Examples of good practices for social media campaigning

How is Amnesty using social media for campaigning?

To coincide with this week's new Guide on the social media for charities, we thought we would take a look at these examples of how Amnesty International are using social across the main platforms Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest. Of course, Amnesty have been enthusiastic adopters of digital media and social media for campaigning from the outset, and need to manage many presence around the world, so they're an interesting case.

For each network we have pulled out some examples of good practices for positioning a Not-for-profit on its page, status updates and encouraging interaction and action.

As an international organisation, Amnesty also have the challenge of managing a different presence in different countries, so we will use a few different examples although this doesn’t illustrate the integration across channels which they seem to manage well within an individual region.

Facebook

Examples of good practices:

• Powerful cover photos provoking emotional connection.
• Photos used in post to feature key campaign messages and encourage action
• Use different pages for different countries.
• Apps or Views promote participation through Event.
• Good tone of voice for brand.
• Feature prominent cases in history showing topical editorial schedule.
• Balance of awareness raising and fundraising updates.

Twitter (US page)

Examples of good practices:

• Great Bio encouraging interaction.
• Updates contain calls-to-action (through Ow.ly links showing they are using. Hootsuite for managing social updates and interactions, a tool we recommend).
• Clear campaigning messages through hashtags like #FreeTheArctic30 and regular updates across campaigns linking to campaign microsites.
• Campaign messages written to encourage sharing through ReTweets.
• Retweet content from others as shown in the first update.

Google+

Although not one of the 'big 3 networks', Amnesty has a good level of participation and following on it’s global page and the USA page shown here. Its content is similar to that for Facebook page.

We also took a look at the Amnesty Australia site, which is an example where updates haven’t been sustained. The last update is over 6 months ago. We would argue that even when you are getting low levels of engagement it’s worth committing to a minimum frequency of posts per month so the page is kept alive.

Pinterest

Good practices:

• Simple positioning about the organization in bio.
• Bio also explains the type of content that is shared to encourage following.
• Well thought through boards to engage, e.g. Inspiring Quotes & People', 'Act', 'Human Rights Reading List' and campaign specific boards, e.g. 'Free Pussy Riot'.
• Re-use of multiplatform campaigning images - designed for sharing and impact - as seen in Facebook and Twitter.
• Links at foot of posts through to site.