Digital tools to enhance your activism

 

Activists tend to be at the ready to use emerging technology for campaigning. This is because

we always need to embrace new ways of getting people to pay attention and take action. It

increases what we are able to achieve, including the ability to reach and engage with more

people. We can better tailor our approaches to particular people based on what we know about

them. That way we’re able to get better results. We have to try to stay ahead of our opposition

and be creative with how we use technology

The best part of modern technology is the access to activism that it gives a lot of people.

People that don’t have the access to grassroots activism on the ground are now able to get

involved a lot more than they could before. This guide is for people to enhance their grassroots

activism with technology. But it’s also for people that only do their activism online. To make sure

you have more options for activism than just signing online petitions. A whole lot more.

Let’s start with an overview of some useful online tools that you can use. We’ll give a bit of

a summary of what you can do with them and when they might come in handy.

Social media tools

Facebook (www.facebook.com)

Sharing information and opinions about issues that are important to you. You can have your own personal profile to share your thoughts and other content to your own network. You can also comment on posts by other people or organisations.

Promoting your activities and events to a wider audience.

You can set up a public page, create events and share them to get people along. You can also use paid promotion to reach a targeted audience of your choosing.

Working with an online community to brainstorm, plan and share information about campaigns. You can create or join Facebook groups that have a specific focus. They can either be private groups or public groups open to anyone.

Determine what you want to use Facebook for before setting anything up. If you want to use Facebook to promote your activities to a wide audience, create a page. If you want it to be more discussion based or only to share with a select number of people, create a group. If you don’t want to do either, just use your personal profile.

Whether on your own profile or a page / group that you’ve set up, keep the number of posts low. 5 - 10 posts a week is optimal, with no more than 3 a day. This is a good balance of making sure others see what you are posting, but also that you are not overwhelming them. Keep your posts short and sweet. Aim for fewer than 250 characters, this will lead to more engagement. Also use eye catching images / videos / links to do a lot of the talking for you.

Track insights on your posts on groups / pages. Keep an eye out for when your audience is more likely to see it and what type of post they respond to more. Consider the time of day you post, when is your audience online? Adapt your posting methods to best suit your audience.

Instagram (www.instagram.com)

Communicating with people in a visual way. Instagram only allows you to post photo or video content. You can create your own, a great way to show what you are up to. You can also share other people’s content to get their

message out to your followers.

Demonstrating the size and scale of the movement you are part of.

Use hashtags on your posts. That way people outside of your followers list have an easier time finding your content.

Discover and follow specific hashtags yourself. Follow and like similar organisations and individuals. That’s so you can keep up to date on relevant content. There might be a hashtag for activism in your city for example.

Include @amnestyaustralia in your posts so that we can easily share your content. This is the Amnesty Australia

Instagram page.

Learn the basics of image / video editing tools such as Canva, Photoshop & Premiere. This way you can make sure your content looks more professional.

Link your Instagram account to your Facebook profile. Then when you post on Instagram it’ll post to your Facebook account as well.

Twitter (www.twitter.com)

These are three of the most popular ones, so it can be more worthwhile to use them. That way you have a better chance of getting your message out there. But if you have a specific audience in mind and you know they’re more likely to use another platform then go for it.

Some other options include YouTube, which is for uploading videos of any length and topic.

Reddit is a popular collection of forums on just about every topic. Snapchat and TikTok are good for younger audiences and are for posting short video clips. Again it is worthwhile finding out what platform your audience uses and go to where they are. But, don’t feel like you have to be on all of them, or even more than one.

Francisco Bagulho-TUA