Trumblog

I’ve already posted about what the 350 campaign is and the results of 350′s effort. They are a fantastic organization and what  particularly was impressive about their organization is the way that they used social media. Here are 6 of 350′s tactics that you should emulate  when creating your own social media campaign and 4  lessons that you can learn from in order to do even better.

1. Provide blogger and media resources – 350 has video, images, a map feature and even blog widgets on their website all of which are download-able or embed-able by bloggers in order to spread the word about the cause.  Not only does providing this make it easier for bloggers (and the mainstream media) to write posts about you, but those posts have media that makes them more interesting and that media is in your language.  The more media that you provide the better chance that it will be used over someone else’s and that your specific message will be spread in the way that you want. Are you making the media that supports bloggers and is easy to find, access and include?
2. Provide a hashtag – a hashtag is  the pound sign followed by a short keyword that is added to the end of a tweet or included as a tag for a photo or video so that media can be easily found when searching.  For 350 the hashtag was #350ppm, which frankly a lot of people shortened to just #350.  Spreading your hashtag around helps there to be a consistent tag used to makes finding content related to the campaign easy.  Do you make it easy to find and share content about your campaign?
3. Use social networks and media deeply – 350 isn’t just on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr, they incorporated the social networks into their campaign.  Have you so completely utilized the power of social network sites?
   1. On Facebook you could fan 350, become a member of the cause, learn information about 350 on their page, but then also 350 encouraged fans to update their status message to spread the word to friends who had not yet been activated.
   2. On Twitter 350 kept their followers updated, responded to information and passed along information from other Twitterers as retweets.
   3. On the YouTube 350.org channel there were regular video updates on the campaign as well as those videos I described earlier that did an excellent job to explain the campaign.  350 started with a brilliantly easy way of explaining the goal for stopping climate change and then they produced a video that did a brilliantly simple job of explaining that. Have you distilled and explained your message so simply?
   4. On Flickr 350 began with posting their logos and posters, but, since one aspect of the campaign is the photos of 350 gatherings around the world, they continued to use the network by posting the resulting images.
   5. On SlideBoom there is a PowerPoint presentation on 350 that can be used to reach we corporate types.
4. Go mobile – 350 sent updates to supporters via text message and has an iPhone app to spread the word.  Can your followers get information about your campaign when on the road?
5. Wear the campaign – Want a 350 t-shirt, sticker, button or tote bag (to use rather than plastic bags at the grocery story, naturally)? Allow your followers to spread the word with products from Cafe Press.  So easy to set up and so often overlooked.  Can I wear your slogan or product name?
6. Think further outside the box – 350 has music, there are stencils, they have headbands, I even saw a suggestion for tattoos, they would have been a perfect fit for the campaign, but I didn’t see them anywhere on the website.  These creative ideas may be too offbeat for your campaign, but fit the 350 vibe perfectly.  What are some non-traditional ways of spreading the word that would appeal to your followers that you should be using?

Now here are a few more things that 350 could have done better.

1. Use the right hash tag – why #350ppm, when #350 would do?  A search for #350ppm will miss a lot of good content.
2. Make social media integration easy – for a campaign that was so focused on the images I’m surprised that the 350 group on Flickr has as few pictures as it does and has not been publicized as far as I can tell.  Instead of harnessing the Flickr photos that participants would logically post, instead the site provides information on how to email photos.  Videos need to be uploaded rather than collected off of YouTube. These unnecessary extra steps are non-intuitive, make it harder to share and collect media and mailing large media files is a bad idea in general.
3. Make your content easy to find – in writing this post I found content on the site that I had no idea was there.  Why, because it was hidden by awkward navigation, bad information architecture and duplicated content.  Don’t let structural issues make your hard produced content and media go to waste.   Make it easy for everyone, especially bloggers and the media to find all that good stuff that you want publicized.
4. QA your website – 350 has done so much right with their site and it was probably a labor of love, so I feel bad pointing this out, but there shouldn’t be any broken links.  I’m not saying where they are and 350 does have a contact us page for receiving feedback, so maybe they will be fixed by the time that you read this.  All is forgiven 350, but everyone else should learn from this error.

Any other ideas from an activist campaign that you would use for marketing?  Anywhere that you feel I’ve gon too far?

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