School of Internet Witchcraft & Wizardry

How to win the internet, in one (not so simple) potion.Cayden Mak (@cayden), New Media Director at 18MillionRising

#BrowerU #InternetMagic @18MillionRising

SOME FACTS ABOUT THE INTERNET

Many people have assumptions about social media and how it fits into the rest of their work. Here are mine*:

1. Social media is a tool for, not a type of, activism.2. Your base is on social media, whether or not you are.3. Social media is not grunt work.4. Building a social media presence is not an end in itself.5. Building a social media presence can be a giant time-suck.6. Building a social media presence can enhance and augment

existing goals and priorities.7. Organizing using social media shares some key characteristics with

organizing offline.

* Not uncontroversial. But they seem to be working.

LIKE WHAT, YOU ASK?• Like offline organizing, your main

goal is to find, and mobilize, a base.• You can find your base where they

work.

(Side note: everything we do every day on social media is work, but that’s a talk for another day.)

• Like life AFK, online life is full of distractions.• Online organizing means building relationships of trust, then

expanding that network of trust.• Online organizing can also be showing up for your allies online.• Basically, online life is still life under late capitalism.

STRATEGY FOR SOCIAL MEDIATo think strategically, you need to identify a couple of things before you get started.

1. Who’s your base?

2. What are your goals? (N.B.: I’m not talking about metrics here.)

3. What are the right tools for the job?

4. What kind of really cool stuff do you plan to put on the internet?

BUILDING YOUR BASE

You wanna be where the people are.

WHERE ARE THE PEOPLE, THEN?

Like it or not, they’re (mostly) on Facebook.

WHERE ARE THE PEOPLE, THEN?

According to Quantcast (one of my favorite dorky websites), Facebook is the #3 most popular site in the U.S., with nearly 140 million unique visitors a month.

Twitter is #7 with nearly 90 million unique visitors a month.

Tumblr has moved from #11 to #8 over the past few months, though it has paid to keep its stats off Quantcast.

But this also isn’t just a sheer numbers game.

Get specific about who your base is and finding people gets easier.

DEFINING OUR AUDIENCEYoung: 18-35;

Technically savvy: they get the net;Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders, who:

already might have some inclination to progressive politics, but want to get involved in a way that feels fresh and

is smart, funny, and critically incisive.

SETTING GOOD GOALSGoals for social media strategy planning should:

1. Serve your organization’s broader goals;

2. Draw on the strengths of social media in particular;

3. Be translatable into meaningful metrics.

SETTING OUR GOALSProvoke ideas,

inspire action, and connect people

online through dynamic social media campaigns that help young AAPIs realize their power and develop a political identity.

PICKING YOUR TOOLSFun Fact: 71% of internet-using American adults use Facebook.

Other Fun Fact: around 20% of internet-using American adults use Twitter.

• Being strategic about your tool choice will probably mean getting on Facebook and keeping up with it, but depending on your needs you might also want to create accounts elsewhere.

• You don’t want to let any of these lag: idle accounts might look worse than none at all.

• We learned from Quantcast early on that Tumblr’s user base skews young (14-25) and Asian & Latinx, so we created a Tumblr.

Bottom line: your tools should be informed by your base.

UNDERSTANDING YOUR TOOLS

Whether or not you believe this man,

Facebook does give you the opportunity to reach a

lot of people you might not normally.

• Over a billion users.• Represents 25% of all U.S. pageviews.• Governed by a secret (possibly evil) algorithm, which changes

constantly but can totally be gamed for your own purposes.

PRO TIP: keep up with algorithm changes at http://newsroom.fb.com

GOING VIRAL

GOING VIRALThe common narrative about viral stuff on the internet is that it just happens: people find stuff they like, they share it, their friends like it, they share it, and so forth.

Fact: luck has a lot to do with it, but that’s only part of the story.

CASE IN POINT:

CRACKING FACEBOOKIt likes:

• Stuff a critical mass of people have already liked, commented on, or shared.

• Visually interesting content.

• Links to pages that users stay on instead of clicking away.

• Short-ish, informative headlines.

CRACKING FACEBOOKIt dislikes:

• Stuff that has already been shared a bunch over time, like classic memes.

• Images that are predominantly text.

• Links that people click and don’t stay to look at.

• Explicit asks to like and share.

CRACKING FACEBOOK USERS

+

+ +

CRACKING FACEBOOK USERS

AXIS OF FEELINGSAnger

Sadness

EmpowermentDespair

IDK what even goes here.

WRITING FOR FACEBOOKFact: it’s really not likely that things are going to go viral by themselves, even if they’re totally kickass and awesome.

If you write 25 headlines, chances are tons of them will be shit. But at least

one of them will be gold.

The way you figure out which things are most likely to be gold than others is a combo of knowing what works generally and A/B testing to find out what your extended audience likes.

PRO TIP: most of the time, you’ll miss. Don’t give up! (You can still be adorable while you miss.)

WRITING FOR FACEBOOK 101

Don’t give everything away. Let the headline and image tell the story.

Don’t tell your audience what to feel or think. They hate condescension.

Hit the right emotional register: don’t bum people out.

Don’t oversexualize: everyone and their mom is on Facebook, literally.

Don’t over-think. 95% of what you write won’t go viral. It’s not personal. Remember this is hard as fuck. Keep writing, testing, and posting.

Don’t drop so many f-bombs.

Be clever. But not obtuse, confusing, or irritatingly ironic.

VIRALITY IS KINDA HARDEasy (not-so-viral)

Hard(totally fucking viral)

Getting your audience to like.

Getting your audience to share.

Getting your audience’s friends to like.

Getting your audience’s friends to share.

Getting your audience’s friends’ friends to like.

Getting George Takei to like & share.

DON’T WORRY, YOU’RE NOT ALONE

Everyone is sharing everyone else’s awesome stuff.

Where do you get your information and news?

Who are supernodes in your network?

Who are up-and-comers in your network?

PRO TIP: always give credit where credit is due. Even if we’re talking about a macaque selfie.

IF YOU DO WANT TO DIY…• Use large, high-quality

images.• Don’t make an image that’s

just text: text should be 30% or less.

• Check out current element dimensions for Facebook Pages.

• Develop a visual identity, because if you are making cool stuff, people are going to share it around.

PRO TIPS: I create images using Inkscape and GIMP, completely free and open-source software.Check out https://www.facebook.com/PagesSizesDimensions for current element dimensions.

CRACKING TWITTERTwitter is the internet’s front porch.

Twitter is about speed and density.• Most Twitter users have a couple dozen followers; seek out

supernodes who can retweet you to a couple thousand.• Participate in real-time events, like townhalls, or livetweeting direct

actions or the State of the Union address.• Use Twitter to break stories before anyone else: lots of journalists

use Twitter to find their next pitch.• Don’t let your Twitter account idle: time is of the essence.

Generosity on Twitter will get you far.• Retweeting is great. Just make sure it’s not your entire feed.• Tag people and orgs you’re talking about in your Tweets.• Build one-to-one relationships with your base on Twitter. This is the

platform for conversation!

TWITTER PRO TIPS• Make sure everyone’s seeing your Tweets: if you start a Tweet with a

mention (@18millionrising), put a period before it. Otherwise it’ll get buried.

• You can schedule Tweets using a third-party app, like Tweetdeck or HootSuite.

• If you want to start a hashtag (#HandsUpDontShoot) campaign, pick just one hashtag: you only have 140 characters per Tweet and a single hashtag makes it easier for users to find, and follow, the conversation.

• You can share the same thing multiple times, because Twitter moves so fast that the majority of your followers won’t catch your content if you share it just once.

REMEMBER…

Building an audience on social media is only as useful as you make it. What are you going to leverage your audience for?

What are you preparing them to do beyond like and share?

School of Internet Witchcraft & WizardryStay in Touch

@caydenfacebook.com/cayden.makbodywithout.org

Check Out Our Work@18MillionRisingfacebook.com/18MillionRising.org18millionrising.org