The document discusses strategies for mobilizing cause campaigns through social media, emphasizing the importance of connecting people and building trust. It outlines twelve steps to effectively engage supporters and details successful case studies that demonstrate the potential impact of such campaigns. The speaker provides practical advice on setting goals, creating calls to action, and leveraging social and mobile platforms to enhance visibility and involvement.

1. Mobilize Your Cause!
B O O T C A M P
Focus: Cause Campaigns
Personal Democracy Forum
JD Lasica
Founder, Socialbrite.org
jd@socialbrite.org
June 2, 2010

2. Relax!
Creative Commons photo
on Flickr: “relaxation, the
maldivian way” by
notsogoodphotography
http://bit.ly/mobilize
(all sites in this talk have been tagged for later retrieval)

3. Today’s hashtag
Creative Commons
photo on Flickr
by Prakhar
Tweet this talk! Hashtag: #pdf10

4. Handouts! Be happy!

5. It’s the ecosystem, stupid!
77% US adults are frequent social media users.*
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, MySpace, Blogger, Craigslist)
Twitter: 120 million registered users; 300,000 new users a day;
180 million unique visitors a month
Flickr: 35 million people have posted & tagged
3 billion-plus photos
Wikipedia: 10 million users have contributed
YouTube: 2 billion videos streamed per day
Whenever someone opens a computer, 60% of time it’s for social
reasons
*Nielsen Online, spring 2010

6. Facebook: Freaky growth
Closing in on a half billion members

7. Cultural norms of social media
It’s not about the technology, it’s about connecting people.
Premium on sharing
Transparency
Conversation expected
Mistrust of traditional authority
figures & marketers
Instead: trust in peers, people
like ourselves — even strangers
Trust is easily gained and easily lost.
Credit/attribution given
Collaboration

8. Types of cause campaigns
1. Raise awareness for your cause,
build your organization’s authority
2. Grow a mailing/newsletter list
3. Sign up new members
4. Raise funds
5. Sign petitions or invite supporters to
write letters
6. Find new volunteers or advocates
7. Attract new Twitter followers or
Facebook “likers”
8. Enlist people to attend an event or
What else?
pledge to take an action
9. Ask people to create content on
your behalf

9. Dream cause campaigns
charity:water supporters raised $250,000
through Twestival.
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.

10. Care2 (if you have $$)
Effective advocacy campaigns
Matt Shepard Act Protecting Oregon’s Starbucks helps Ethiopian
to prevent hate crimes forests coffee farmers

11. 12 steps to mobilize your cause
1. First, listen and observe. Engage
before the Ask.
2. Set clear goals & define metrics
to measure
3. Define a clear theme
4. Frame it with a personal story
5. Create a simple call to action
6. Be transparent, 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. Measure results, reconnect, refine, refresh

12. 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.
See your handout! How
to set up a Monitoring
Dashboard

13. 2. Set goals, map metrics
Goals Metrics to measure
Grow email list of supporters # newsletter, RSS subscribers
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
Increase virality of content # of shares
Get people to take action # of petition signatures
Attend an event # of registrants, year over year

14. 3. Define a clear theme
Boil down your cause to a strong, single sentence
Share Our Strength:
End childhood hunger in America
ActBlue:
Elect progressive candidates
DonorsChoose:
Support public classrooms in need
Hope Blooms:
Get kids adopted

15. 4. Tell a personal story
Use videos or photos for maximum impact
invisiblepeople.tv

16. 5. Create a call to action
Inspire people to act with clear, motivating steps

17. 6. Create conversation hub
Where will you engage with supporters?
Your blog Community site (WiseEarth)
Facebook Social hub (Change.org)
Twitter Contest site (Giving Challenge)

18. 7. Social love handles
Turbo-charge your campaign with plug-ins, widgets

19. 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

20. 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 cause
Connect with other social media influencers through
their blogs and other venues

21. 10. Create mini-actions
America’s Giving Challenge: Daily winners

22. 11. Use immediacy
Headlines & deadlines: Play off the news & use a hard stop date

23. 12. Measure, refine, refresh
Measure results, follow up, recalibrate, relaunch
http://dashboard.imamuseum.org/

24. Campaigns with impact
Cause It’s My Birthday: Microsite
Equality California: Wedding registry
SMA: Tweet for a Cure
93 Dollar Club: Facebook
charity:water: Website, blog, Twitter,
video updates, Google Earth Ric O’Barry, “The Cove”
Greenpeace & Nestlé
We’ll discuss other campaigns in
Tools session

25. CASE STUDY
Cause it’s my birthday
$19,000 for malaria nets in rural Ghana

26. CASE STUDY
No on 8 Wedding Registry
1,700 couples raised $1 million+ for Equality California

27. CASE STUDY
Spinal Muscular Atrophy
Slide show on Photobucket

28. CASE STUDY
Tweet for a Cure
2,000 people have tweeted reaching 1.6 million followers
http://gwendolynstrongfoundation.org/twitter

29. CASE STUDY
93 Dollar Club
Grassroots serendipity: $83,000+ to fight hunger

30. CASE STUDY
charity:water & Twestival
http://www.charitywater.org/projects/map/

31. CASE STUDY
Greenpeace & Nestlé
Nestlé’s Facebook Page, March 17, 2010

32. CASE STUDY
Greenpeace & Nestlé
Nestlé Killer microsite

33. CASE STUDY
Greenpeace & Nestlé
Boycott Nestlé pages on Facebook

34. CASE STUDY
Greenpeace & Nestlé
Greenpeace bought Google AdWords like “chocolate”

35. CASE STUDY
Greenpeace & Nestlé
Nestlé partners with Forest Trust

36. Following up
JD Lasica, Socialbrite.org
email: jd@socialbrite.org
Twitter: @jdlasica
Katrin Verclas, MobileActive.org
email: katrin@mobileactive.org
Twitter: @katrinskaya
Resources at bit.ly/mobilize
Bookmarks at delicious.com/socialmediacamp/mobilize