Digital campaign communications
Glyn Thomas
glyn@glyn-thomas.co.uk
@glynmthomas
A bit about me
- Worked a consultant for a range of NGOs, charities and non profits in Europe, Asia and Central America
- Mencap, Mind, Dignity in Dying, ShareAction, Positive Money, War on Want, Global Justice
- Save the Children, International Tibet Network, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth
- Worked with digital agency more onion; now freelance
What we'll cover
- Trends in digital campaigning
- Principles for effective digital communications:
- Social media
- Webpages
- Content
How not to engage and audience
- Sign petition
- Email 1 – please donate £20
- Email 2 – please donate £20
- Email 3 – watch video, PS donate £20
- Email 4 – please donate £20
- Email 5 – please donate £20
- Email 6 – you’re great, PS donate £20
Contrast with this:
- Hello, this is [your name] calling from [institution]. Have I reached [name]?
- How are you [name]? … Good. I’m glad to hear it!
- Did I catch you at a good time? … [OPTIONAL: When is it ever a good time, right!]
- Now, I understand you hold a degree in [program] from [institution], is that correct?
- [OPTIONAL open-ended question related to student/alumni experience.]
Tactics before strategy
Key trends
Narrative / story
Georgetown University
- 56% read a story on social media that made them want to do more
- 41% watched a video
- 40% saw a photo
- 36% read or heard through social media about other people taking action
Supporter journey
Quality not quantity
Crowdsourcing ideas and content
Building effective engagement
Three key elements
- Drive traffic - email, social media channels, partners
- People land on the page
- People share
- One email per week – not a monthly email with 4-6 stories in it.
- Template design - mobile first / responsive
-
Include a range of content – asking people to do something interspersed with reporting back, general updates, useful information etc
Social media
Keywords - Facebook
- Where
- When
- Tell Us
- Inspire
- Warns
- Amuses
Keywords - Twitter
- ReTweet
- Follow
- Social Media
- New Blog Post
- Check Out
- Help
- Top
Keywords - LinkedIn
- Created
- Improved
- Increased
- Developed
- Reduced
- Researched
Length of post
- Short and concise content - not using lots of abbreviations. Make it easy to read
- Tweets shorter than 100 characters get more engagement
- Facebook posts with fewer than 40 characters
Twitter engagement tips
- Tweets with hashtags attract 2x more engagement (retweets, favorites, replies)
- There’s 21% more engagement on Tweets with 1 to 2 hashtags.
- If you increase the number of hashtags more than 2, the engagement levels fall by an average of 17%.
- Almost 40% of Tweets with hashtags get Retweeted.
Visual content
- Facebook - image based posts 39% more engagement
- LinkedIn - image based posts 98% more comments
- Linking to YouTube results in 75% more shares
- Twitter - including images 200% more engagement compared with simple text tweets
Landing pages
- The page you send people to is vital
- Mobile optimised
- Form fields
- Clear error messages
- Navigation
- Mouseflow
- Copy
Sharing
- The page you send people to is vital
- Mobile optimised
- Form fields
- Clear error messages
- Navigation
- Mouseflow
- Copy
Sharing conversion stats
Facebook: 4161 / 503 / 12.09%
Twitter: 6378 / 28 / 0.44%
Email: 243 / 30 / 12.36%
(63 people clicked the share by email button, and 15 people chose to share by email. Those 15 people brought in 30 new people.)
Content
- Getting attention of politicians
- Engaging people
- Recruiting people
- Timeliness
- Grassroots led
- Content that resonates
#walktogether
- 7 July 2015
- Get off bus/tube one stop early and walk
- Tweet picture
- Created intrigue - strong visual content
Concern worldwide
- 2015 General Election campaign
- Pledges from candidates
- 600 tweets - 100 pledges
Nicebot
- Spam for good
- Nice tweet to everyone on Twitter
- Creative twist - gets attention
- Unexpected / subversive
- Taps into something being debated - trolling/abuse
Fairtrade / Rainforest Alliance
- Social Listening
- Fairtrade - 100,000 emails to Asda and Tesco
- Social content
John Underwood
- Tweets from hospital
- Story / narrative
- Mix of content
- Engagement
- Humour
- Authentic
John Lewis /
Action on Hearing Loss
- Mobilising people directly affected
- Brand
- Easy win
Involve
By Glyn Thomas
Involve
- 252