Ideas for a possible social media plan

Hey guys, so we students of Alberto’s class at Politecnico and were asked to brainstorm some ideas for a social media plan for unMonastery. This a pretty long post, but let us know what you think works or not.

So to start we felt social media’s strength is in its ability to engage users to participate or leave their mark in a simple and quick way. Virility is based on how interested users are in the subject. Knowing this, can we design a campaign that brings together a global community around the common unMonastery cause while giving them attractive content to share amongst their friends?

There is also an opportunity to using this voting period also as a way of understanding the community that is supporting unMonastary, as a way of uncovering their motivations, and then taking and understanding these motivations to build upon future campaigns. This might make the campaign more enganging than just voting.

An interesting avenue could be to create an integrated social media campaign using Facebook, twitter, pintrest. Facebook is a powerful platform to spread content, such as videos and images. Twitter allows for a strong virility around voting itself, allow us to spread a singular message that each user can than adapt in their own way. Pintrest gives you the access to an underground social innovation following, and can be a way to create fun content like d.i.y solutions that are related to the areas of interest of the EdgeRyders. The plan could be deployed in a few steps

Stage 1: Activate the users that already know and are passionate about the project to vote for unMonastery and to start a hashtag that will hopefully catch on with future voters. Having those who are participating in the project reach out to their friends as a primary first level voters. This can be spread through twitter using a hashtags such as #voteunMonastery.Another interesting hashtag you can play with is #oraelavora or #timetowork in english. This hashtag is a wordplay on the motto of the benedict monastery ora et labora.

So as we ask people to vote for the project we can get them to also post on Twitter and Facebook that they voted and why they voted. An example could be

" #voteunMonastery because we need new systems of citizen engagement "

We can also ask users to draw their vision of a new world take a picture on their phone and upload it the #voteunMonastery

Stage 2: Is to start to create content that can be shared centrally through a pintrest, Twitter and Facebook pages of unMonastary that is easy for people to share, to their friends.

Examples could be:

A. create a short video series (2 mins or less) under the name of unStories to promote each initiative in    the project.

#1 UnStories. Solar pannel.

#2 UnStories. Urban gardening

#3 UnStories. Wii Networks

ecc…

B. Create D.I.Y image tutorials that can be posted on twitter similar to this: http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/236x/3f/6e/e6/3f6ee6f91ebfde236e17c226cc7f8a97.jpg . This is only an example but you get the idea that you can make interesting tutorials on a number of subjects the Edgeryders are knowledgeable in and this content can spread and help direct traffic to voting for unMonastary.

Stage 3: Can be creating custom profile / cover images for others to use on their profile pages that are centered around voting for unMonastery.

What do you guys think?

I love it!

Boy this was fast, thanks for this guys:)

I think we have a solid point here, with which I agree completely: tap into the motivations and enthusiasm of the current unMonasterians, and use their project stories to draw attention. One common reaction I’ve seen to the unMonastery on social media so far has been “hm, looks interesting but I don’t really understand it”. [Bembo Davies] I think agrees with me.

So storytelling at the forefront of the campaign is great - whether it’s interviews, videos, pictures on a Pinterest board, or a shared hashtag. It’s not easy to pull of a successful integrated campaign, but if they are good, stories tend to travel by themselves and are self explanatory.

Not to mention this generates real content, good for the visibility of the project. Documenting what unMonasterians do is something that I believe we’d need to do anyway no?

1 Like

Hashtag!

This is a really great idea, simple but we had already overlooked it.

We should definietely establish a centralised hashtag, to expand on your idea, it could be used as way to badge all individual pieces of content, so that every is tied to single place. Then reinforce this by encouraging the use of this hashtag within events that don’t relate directly to voting but might drive votes through discovery and serendipity. It seems an effective way we diversify our tactics without annoying people.

Stage 2 is essential, I’ve bought some easy to use equipment for documenting and uploading fast, #unStories they shall be!

Stage 3, again is a great idea. Let’s see if [Ola] Moller can help with this!

I see this already!

Simple, effective and useful. I totally agree with the importance of using this campaign to create meaning and support the launch of the unMonastery on the 1st of February. Excellent work, and much simpler than what I had baked up - which is probably a bit of a complex thing to do in such short time! I also agree on the fact that we should kick-off by building on what we have, and for the moment we have beautiful projects which can tell about the unMonastic approach to problem solving by going deeper into the project proposals. I would create momentum online around the single projects, scattered from now until the 13th of March: something like thematic Twitterstorms around #unStories.

So if I get this right, at the end of the campaign we would end up with this kind of stuff:

  • a centralized hashtag to badge individual pieces of content (latin is a good take since it solves the question of the language to use, I like the wordplay: I really think that sense of humour is a way to promote the unMonastery)
  • channelling voting reasons in order to reframe the pitch of the unMonastery: I would do 2 sessions on that, one aiming at the global community and one aiming more specifically at the locals
  • content to share (not sure I understood this part correctly)
  • #unStories: short presentation videos of the unMonasterians' projects 
  • thematic Twitterstorms (say, 30 min around each project) during which single challenges/unMonasterians can answer questions, produce content, explain what they are up to and what they have in mind and other people can share knowledge on their mission. 
  • customized profile pages to use on Facebook / Twitter to promote the unMonastery and promote votes

Awesome. Let’s see how this works out.

Last question: I know this was part of an exercise during a Service Design course, but would you guys be in any ways interested to participate?