Social change happens when people are made aware of issues and opportunities to serve, when they are educated about the misfortunes of others here and abroad, when they are moved to do something to support people or a cause like raise money, build houses, advocate for new legislation or to stop littering. A common criticism of online social change efforts is that they lack the intensity of in person efforts. Just clicking for breast cancer isn’t the same as walking or raising money for a cause. That’s true, it’s not the same. But it is a start. For everyone who becomes aware of a cause by clicking, there is an opportunity to engage them, build a relationship and strengthen their support for your cause.
There are significant differences in working on land and working in the social media ether. One important difference is the low cost of experimentation and the ease of real-time adjustments when you are using social media. Real-time learning about your efforts and ways to improve them to have greater results is one of the most powerful aspects of working with social media. KD Paine describes the impact that social media can make on efforts as an upward ladder of engagement that moves people in a social network from Engagement to Relationship to Return on Investment. We propose adopting this progression specifically for social change efforts. Social media grows Social Networks to generate Social Capital to create Social Change.
Social media tools can be used to broaden your audience (social network) and intensify the relationship that those people have for your cause (social capital) in order to lead a group of people to act for your cause (social change.) What you are aiming to have happen as a result of those connections and interactions depends on your goals: are you trying to raise awareness of your candidate or issue, raise money, raise friends, lobby Congress for specific legislation, elect a Senator? The goal of social media learning is to build in opportunities within this system to listen and learn, in real-time, what is working well in order to increase the impact of your efforts.
This is not a financial return on investment, rather it is a real-time learning process to track and understand your efforts using social media and improve as you go.
Social network. The number of people you are connected to matters. You need people’s attention in this very busy world in order for more and more people to become connected to your cause by friending you or following you or reading about you. For your blog and website, you want to watch to see what messages and tags are increasing traffic, how many people are linking to our sites and who are they, how many RSS feeds do we have? Tools to help you to watch include Feedburner for RSS feeds, Google Analytics for web traffic, Technorati Authority growth, and using your own blog stats page, Twitter followers, Facebook friends.
Social Capital. Trust and reciprocity are the essence of social capital, which is the foundation of stronger communities. Social relationships need to be valued and nurtured for networks to work on your behalf. The power of social media is the second degree of influence and outwards. Are influential people in your field (meaning those with a lot of followers in Twitter or a high influence ranking on Technorati) talking about you? Are your tweets being retweeted? Are your posts being Digg’d and Stumbled Upon, websites that allow crowds to show their support for a cause or idea? Are the number and quality of the comments about your issue in various places increasing? (in particular, the comments are an opportunity to engage in conversations with your participants to find out what is appealing to them, what is driving them to action.)
Social Change. Ultimately, social change people need social change to actually happen in the world. We need people to do something – hopefully something that helps our efforts! We need them to pass on our message to their friends, fill out and send a petition, vote for our candidates. This happens online, but also more importantly on land. It is important to build feedback loops into your strategies so you will know when, how and why your people are doing what they’re doing – or not doing it. This is where the on line and on land connection intersects because real change doesn’t just happen on line, it can’t and shouldn’t, it happens between people in terra firma, on street corners, in homes, town halls, offices and congregations around the world. And you measure your impact on land the way you always have; using surveys and interviews, observations and focus groups according to what you are trying to learn.
Using social media to listen and learn doesn’t become important as part of one campaign or effort; it is a way of being in this new world. Some are blogging, others are talking with friends and supporters on your Facebook page and on Twitter, they’re active on their Google groups for your cause and Meetup every Thursday at 6 at McMahon’s Pub downtown. You are inextricably intertwined within your ecosystem of supporters and kindred spirits, but only if you chose to participate in the conversation.



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Allison Fine is a successful social entrepreneur and writer dedicated to helping grassroots organizations and activists successfully implement social change efforts. Her book Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age, the winner of the Terry McAdams National Book Award, was published in 2006 by Wiley & Sons. As a senior fellow on the Democracy Team at Demos: A Network for Change and Action in New York City, Allison researches and writes about the future of social change and civic engagement in this new digital age.