Newsletter
Subscribe to our free mailing list for event announcements, CSM news and our latest reports.
Feeds
Subscribe to News RSS feed
Subscribe to iCalendarPlease login or register to post
Copyright & Fair Use Blog
New Organizing Institute’s New Media Training
Posted by Micael Bogar on Jul 2, 2009 at 12:46 PM
Last week I attended a two-day New Media Training conference with the New Organizing Institute (NOI). The Institute aims:
* To train and support a new generation of technology-enabled campaigners.
* To consolidate and disseminate knowledge gained in the field of political technology and online organizing.
* To conduct new research and post-campaign investigations that employ results-focused, systems thinking to make progressive campaigns and organizations more efficient.
The training was focused very much on political campaigns but the discussions still proved very helpful for any advocacy organization/think tank interested in upgrading their promotional and outreach capabilities, as well as media makers hoping to increase the impact of their productions.
A few highlights:
Marc Laitin from the AFL-CIO said, “Don’t forget the simple stuff. Make the JOIN button on your front page accessible and obvious.” Laitin went on to talk about his work with the successful campaign to challenge ABC and Disney’s release of their film The Path to 9-11. He said the three main reasons this pushback against the inaccurate movie worked were:
1. The issue resonated with the community.
2.The organizers provided a regular stream of new info.
3. The organizers stayed on message.
Daniel Mintz from Moveon.org hosted two sessions — one on online advertising and another on testing. It was truly fascinating sitting in the room with one of the minds behind Moveon.org’s outreach campaign; the organization has an email list long enough to span the earth four times. Someone in the room actually asked Mintz at one point what the exact number was. Mintz smirked and replied with something like, “I’m not at liberty to tell.”
The two major takeaways that I got from Mintz’s panels were that online advertising can yield cheap amazing results if your goal is to grow your list and that the simple subject line of an email can have a huge impact on the success of your work —test it and see.
Overall the training reaffirmed our claim that new media culture is a powerful arena for outreach and promotion. The training offered concrete tools to engage users more deeply and test the results of this engagement. Social media tools can yield amazing results in organizing transformations and revolutions — but hell, we’ve been saying that all along.