Twitter as a Communications Tool for Unions
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Twitter is yet another free Internet service that could open up new possibilities for union communication. Read on for more.
If you haven't heard of Twitter or tried it yet, it's a service for submitting blog items onto the Internet using short posts, referred to as "tweets", of 140 characters or less. Have a look at my Twitter page to get a clearer idea of how it works.
At first glance, this seems useless and frivolous. But the big strength of Twitter, and probably a major reason for its success, is the ease with which you can update it using your browser, your favorite instant messaging client, or your cell phone. Posting to Twitter from just about anywhere is effortless and doesn't take a lot thought or time, a big plus in today's world of overworked, overloaded information workers.
The other major feature of Twitter is the ease with which other "followers" can subscribe to your tweets and keep apprised on what you are thinking or doing. Your Twitter blog also generates an RSS feed which can be subscribed to by anyone if you choose to allow the public to do so.
In the year and a half since it's public release, Twitter has gained the attention of serious communicators as a way to help get their message out. Politicians, corporations, non-profits, freelancers; just about anyone with a message can find some value in using the service. Check out the Twitterholic home page for a sampling of the most popular Twitter blogs.
So how might unions use Twitter? Here's a few ideas:
1) Set up your website to receive incoming RSS feeds from the picket lines or other major events like conferences.
2) Labor leaders can twitter their daily activities to keep members apprised of what leadership is working on and fighting for.
3) If you don't have time or staff to write quality blog posts, use twitter to keep the community up to date on the issues and concerns of your union.
4) Set up a bogus Twitter account using the name of a hated CEO or manager. Post entertaining items like "Don't know why our workers are so upset at my salary. Don't think they realize all the maintenance needed on 100 foot yachts."
5) Post up the minute bargaining updates to the website right from the bargaining table.
I highly recommend that unions experiment with this technology and see what works. These new social media tools don't come with handbooks. The best way to find out what Twitter is capable of is to get out there and give it a shot. Just be sure to share what you learn by posting here on Communicate or Die.
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Best of the Official Union Web?
How to collect all these good tools and raise awareness of them?
Maybe we need to run a Communicate or Die "best of the official union web" contest?
We could recruit judges from past and current CorD participants and either do a "best website" type contest, or a "ten best features" type contest?
On a related note, it would be useful if there were a "best of CorD" list, with the ten most useful or interesting articles since the site started. There's some interesting material buried here.
are any unions
are any unions actively using Twitter or other social networking tools? I would be very interested in learning more about this.
cheers
James Hayton
LabourStart twittering
repost email:
*******
I'm always looking into new technologies, new ways for trade unions to work more effectively, and I want your help to test one out. I also want to give away fifty LabourStart fridge magnets -- more on that below.
As you know, LabourStart has long used the web and email to publish trade union news and run online campaigns.
There are problems with both of those, especially when you're trying to get someone's attention.
We ran into this last week when we were asked to urgently get people to send in their photos in support of the jailed union leaders in Zimbabwe. (Read to the end of this email to find out what happened.)
I think we need to find new ways to break through the background noise of cluttered inboxes and millions of websites.
I want to try using a new tool that will allow us to send out extremely short
messages to you via your mobile phone, or your instant messaging service (if you use one), or the web.
Twitter is a free (and advertising-free) service that allows us to do this.
To help me try this out, could I ask you to do two things today?
1. Go to Twitter and sign up for an account.
2. Go to the LabourStart page on Twitter and sign up to 'follow' our Twitter account.
You can then configure your Twitter account to receive our short messages to your phone, to the web or to your instant messager.
I promise to use this sparingly, and will not burden you with frequent messages.
To encourage people to sign up, we're giving away fifty LabourStart fridge magnets -- but you'll have to be signed up to Twitter to get the details. We'll announce this with a 'tweet' (that's Twitter-talk for a short message) in a few days -- as soon as we have 1,000 of you signed up.
I've written a short article laying out the case for using Twitter as a campaigning tool. Please feel free to add your comments there.
Finally, a big thanks to the more than 2,000 trade unionists who on very short notice contributed your photos in support of the jailed Zimbabwe trade union leaders. You can see one version of the resulting image with their faces made up by a mosaic of your photos, here .
See you all on Twitter!
Eric Lee
*********
Best, Mark
still thinking about UnionWiki.org