Thinking of

Campaigning.

Alexander Crockett
alex.crockett@ceasura.com

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Contents
A Resource For All ............................................................................................. Error! Bookmark not defined.
When Social Media Can’t Be Ignored .................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
Campaigning for action................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
What We Can Take Away............................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
About Ceasura………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………11

Campaigning Online
Social media adoption has been booming. There has also been a concomitant rise in the

number of self proclaimed experts in the field of new media, resulting in the wide adoption of

platforms with little to no strategic insight into their use. A consequence of this trend has been

skepticism about the benefits of social media. Therefore the need for a paradigm that can be

relied upon to secure investment seems obvious. This paradigm will benefit from, and

capitalize on, a thorough understanding of how media have changed and how people,

interestingly, have remained the same. Such awareness will inevitably dictate a dynamic and

effective strategy.

A well crafted strategy, with an equally lucid view of the workings and benefits of social media

should raise the bar of expectation for an organization and for its supporters. Stakeholders and

campaigners alike can expect to see a direct and beneficial effect from a considered use of the

tools available online. However, those elevated expectations can only be justified when they

are supported by a genuine understanding of the potential benefits and lucid presentation of

the strategic use of available online tools.

The following article will look at new media success stories, drawing out vital elements,

illustrating not only the benefits of social media, but also its proper use.

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It is clear that campaigning is crucial to charities. Knowing what campaigning online consists

in is doubly crucial because a campaign based on false assumptions about key features will fail.

Twitter is an example of a medium that has seen a phenomenal increase in popularity amongst

media strategists. This microblogging platform was reportedly responsible for $1 million in

revenue for Dell last year (as reported by nasdaq). Similarly, the Red Cross has openly

embraced Twitter. The reason? Twitter offers a form of communication that is constant, self

correcting and up to date.

Significant online data and numerous success stories demonstrate the power of social media to

carry a campaign. However, merely looking at a charity’s campaign pages will not provide an

easy insight into how it can campaign well.

A scan of available material reveals certain crucial elements. The importance of charities

strategic use of social media has emerged as vital. Integration of channels and making the best

use of networks are key factors to an online campaign. In order to achieve these goals

however, greater perception and more profound analysis are necessary.

We will focus on the following areas: channels, calls to action and the ability to pass a

campaign along a network. Of the available criteria there has been some division about what is

essential. For example, some sources indicate the following to be the crux of campaigning:

1. To show an opportunity to solve a crisis

2. To ask a users to do one thing

3. To explain what their action will accomplish

However, others have added the following elements to good campaigning:

1. Include deadlines in appeals

2. Combine SMS, e-mail and social media

3. Ask corporate sponsors to e-mail on your behalf

4. Be movement building

Not all of these strategies are easy or necessarily applicable. To build a movement you need to

know the channels along which the movement will develop. That means knowing your

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audience and their preferences. Simply signing up to Twitter will not
t be enough despite the

proselytizing by the industry. Although

lthough new ways of eliciting data from Twitter are emerging

(Tweet
Tweet Stats, Trendrr, Tweet meme, Xefer Twitter charts - are a few data sources), not all of

your stakeholders/users will use Twitter

Twitter. Over 30’s may make greater use of e-mail.
e (The

NSPCC recently raised £1.4 million from a direct marketing campaign by ee-mail
mail that cost less

than £20,000 to implement.) In addition

addition, one of the most successful campaigns from Grey

London made astronomically good use of YouTube

YouTube, a medium which is much more familiar to

most people than Twitter.

Crucially,
rucially, getting users to involve other people who have not come directly to a charity will be

part of any good campaign.. Facebook, Causecast, Socialvibe, Change.org, Justgiving and Carez

are tools by which this goal can be achieved

achieved. For example, the
he success of the JustGiving model

has prompted Virgin media to release a new online donation network, set to outperform

JustGiving which at present owns the largest share in the market. All of this underscores the

importance of clear, clean and int

integrated approaches.

Ann example of the kind of site that has a lot to offer is Know How Non Profit.org.

http://www.knowhownonprofit.org/

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Know How Non Profit.org is a promising resource for several reasons
reasons:

1. It discusses how charities can best operate online while providing free strategy and

guidance from professionals within the charity sector itself

2. It is a Social media platform for people within the charitable sector and reflects the kind

of information that will

ill be relevant to them

3. It has been designed specifically for those within the sector to support others within the

sector and offers an impressive shared knowledge base

An example of a highly regarded strategy is the release earlier this year of an advert featuring

Keira Knightly. It is for the charity Women’s Aid. In the advert Ms. Knightly, is seen as the

victim of domestic abuse. The advert has since appeared on YouTube and in several places

across the blogosphere as well as in the traditional news media

media, including The Daily Telegraph,

The Guardian and the Times.

In this campaign, designed by Grey London, the advert was initially banned for TV viewing.
viewing

However, it generated an enormous number of views online. Since its release on YouTube one

of the online versions has been viewed 239,344 times, another 431,116 times. (Neither of

these statistics is from the charity’s own page

page.) On the charity’s YouTube channel,
channel the same

video has been viewed 208,494 times. All in the space of a couple of months since its release.

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It is worth noting that at the time this campaign was launched Third Sector reported that

charities were being offered cheaper airtime. Rates had fallen by as much as 25% to place an

advert on TV, making the possibility of integrated campaigning even more attractive.

However, TV advertising is expensive and Women’s Aid, in a short period of time, received

greater exposure than they would have at a fraction of the cost of televised advertising.

The benefits of online campaigning are manifestly promising. The buzz in the digital arena is in

itself compelling. However, there is still no paradigm to provide organizations like charities the

security they seek. Certainly one outcome of the rise of the digital arena has been a radical

shift in the identity of the decision makers. In a recent poll fundraisers have for the first time,

made the top of the list of important influencers. Interestingly Professional Fundraising, one of

the sectors major news sources, has raised the question “Are Funders Taking Over Social

Network Fundraising?” Also of note: aid agencies have come under criticism as of late

because many have made themselves more accountable to donors than disaster victims

(reported in Third Sector Online).

One of the signal success stories in this shift has been charitywater.org. They don’t provide

aid; in fact they don’t directly help anyone. They liaise among aid bodies, securing funding

for others. However, at Twestival earlier this year charitywater.org raised £250,000. Similarly,
when Facebook launched Facebook for Good, charitywater.org managed to become one of the

16 charities supported, despite the fact that few people had heard of them. When Hugh

Jackman and the American retailer Target offered money to charities online, it was charity

water.org that did best (in both cases). The question remains: how, given their anonymity, have

charitywater.org managed to do so well online? Professional Fundraising believe that there is a

single and crucial explanation, “It is a people-facing organization….concentrating on both its

donors and its beneficiaries as people, bound together in a globalised world.”

The fact of the matter is that for charities, social media platforms offer a singular opportunity

to engage with their donors and, unlike many forms of marketing, they allow for

communication to be constant, fluid and reciprocal. In other words a distinctive feature of

social media is the ability to induce potential donors to be a part of the charity’s own

network. For a great number of people, membership is a motivation in itself.

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Much can be learned from campaigns th
that have been so successful they’ve
e brought social

media into the forefront of strategists

strategists’ imaginations. The success
ss of the Obama campaign and

the
he attention it received across media has highlighted the need to use the internet as a means

of campaigning. In an article about the Obama win

win, a Capitol Hill correspondent writes:

“The
The campaign of Barack Obama and meticulous use of new media tools led to a landslide

victory in the 2008 presidential election and it has changed the way politics and business
bu

deploy new media to influence voters or customers to action

action”

And
nd as one of President Obama’s ke
key campaigners Michael Silberman, wrote after the

victory:

on: It represented a carefully considered element of almost every

“Technology was not an add-on:

critical campaign function. Most remarkably, technology played a critical role in the one area

least understood by the "digerati" and most online campaigners: moving online supporters

toward real-world action.

The New Media team's mantra and focus was "Message, Money, and Mobilization"—three
Mobilization"

critical campaign functions that their work served and supported. The Internet's role in the

first two—enabling
enabling a massively successful online word-of-mouth
mouth campaign and record-
record

breaking fundraising totals—are

are both fairly well documented. Not so the third "M,"

mobilization.”

Getting people to act may seem like the toughest part of an online campaign. When a

campaign is launched, there is no guarantee it will mobilize an audience, especially

specially if a charity

wants to think creatively about how they approach their audience, (and
and creative thinking is

certainly needed). But, that is the crux of the problem. Thinking in terms of messages within a

traditional context is exactly what needs to change. Rather, thought has to be allocated to

developing communities of people who are a pa

part
rt of the success of a charity’s ability to reach

its (and its community’s)

) goals
goals.

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There are a number of charities that are doing exactly this to great effect. The British Heart

Foundation have made social media an integral part of the

their strategy. Recent
ecent campaigns have

taken advantage of mediums such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, JustGiving and Flickr. By

aligning these platforms with campaign microsites

microsites, the charity has
s seen enormous

participation in their campaigns. Their Red For Heart campaign in February this year raised

£1.3 million in one month.

onth. There is no doubt that the change in tactic was born of necessity.
necessity

Their
heir traditional method of getting users to buy from their campaign shop was not successful.

Moreover,, the shift in strategy has saved money as well a

as
s made it. What is important is that

the message was clear, the charity were directly asking for participation, and they engaged

directly with those who got involved, securing the aid of future fundraisers as well as taking a

lead in social media strategy.

Online campaigning is a burgeoning field not yet consolidated. What is more, with new forms

of Social Network seeing greater and greater success

success, the exact nature of online campaigning

will continue to evolve.

That said, what the Obama campaign has highli

highlighted
ghted is that online communication is only

growing in importance. As online forms of communication become more and more

mainstream,, with mobile technology evolving, Digital Britain underway, social networks are

now part and parcel of the landscape

landscape. It is the proverbial laggards who are now using

Facebook. The
he potential is in place to harness the power of the web. The question is:
is “Are

charities really doing it yet?”

Beyond the web

eb pages and campaign pages of charities, there is a wealth of information and

opportunity to generate successful campaigns online

online. When we are commissioned to work

with charities, one of the crucial questions that we will have to ask is
is, “How
ow well is the charity

optimizing their networks?” For most charities

charities, money is a crucial issue, and social media

offers a cost-effective means of engaging with people when it is executed correctly.

correctly That means

dropping what are fast becoming antiquated modes of speaking at people and instead,

engaging with audiences

udiences as a part of a wider community. Alongside that comes action. That is,

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getting communities to act on behalf of the charity so that growth is based as much on the size

of the community as on the amount of banner space that is bought.

The vital lesson to be learned at this point can be expressed in one word: ‘strategy’.

Strategic campaigning is crucial to charities. This means knowing who they are talking to and

how to talk to them. And while talk does come relatively cheap these days, the art is turning

words into actions. What charities need to know is who is going to act on their behalf. It has

been suggested that the new model for online marketing does not ask how many hits an

organization is getting but rather, which of those users is going to come back and hit again. In

other words, who are the valuable users that a charity can focus on before they begin to count

their conversion rates? There are some basic principles that a charity would do well to follow.

They include:

- Being multi channel

- Stating both problems and opportunities

- Keeping people involved

- Being familiar with your audiences

- Not asking for too much but getting people to come back

- Creating campaigns that move

- Using support networks including corporate sponsorship

- Setting deadlines

- Developing communities of supporters

The discussion so far illustrates the need for clear strategies. These should incorporate the new

media model into the way organizations communicate. The first key point within the digital

industry is that online campaigning does not involve a radical departure from how we

communicate as individuals. The crux of social media is that it is social first and foremost.

Networks may be larger; they may in fact be more immediate in their effect. That said, they are

still networks of people talking to other people. As soon as that realization comes off the shelf,

the mystery around digital media will thankfully vanish. Campaigning online is still

campaigning.

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It is also the case that the potential impact can be much larger at a fraction of the cost of

traditional campaigning. Social media platforms are global, and as the Digital Britain directive

gains traction more and more people will become reliant on the internet. That means that well-

designed and well targeted campaign will have the potential to reach across geographical and

economic divides, finding resonance across broader audiences.

Vital however, is the participation and involvement of communities of people. Membership to a

cause has advantages beyond the scope of this article. Any communications professional will

understand the value of knowing who will be responsive to a cause. In fact both the NSPCC

campaign mentioned in this article and the BHF campaign achieved a large part of their

success because their campaigns were targeted to those members of the public they knew

would pick up on the campaign. The Obama strategists did much the same thing, using young

activists to go door to door in locally designated areas, energizing those who were already

sympathetic.

To summarize there are four key points to success. First, traditional one way messaging is

dead. Secondly, for the greater part of the public the white noise of egocentric organizations

telling us what they want us to hear is slowly being washed out by the sound of participation.

Third, the donor is the decision maker and the donor also wants to be a part of the solution.

And fourthly, in order for them to do that, and to feel involved, they also need to feel that their

voice is being heard within the communities they join. In that way a charity has the power to

secure both action and dedication from communities of people ready to carry their flag and act

on their behalf.

This means one thing. Traditional structures within organizations are no longer qualified to

manage the changes that social media has brought about. Organizations need to look for staff

who can communicate with their wider community. These must be staff who understand the

individual concerns of their donors, who speak the same language and who are equipped to

communicate along the preferred channels that audiences already use.

If you are thinking of communicating online, start with strategy and end with people. The

media may have changed but, they are only tools that enhance communication with people

who have not changed.

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 A
About Ceaura
Ceasura is a small organization dedicated to meaningful partnership. We believe that
knowledge and information are the backbone of any good decision making. That’s
what we’re here to provide, and at the core of our service will be our need to know
you. We want
ant to collaborate, why, because we enjoy the work we do and we think that
you won’t just benefit from it, you can get inspired as we work together.

So far we have a combined knowledge and experience writing for top publishing
houses and conducting research for top 100 interactive agencies. That includes writing
for womens glamour magazines to government agencies and NGOs, producing reports
as well as working closely with charities designing and launching campaigns that have
raised over one million in their first month.

So far we’ve been involved in helping conceptualize university websites, charity

campaigns, big pharma marketing and reviews of hospita
hospitall communications. In other
words we are diverse. We’ve looked at the insides of companies as well as at their
stakeholders, clients and customers to get an overall view of what needs to be done to
help organizations move forward. And I emphasize, moving forward
rward doesn’t mean
you’re failing, sometimes it’s
t’s just the next step to great
greater success.

That is why we believe in the research we do can help, because it’s been reaching out
to the people that matter and hearing what they have to say, and it’s made a
difference,
ference, inspiring us to create our own family right here at Ceasura.

Alex Crockett

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Contact us:
alex.crockett@ceasura.com

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