Five tips for social media activism
After facilitating social media workshops for refugee activists, these are the five pointers needed to building your support base and mobilising them to take action.
1) Is your activism relevant to the medium?
Social media remains a huge source of people’s news, identity and indeed idea development. Your political mobilisation needs work within that framework, and importantly make sense to that framework. That means appealing to someone's self-projection, their news or social calendar. If your content isn't appealing to any of these, it won't work.
2) The algorithm must love you, and trust you.
People will only hear from you if the algorithm trusts you, promotes you and importantly, has strong reason to believe that your target audience wants to hear from you.
Algorithms are smart and their main aim is to get their uses coming back for what they hope will be an hour and half each day. What better offering for advertising dollars?
Think of the algorithm as a trusted librarian who serves their visitors the information they want to see, when they want to see it.
Even advertisers have to play by the algorithms' rules. Remember, if your advertising cap isn't being reached in a few days, the algorithm itself has tested out your content, and decided it's not good enough to promote.
3) First you'll need to prove yourself. Then you can mobilise.
You need to be appropriate to the social media platform’s logic/purpose, and build credibility on your subject area over time. That means shares, likes and engagement from people who are already trusted authorities in the space.
What will you want before anything else for your social media? For your content to be shared by anyone who is trusted in your area. This remains the driving rationale behind brands paying influencers to promote their products and services. By focussing your efforts on content that others will want to share will grow your followers and increase your reach.
4) Forget about the merry-go-round about of political actions.
Therefore approach your socials as a way to: share news, be a source of analysis, provide inspiration, and bring about a shared understanding of the world. Then, and only then, will you be able to call on your supporters to take the political action that you need.
5) When ready, integrate social media into your activism tool box.
Then chuck that engaged social media following into your communications toolbox to mobilise your online community at different moments of a campaign for grassroots political action. Whether that be asking supporters to pick up their phone to call the local MP, attend a fundraiser, or become a member. Bring your followers one step closer to your core supporters by asking them to join the cause.
With this in mind, is it really worth the effort?
When we went into lockdown social media usage went up 70% in a week. Online engagement is going to stick around strong and mighty during and after COVID so investing in your online “Community” now is important for whatever social or political change you wish to bring about. The time you spend building your support base will not be lost.