Presentation at the Melbourne social media forum by Chris Roberts from the Brotherhood of St Laurence, titled 'Integrating social media into advocacy campaigns: What’s the right mix?'

2. Integrating social media
into advocacy campaigns:
what’s the right mix?

3. Social media and the
Brotherhood of St
Laurence

4. Facebook and Twitter:
Broadening our audience

5. Twitter and the Brotherhood
• Twitter amplifies our voice and is used to provide
an instant message regarding an issue, cause or
campaign to our followers.
• The bulk of our followers on Twitter are media
organisations, other not-for-profits, active
community members and government MPs.
• Government MPs often re-tweet our messages if it
supports their agenda

6. Facebook & the Brotherhood
• Facebook has been the social media leader for the Brotherhood in
increasing our profile and growing our audience over the last 12
months
• Facebook supporters have on average more than 150 contacts in
their network. We can encourage them to share our information with
their friends and followers, creating a viral marketing campaign.
• We advertise on Facebook – and reach new audiences

7. Facebook & the Brotherhood
Facebook advertising
campaign commenced

8. The ‘End The Decay’
campaign

9. December 2011:
Release of the
End the Decay report

10. How poor dental health affects
disadvantaged Australians
• Loss of teeth impairs eating, leading to reduced nutritional status and
diet-related ill health, particularly for children and older people.
• A quarter of Australians report that they avoid eating some foods as a
consequence of the pain and discomfort caused by their poor dental
health. Nearly one-third found it uncomfortable to eat in general.
• Oral disease creates pain, suffering, disfigurement and disability.
• Just under one-quarter of Australian adults report feeling self-conscious
or embarrassed because of oral health problems.
• Poor oral health is linked to other health conditions such as
cardiovascular disease, stroke, hepatitis C, pancreatic and oral cancers
and in some cases death.

11. Our advocacy campaign
We called for an immediate investment in
dental care for low-income Australians and a
commitment to a staged plan over five years
that would add dental care to Medicare for
all Australians.

12. The campaign micro-site
• Clear call to action
• Social media interaction
• Viral campaign

13. Integrating social
media and advocacy

14. Educating our audience

15. Educating our audience
Through Twitter our messages were heavily re-tweeted by
individual and institutional supporters, including, Corinne
Grant, Anglicare, Dental Health Services, Consumer
Action Legal Centre, Richard Di Natale, Adam Bandt, and
The Circle – reaching an audience of over 100,000.

16. Clear call to action
• One clear message
• Pre-written letter
• Ease of sharing the message

17. Using existing
marketing channels

18. Email direct marketing
Contacting: Donors
Volunteers
Researchers
Government contacts
Internal networks

19. Email direct marketing
Our results...
10 times the industry average

20. Other online channels
Website promotion
E-newsletters
Google adwords

21. Traditional media and
social media:
working together

22. Traditional media decline

23. However...
Dental story on The
Circle television
program

24. What did we
achieve?

25. What would we do
differently?
• Report launch should have coincided with the
website launch generating publicity for both
• Client stories to be promoted earlier
• The ‘celebrity endorsement’ distraction
• Launch earlier and maximise publicity

26. Where to from here?

27. Where to from here?
• Using the database of email addresses gathered from the
campaign
• Developing a foundation for future advocacy campaigns
• Creating stronger ties with our supporters
• Increasing engagement with our social media audience
• Galvanising our social media following and encouraging
them to act on our behalf