Advanced Organizing institute - Influence & Social Media

Influence in Social Media

Aaron Coleman

@aarondcoleman

aaron@smallstepslabs.com

www.aaroncoleman.net

Goals for Tonight

• Tools - Expanding your digital organizing

tool belt.

• Narrative – the story is more interesting

than the campaign.

• Influence – how to affect the social graph

• Conflict – how conflict is at the center of

digital organizing

Twitter.comPlease Create a Twitter Account Now.

(try to get a twitter name that is short, and close to your own real name)

Twitter in 60 seconds

• A Tweet: 140 character thought.

• A re-tweet: something you saw that others

following you need to see.

• A reply: first character is “@” followed by

their account name. Click the “reply”

button to thread replies together as a

conversation.

Twitter in 60 seconds

• A mention: a tweet with “@” and the

person‟s username. This will alert them

you have said something about them.

• A hashtag: a tweet containing the “#”

character followed by an existing or new

non-spaced theme. Like “#fridays” or

“#gettingThingsDone” – powerful. Others

can search on this.

Twitter in 60 seconds

• Let‟s try this out tonight!

• Please follow: @orgInst

• Please mention @orgInst tonight!

• Please tweet about what you see and

what you think. Your opinion is part of the

conversation!

• Please tweet about other

“tweeple”, mentioned or that you know of.

Twitter in 60 seconds

• Please follow or mention me:

@aarondcoleman

• Please respond to one another.

• Please re-tweet one another if you find a

tweet particularly interesting or well

composed.

… another goal

http://visual.ly/sitting-killing-you

By medicalbillingandcoding.org

Dr. Neville Owen: “All these agencies are interested in this …. strange people on the internet are saying this now.”

How was this story first told?

Healy, G.N., Wijndaele, K., Dunstan, D.W., Shaw, J.E., Salmon, J, Zimmet, P.Z. and Owen, N.

(2008). Objectively-measured sedentary time, physical activity and metabolic risk: the AusDiab

study. Diabetes Care, 31, 369-71

http://sma.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/pres-4.pdf

Infographic vs Research

Why wasn’t the research PDF, with the same

info, shared in 2008 the same way?

• Personalized the message

• Simple, shareable.

• Rapid digestion of data.

• Aesthetic – it‟s important!

Influence

Measuring Social Networks

Clusters of Influence

James Fowler

@James_H_Fowler

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMkr0ZvgW9U#!

Facebook – 2010 Voter Turnout

Facebook – 2010 Voter Turnout

Facebook – 2010 Voter Turnout

About 600,000 people, or one percent, were randomly assigned to see a modified “informational message,” identical in all respects to the social message except for pictures of friends. An additional 600,000 served as the control group and received no Election Day message from Facebook at all.

Fowler and colleagues then compared the behavior of recipients of the social message, recipients of the informational message, and those who saw nothing.

Users who had received the social message were more likely than the others both to look for a polling place and to click on the “I Voted” button.

http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/facebook_fuels_the_friend_vote

Conflict

Why do we love it?

http://xkcd.com/386/

Man vs „the Machine‟ Conflicts

@DaveCarroll

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

What Happened?

• Near immediate viral success.

• Millions of hits in first few days

• @United twitter account bombarded with

travelers re-booking or making new trips on

other airlines

• CNN and major networks picked up the story.

• United slow to respond.

• United stock dropped 10% - $180 MILLION

What Happened?

• Rob Bradford, United managing director phones

Carroll to apologize, says the video would be

used internally as training.

• Taylor Guitars – my then employer – responds

with video on travelling safely, offers Carroll two

replacements, (but only after media wave).

• The song jumped to #1 on iTunes the week

after.

What can be learned from all this?

#UnitedBreaksGuitars

Discussion

• Many other examples of social influence and campaigns.

• Think about a compelling narrative.

• Make it personal, or about a relatable person.

• Do not avoid conflict as part of the narrative.

• Consider how this message will influence from one to another

Influence in Social Media

Aaron Coleman

@aarondcoleman

aaron@smallstepslabs.com

www.aaroncoleman.net