An Action-Focused Agenda for Social Change Using Social Media

Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vegahttp://www.raulpacheco.org

@raulpachecohttp://hummingbird604.com

@hummingbird604

Social, social, social...

Social media...social marketing... social change

What does it all mean?

Public Policy Issues

At the intersection

...

Social Media

Social Marketing

Social Change

The human nature and the need to relate

At the intersection of social media, social change, social marketing and public policy

issues, you will find 3 elements:– Relationships– Information– Behaviour

These elements are intrinsic to humans and our need to relate to each other... through

NETWORKS

Social network of the New Testament

http://www.esv.org/blog/2007/01/mapping-nt-social-networks/

So how is everything connected?

Social changePublic policy goals Social media Social mktg

Social marketing

• Using marketing tools and techniques to advance SOCIAL goals as the PRIMARY objective.

• “The design, implementation and control of programs calculated to influence the acceptability of social ideas and involving considerations of product planning, pricing, communication, distribution and marketing research”

» Kotler (1971) “Social Marketing: An Approach to Planned Social Change” The Journal of Marketing, Vol. 35, pp. 3-12

So, what is this thing you call... Social media?

(a) It is social– Allows you/enables you to create

multi-directional relationships.

(a) It is media– Content generated is distributed via

online (electronic) methods

Image at http://www.47project.com/2009/03/11/social-media-experts-you-have-lots-to-learn-grasshopper/

Credit and source: http://www.fredcavazza.net/2008/06/09/social-media-landscape/

Social media is an enabling agent

• Finding information

• Learning from other’s stories

• Building trust and strengthening relationships

• Sharing your story (storytelling)

Towards an action-focused agenda

I tweet something – 2,400 people believe in what I am saying. Why?

Because I have built bi-directional relationships primarily based on trust and reciprocity.

So how can we take this insight and move towards an action-focused agenda?

Step 1: Create the relationships

Building trust-worthy relationships through• Sharing information with others• Sharing information about myself• Discerning the value of what information I am

sharing• Making my decision-making processes

transparent

Step 2: Be strategic and long-term about goals, tactics and strategy

• Mental Health Camp– Long-term goal

• Contribute to the de-stigmatization of mental illnesses• Help build healthy communities where mental illness is

seen as one of many public health issues.– Short-term goal

• Explore the concept of MHC– Strategy

• Build a strong, nurturing community around MHC– Tactics

• Exploring the intersection of social media and mental health

Step 3: Align your social media toolkit to the strategic objective

• A broad array of tools– Twitter and blogging as a primary tool– Wiki-building as a secondary tool– Facebook as tertiary tool– We did not think exploring YouTube and

Flickr would take us anywhere

Step 4: Monitor behavioural change

• This is the most challenging step of them all.

• Determine the metrics of change– Several participants signed up for Twitter AT

the MHC.– Personalized guidance. Trust-building,

nurturing, camaraderie.– One participant spoke spontaneously at the

Camp.

The most important element of all (TAKE ACTION)

• Air took action (the organizer of Coping Digitally)

• The participants of the panel took action and told their story at Northern Voice '09.

• We (Isabella and I) took action. We took it upon ourselves to create a Mental Health Camp within 2 months of Coping Digitally. We succeeded.

The 4xN Grid Method to analyze, design and implement social media campaigns

Target audience & demographics

Issue selection & galvanization mechanism

Platform selection & deployment

Life-cycle & stabilization

DeSmogBlogMainstream media & PR folks

Global warming Blogs Short-medium term

Earth Hour Canada General public Energy conservation Twitter and Facebook Short-term

Vote for Environment.ca

Average Canadian voters (>18 yrs old)

Environment as an outcome of political decisions

Twitter/blog & Facebook Very short term

Save the Great Bear Forest

Average Canadian folk

Biodiversity conservation

Flickr/Facebook/Twitter Medium term

Mental Health Camp

General public, mental health practitioners

Mental illness, stigma

Twitter/blog –Facebook Long term

Source: Pacheco-Vega (2009)

In closing

• An action-based agenda for social change through social media requires:

– A strong understanding of the issue (Information)– Deep and strong interconnectedness

(Relationships)– A clear vision of what change needs to be

effected (Behaviour)

– Aligning social marketing and social media toolkits to public policy objectives.

Thanks for listening!

• Raul Pacheco-Vega, PhD– How to contact me:

• Via email – hummingbird604@gmail.com for social media matters– raul.pachecovega@gmail.com for my enviro research

• Via contact form on my blogs– http://hummingbird604.com social medial/personal– http://www.raulpacheco.org research

• Via Twitter– http://www.twitter.com/hummingbird604 social media– http://www.twitter.com/raulpacheco research