phones
Carroll to apologize, says the video would be
used internally as training.
• Taylor Guitars – my then employer – responds
with video on travelling safely, offers Carroll two
replacements, (but only after media wave).
• The song jumped to #1 on iTunes the week
after.

38. What can be learned from all this?
#UnitedBreaksGuitars

39. Discussion
• Many other examples of social influence
and campaigns.
• Think about a compelling narrative.
• Make it personal, or about a relatable
person.
• Do not avoid conflict as part of the
narrative.
• Consider how this message will influence
from one to another

40. Influence in Social Media
Aaron Coleman
@aarondcoleman
aaron@smallstepslabs.com
www.aaroncoleman.net