How to Influence the Conversation Around Your Next Campaign

You’re not paranoid. People are talking about you.

But it’s all good. There’s a flurry of conversation happening about the issues your organization works on that can move the needle on your campaign. The best part is that these conversations are happening with your current supporters…in your CRM.

Watch the recording of the Influencing the Conversation webinar we hosted with Attentive.ly and United to End Genocide. Learn what supporters from your database are saying and sharing on social media and who is influential, so you can:

• Use social listening to better segment your messages and cultivate your social media advocates.
• Impact conversations that are relevant to your campaign.
• Harness the collective power of your active social media voices to pressure decision makers.

It’s critical that organizations understand how, and if, their supporters are talking about their campaigns and issue areas. It’s not only interesting to see the nature of the conversation, it also helps inform the content strategy while offering powerful opportunities to reply with real time, personalized multi-channel engagement.

By listening to what stakeholders are saying on social media, organizations can understand which issues and message resonates and why. You can literally see how people are talking about your campaigns and gauge when there’s excitement.

Know When To Ramp Up Your Campaign

Timing is everything with communications, especially on social media. Social listening takes the guesswork out of knowing when your base is fired up and ready to take action.

For example, United to End Genocide (UEG) used social listening to inform their decision on when to ramp up their campaign efforts in Yemen last year. They began monitoring the conflict using social listening in Luminate Online with their Attentive.ly integration, but didn’t run any advocacy campaigns until their members gave a signal of their interest.

Noticing an uptick in mentions of Yemen by supporters, they responded in an incredibly effective and practical way that resulted in thousands of mentions of the campaign.

Impact Conversations by Knowing the Headlines in Your CRM

When we talk about rapid response on social media, it’s more than they ability to quickly reply to direct comments, which are are fairly limited and easy to follow up with. Instead, it’s the ability to ride the social media wave with terms directly related to your campaign and terms that you can make a reasonable connection.

Think of this as riding your wave and riding their wave like State of the Union. For example, when conversations about your campaigns start to trend in your CRM, ride your own wave by seizing the moment. We’ll talk more about this on our webinar, Impacting the Conversation, but we recommend showing some social love, or emailing an action alert or donation appeal while the issue is top of mind. Generally, this wave won’t be out of the blue, so you should have time to prepare. Here’s an example of how one nonprofit rode their own wave.

Respond to Trending Campaigns Terms

A few days after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), noticed a significant shift in focus on social media to the hashtag #Ferguson.  They could quickly see that terms such as “police” started trending, not just nationally, but in their own database. AFSC created a segmented group to see exactly who was talking about Ferguson on Facebook and Twitter from their CRM. They invited those supporters to a Google Hangout which resulted in a record high Google Hangout turnout and 74 donations.

Leverage Your Social Media Influencers

You might be surprised to learn that on average, 5% of supporters in your CRM comprise 85% of your network reach, which is 200 times more people in your CRM alone. Finding supporters who have social reach, post about relevant terms and who are already involved with your campaigns can have tremendous impact. Influencers can extend your social reach and raise campaign visibility while adding social proof that other people support the cause.

For example, In preparing for their #Write4Rights campaign, Amnesty International Canada used Attentive.ly to identify a large number of supporters talking about issues related to their human rights campaigns on social media.  Amnesty successfully identified influencers that had already used the hashtag and asked them via DM to tweet during their global day of action which raised the profile of the campaign.