Mail Chimps and Changing Walmart

A couple of IWDs ago I used my Webwork column to look at the distressingly negative experiences many women have online, including being flamed or otherwise harassed. And how those experiences might negatively affect women’s receptiveness to their unions’ online organizing efforts. In other words, I was looking at the gendered division of the internet.

A recent article in The Pacific Standard, “Why Women Aren’t Welcome on the Internet,” by Amanda Hess, describes the “noxious online commentary” the journalist gets in response to her columns. That article, along with a bunch more I was able to Google-up (79,400,000, give or take), did have one slightly (but not counter-balancing) positive aspect, though it’s one you have to work hard to find: email is best when it comes to avoiding what you don’t want to see or read. Unlike most social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, email gives the recipient a measure of control over what she is exposed to. You may be forced to read the subject line, but that’s all, giving you a lot more control over what you see in comparison to what you’re forced to witness with Facebook and company. So, yet another argument in support of email as the killer app for online organizing. You can read the story here: http://tinyurl.com/l9joyfr.

MAIL CHIMP

Chances are that anyone who manages online actions for their union already knows that email is the most effective online communications tool available, and they likely use a service like Mail Chimp or other software with similar features.

LabourStart tested one of the newer features of Mail Chimp, called “A/B Testing,” and we’re now using it with almost every mailing. The feature allows you to test different subject lines in your messages and then compare the rates at which recipients open messages. In one example, we did two mailings, each with a different subject-line message, about Firefox OS for Activists, the latest book in LabourStart’s series covering a mix of global solidarity topics and things techish. The subject might have seemed arcane (an open source, free operating system for smartphones) and the book has a somewhat nerdish title. Nonetheless, the email with the subject line saying “Firefox OS for activists – now available in Canada” had an open rate of 6.3 per cent within 60 minutes of the mailing. The email with the heading “Smartphones, tablets and Canadian unions” was opened by only 5.0 per cent of the target group. The difference between them was significant. On a Canadian mailing list of more than 12,000, it meant another 156 people opened the message. On our entire mailing list, it meant almost 2,000 more people opened the message. 

Being a mildly obsessive-compulsive type, not to mention a beery Marxist, I look for qualitative results from quantitative analyses. But, so far, no rules about subject line content are appearing in my tea leaves (okay, beer bubbles). Subject-line-response results are almost never predictable, which is why it’s important to test them. But the difference you’ll see is substantial enough to warrant using this feature, if you have it.

MAKING CHANGE AT WALMART

The good folks at Making Change at Walmart, and OUR Walmart, in the U.S., have their work cut out for them in taking on the world’s largest – well, largest everything. Their resources, even with the backing of UFCW (United Food and Commercial Workers), will never come close to what Walmart can spend on crushing organizing efforts in its stores and warehouses. Of course, that’s what is making the campaign grow, and what’s having the most impact on the corporation are the strikes – by unorganized workers, no less. (Think about that the next time you’re tempted to crow about our Canadian labour laws.) And organizing those strikes, and other meatspace actions, was made a lot easier for organizers by their judicious use of social media.

They used “Causes” on Facebook and created events there, too. They created websites to describe actions and how to organize for them; how to safely, and legally, conduct the strikes. Tweets were tweeted. Flickr was deployed on the day of a strike, as was Instagram. The result? One thousand five hundred actions (think about that for just a second) at 1,500 (think about it again, a little longer this time) Walmart locations resulted. Simultaneously. On the biggest day of the year for retail in the U.S.

If you’re not at least a bit slack-jawed at this point, turn in your membership card.

It gets better. The strike organizers did what too few unions would, or can, do: they created a mediated, but pretty free-wheeling, online space where the workers themselves could speak about their fears and needs, and why they were or were not participating in the Black Friday actions. Even better, much of the online organizing in preparation for the strikes was done by crowd-sourced online leadership that organically defined the campaign. Typically, a number of workers would find a Making Change website or Facebook page or group. They’d start to talk directly, rather than through Making Change’s facilities. That talking became self-organizing, and the self-organizing took control of the strike in a location. The pattern was repeated, over and over.

I’ll spare you my crowing about how the Walmart campaign was able to take people from cyberspace to meatspace in order to take effective action. But what’s striking is how closely their tactics parallel those of Leadnow.ca. It works.

Take a peek here at a nice summary of what Making Change folks are prepared to make public:

http://tinyurl.com/pfd222h.

DON’T DISS THE BOSS ON FACEBOOK

Just a reminder: Facebook ain’t Vegas and what happens on Facebook doesn’t stay on Facebook. Not only can it migrate out to meatspace, but it can bite you on the arse when it arrives. A worker in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, took to Facebook after she was almost killed or seriously injured by lax safety precautions at a paper mill, to complain about how slow management was in responding to her complaint. Clearly angered by her manager, she posted a rather heated opinion of him, and a few others. A 13-year employee, she was fired, and her discharge was upheld at arbitration. See the story here: http://tinyurl.com/m5xefum.

UNITED NURSES OF ALBERTA

Download the United Nurses of Alberta (UNA) iPhone App and you’ll get breaking news, collective agreements, leadership messages and a whole bunch more. UNA members can search collective agreements for keywords, make notes, and highlight important sections for future reference. Fab! See it here: http://tinyurl.com/kz6443l.

GOOGLE+

Much as I love and respect the work Australian union online guru Alex White, sometimes his boundless online energy just makes me feel like I want to take a nap. Or retire. Alex has an insider’s take on the resources unions can spare for just about any activity or campaign. So, until now, he’s been pushing email, Facebook and Twitter for all our campaigning needs. But, recently, he came to the conclusion that we need to add Google+ to the list.

I’ve had a Google+ account for a few years now, but I only check it maybe once a month, and even then just to connect with a Facebook-phobic friend.  (Is it a phobia when there’s good reason for the fear?) Alex’s take on the change boils down to this: “Google is taking over the digital world and integrating all its platforms such that, if you’re not active on its social media platform, it will wreak revenge when someone looks for you using its search engine.” Sigh. Unfortunately, this, like Alex, makes sense. Read it for yourself, and then have a nice long nap: http://tinyurl.com/l9jevwe.

FACEBOOK NO LONGER COOL?

There’s a countervailing bit of good news about the Bad Book (Facebook, I mean): its user demographics are changing and there are indications Facebook is headed for a downward slide in popularity, though it might take a while for the beast to die.

A study by a British social scientist suggests that Facebook use is no longer cool, now that people like me are signed up and posting news about our boring middle-aged lives. (See http://tinyurl.com/ne7dh9y.) So, the young folks are spreading themselves around a bit. They are staying on Facebook, for sure, in order to keep in touch with older family members. But they are investing more of themselves in platforms that the old folks haven’t yet discovered. Might explain why the grandkids haven’t been in touch with me for the last little while. I’ll have to remember to wig them out by dropping some references to my non-existent Instagram account. . . .

Tech Tips and Tools for Change

Katie Arnup at Unifor is the first Canadian unionist I’ve seen, to date (besides me), to use a badge on Facebook: a small logo or other graphic in the corner of a user’s photo. It’s an inexpensive way for union members to show their allegiance to and play a small but collectively important part in campaigns such as “together FAIRNESS WORKS,” launched by the Canadian Labour Congress (that’s what Katie did). TV commercials are wonderful, as are the efforts unions are making to reach their own members about the campaign. But a free little badge that sits on each union member’s Facebook profile picture declaring their allegiance would, in a small way, reach many more people. Get your union a badge and get the word out.

Another campaign I’ve been following was the one by the folks at the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers, in their strike for better working conditions. Their under-reported but well-organized global actions against the federal Tories could serve as a model for many of us. One small downside to their campaign was yet another decision by a labour board that confirms what we should all know by now: your employer owns its email system and if you use it for unauthorized (i.e. union) purposes you might lose it, without warning. See here for details: http://tinyurl.com/pcsnnwl.

SAVE MY TEETH

Have pity on my tattered teeth: don’t use Change.org to run an online action. Every time I see a union (or any other organization I approve of) using it to put some digital pressure on an employer I wind-up grinding my teeth in frustration. Here’s why. First, though they won’t release the numbers, clearly Change.org is making a ton of money. Second, if your members sign on for one of your campaigns then Change.org has their address and will use it in ways you can’t control and in ways that are increasingly distant from Change.org’s progressive roots. Third, there are several more principled alternatives that don’t and won’t sell the use of their lists for cash. Fourth? Fourth is what should be but isn’t: a single mailing list for the labour movement that all affiliates can access, and in confidence. I guess that’s a political impossibility. But it would be by far the most effective way to mobilize workers online and we would own it; we’d be building our own capacity and not someone else’s. For a quick peek inside Change.org see: http://tinyurl.com/m7n2j87.

DUCKS & TOOLS FOR CHANGE

Tools for Change has a quick survey of some online action tools you may not have heard of. Not all are suitable for use by Canadian unions but they can serve to inspire an idea or two, perhaps. See: http://tinyurl.com/nc6a6fs.

“Tech Tips for Trade Unionists” is the title of a series of regular blog posts by Eric Lee of LabourStart. Eric is a gizmo freak and goes looking for things most of us wouldn’t try if they were offered-up on a plate, for free and with lifetime on-site support. Yet, even then, it’s kinda fun to try to imagine the poor buggers who might find a use for them: http://www.ericlee.info/blog/?cat=55

DuckDuckGo is the name of a fairly new search engine that, unlike Google (and the also-rans like Bing), doesn’t collect all kinds of info about you. There have been efforts like this in the past including one by ILO/ACTRAV (the workers education office at the International Labour Organization) that biased its results towards the interests of trade unionists. While I’m not optimistic that this will be any more successful than the previous attempts, who knows, maybe the Snowden spying disclosures are having an effect and this one will get some attention:

https://duckduckgo.com/

BOGUS TEXTING & TABLETS

Bogus text messaging can and has caused unions problems. Here’s just one example of a wave of such stories in the past six months. Hard to tell whether this is a new trend in response to increasing union reliance on texting or just a slow day in the newsroom. See: http://tinyurl.com/pqujaou. And while we’re on the subject of phones, the always spot-on Alex White blogged recently about “four things unions should know about mobile.” Fact one: according to Alex: One out of every three monthly visitors to the average large website comes exclusively on mobile platforms. “This means,” he says, “that if you don’t optimise your union’s website for mobile and tablet, you’re potentially sending away up to a third of your audience.” As yet there aren’t many unions adept at using mobile devices, even though 36 per cent of all e-mails are being opened on a mobile device of one sort or another. Read about it here: http://tinyurl.com/pd48urp.

WHAT DUFF DOES

Joel Duff at the Ontario Federation of Labour has been making a real and effective splash there and across the province since his appointment as communications director. He’s had many, but a recent, inspired effort of his made a campaign grow by making it easy to spread. Here’s the story. The OFL has been organizing support for the striking municipal workers in the Township of Bonfield. By unilaterally amending the workers terms and conditions of work, this small town declared war on the Canadian Union of Public Employees. As there’s a fear that the town’s tactic will spread (and because the workers in Bonfield could use and deserve it), the Fed has been out there mobilizing support for the workers and their union.

What Joel has been doing is using his mailing list to get boilerplate text out to a large group of hardcore trade unionists. The text he provides prior to solidarity rallies or other events can be copied and pasted into Facebook or Twitter, making it easy for activists to pass the word along – accurately. He makes it easy for the word to get out, and for the word to be accurate and not missing a crucial letter or two – something that has happened to us all. Thank you, Joel.

LabourStart is one of many global news services that let you filter by topic, and you’ll reach the following conclusion quickly by just browsing: health and education workers and migrant workers are taking it in the neck pretty much everywhere. Whether in the public or private sector, and from Albania to Zimbabwe, employers are increasingly aggressive, with many more lockouts than before, and much more use of scabs. The up side is there are also lots of stories about battles being won.

New Unionism remains a great concept, well-executed. Check this link and expand your idea of what unions are and how we should be organizing and why the current organizational lines of demarcation don’t always serve workers’ interests: http://www.newunionism.net/global_unions.htm Oh, and while you’re there, contribute to a large global conversation about why and how these things can and should change.

I haven’t talked about Flickr in a while. It was time for me to review its very useful features and the extent to which it can act as a resource even for those who never pick up a camera. But I’m not going to, at least not for a while. Because the Activestills account on Flickr says it all. Look at this and think about all the ways in which these folks are harnessing the power of all those mobile phone cameras out there. That’s all you need to know about Flickr. See

http://www.flickr.com/photos/activestills

MATERIAL INCENTIVES & ACTIPEDIA

This kinda stuff seems more like marketing than organizing to me, but it’s worth noting the impact campaigns by companies like Bell and Air Canada have online when they offer material incentives of one sort or another. Is there something here we can make use of? I suspect not. Union mugs in exchange for. . . .

The Actipedia.org project aims to create a database of useful case studies we can access in the search for tactics and tech that work. On the day I wrote this there were stories of effective actions in Mexico, Australia and Tunisia. Look for useful stuff and leave your own stuff behind.

I’ve mentioned Corey Doctorow here before. Here I go again. With the holidays coming (yes, they are), if you’re looking for a book (paper or digital) for a young adult, give some thought to Doctorow’s most recent release, Pirate Cinema. Help give the budding digital revolutionary in your social circle some good ideas. Best of all, you can take a peek before you buy by downloading the entire book. If you’re like me, buy it if you love it (http://craphound.com/pc/).

E-mail Lists Work Best

Last issue you were treated (?!) to a rant. This time I’m giving you a bunch of shorter items, leaving less room for my opinions. Mebbe.

At LabourStart, we recently made an effort to track the ways that work best for getting the word out about our campaigns. It’s difficult for a volunteer organization of people with wildly varied tech expertise to be consistent, so our little survey was definitely not scientific. But it might be instructive, even so. The results aren’t at all surprising: the vast majority of those responding to our campaign appeals do so using the links embedded in our e-mailings. Twitter isn’t nearly as effective, even when tweets about a campaign are sent repeatedly. And Facebook lags even further behind. Way, way, way behind.

In one campaign I used Hootsuite (highly recommended, see www.hootsuite.com) to send regular posts to my Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as to the LabourStart Canada Twitter accounts, both French and English. I sent identical messages to each account at the same time. All the Twitter accounts, combined, have less than 15 per cent of the followers that the Facebook account has as “friends.” But the Twitter accounts generated 11 times as many campaign participants.

This just confirms what we all thought: e-mail remains the killer app for online campaigning.

Speaking of the LabourStart Twitter accounts, look for LabourStartCanE and LabourStartCanF. And speaking of stats and LabourStart, something interesting has started to develop as we track our mailing lists’ growth each month: the non-English lists have started to grow at rates that far exceed that of the largest, the English-language list. And the pattern for all our Twitter feeds in all languages has been for them to pick up followers at a rate that increases with the number of established followers. Is there some political/technical/sociological principle at work here? For the Twitter feeds, the “retweet effect” probably explains it. For the mailing lists – stay tuned, I guess. If you have an explanation, we’d love to hear it. We live for our mailing lists. You should, too.

LINKEDIN

LabourStart just completed its annual survey of unions and their use of the internet. Lots of slow movement reflected in most response areas (though our total number of responses doubled). Some notable exceptions were the huge increases in the number of trade unionists using smartphones to access their union’s online communications, a small increase in the number using tablets, and an accelerating decline in the percentage who use desktops. The popularity of laptops, Notebook and Ultrabook seems stable.

Facebook use was unchanged and Twitter use is growing. But the number of union members and staff using LinkedIn to communicate informally appears to be taking off. A quick peek at the survey results and my own account suggests that its use is concentrated in a few countries (is there a Dutch union staffer left without a LinkedIn account?). But they’re there for a reason, even if I can’t figure out what it is, so it might be worth your while to take a peek and figure out why. And then tell me. More importantly, if a lot of your union’s members are there, you might want to start a group and link it to the union’s Twitter account to give it some life without adding to anyone`s workload.

GOOGLE+

Google+ is becoming popular in the Francophonie. In French-speaking Africa, France itself and Quebec, take-up is noticeable. This doesn’t appear to be the case in the Anglo world, where Google+’s user base is not only not growing very quickly, but it’s usage pattern is cause for comment. Studies like the one done by Comscore, mentioned in the UK’s Daily Mail (see http://tinyurl.com/7j692la), seem to indicate that the average user spends a lot less time on Google+ than on Facebook: as little as three minutes a month compared to seven hours a month for Facebook. Matching this news up with the results of the LabourStart survey, it seems that whatever the platform, Facebook or Google+, more and more of us are using our phones to access our accounts.

SMART PHONES AND WORKERS

It’s not just union types who are taking-up Smartphones in a big way. Korean Samsung workers are subject to all kinds of harassment when and if they talk union. So, when the company announced the closure of one of its facilities, the workers found innovative ways to use their phones and SMS to make their unhappiness known to their employer. Non-union folks sometimes have the best ideas. Where we would file a grievance, they got together and took direct (if digital) action. See http://tinyurl.com/d58tc3w for details.

Smartphones are the Rodney Dangerfield of the commtech world. They get no respect, despite being in everyone’s purse, on everyone’s belt. They give us access to e-mail and the web anywhere. SMS can be as effective as e-mail. They have still cams and video cams built-in. And they can even be used to make phone calls (though if my usage patterns are anything to go by, that’s the least-used of a Blackberry’s features).

But one of the more interesting features of your Smartphone isn’t a technical spec or a functional feature. It is that we take them to work. We ALL take them to work, not just the folks who have them provided by their employers. The Smartphone represents one of the few times when tech change in a workplace can be said to have been introduced by workers, not bosses. And it is used, or, at least, useable, for organizing purposes by those workers.

Yet, finding a union in the Global North (the south has too many examples to list) that makes routine use of Smartphones in campaigning is difficult.

BITS AND BYTES

Sahid Fawaz runs a not bad little website called “Labor Think: Web Strategies for Unions” (www.laborthink.com). It’s devoted to making design and other not-quite-technical tips on online campaigning and such available to unions. Unusually, for this kind of site, there’s a lot of material on how to write for the web – as in prose, not code.

I recently pointed you in the direction of the website in B.C. that directs shoppers and service users to unionized providers (www.shopunion.ca). A site co-sponsored by the Alberta Federation of labour does an equally nice job. Take a peek: www.ethicalshoppingalberta.com.

Doorey’s Workplace Law Blog is a useful blog run by David Doorey, a labour law professor at York University. One of the more practical tools it provides is a list of Ontario employers who are being, or who have been, prosecuted for violations of that province’s Employment Standards Act. Kind of a “bad bosses” list, but accessible on your Smartphone so you can check it before opening the door. See www.yorku.ca/ddoorey/lawblog.

BETTER BRANDS TO BUY

I have participated in inspections of garment factories in Central America. Most were producing clothes for the better-known global brands. Inevitably, only the owners of the better factories with the better working conditions would co-operate and allow inspections. And better, take it from me, doesn’t mean good.

Labour policies and working conditions all up and down the supply chain help (along with environmental impact and other good things) determine the ratings various products get at www.goodguide.com. Access their ratings site using your Smartphone while shopping and buy only the best (for all involved). Almost as an aside, you can use their site to access webcams that will give you a view of some of the factories that produce the clothes and electronics we all use. At the right time, you can even Skype with the workers producing your stuff. I’m gonna see if I can Skype the workers at t-shirt factory and order some XXXL shirts with M labels (for “medium”) in them, just to make me feel good.

It’s always fun to close on a warm and fuzzy note. In my capacity as senior Canadian correspondent for LabourStart.org, I  just received a thank-you e-mail from the Maritime Union of New Zealand as their struggle against a giant multinational that runs the port of Auckland came to a successful end. LabourStart had helped out with an e-mail campaign. The letter included to-be-expected (no offence) references to the importance of global solidarity between unions, and a thanks for LabourStart’s efforts. However, it also included a personal bit about the effects on the wharfies of solidarity messages from other rank-and-file union members around the world – in other words, worker to worker solidarity.

Way too often we think of online campaigns as little more than an effort to clog an employer’s inbox. We should give ourselves a slap.

A Union Wikipedia Initiative?

I have been listening to Corey Doctorow’s Craphound podcast for a long while and his closing Creative Commons licensing notice (which quotes Woody Guthrie) finally made me think it was time to say a few words about Creative Commons (CC).

CREATIVE COMMONS

CC is just a way of claiming control over intellectual property, much as copyright licensing does, only better. It’s better for the creator/owner because, by being far more flexible than copyright, CC makes it far easier for your work and its message to spread to a larger audience. It’s also better for the user/consumer of such work, because it’s far more likely that you can find material you can use at a cost you can afford (mostly free). A great example of the effects of CC can be seen in the Unions group on Flickr.com at http://www.flickr.com/groups/union/. Most of the photos posted there are CC-licensed, with restrictions that don’t apply to non-profit organizations like unions. This means that the thousands of photos there are free for us to use. And, if our photos were there, with the same licensing, people and unions elsewhere would be thinking about using them, thereby extending the reach of our message. See http://creativecommons.org for all the poop.

LABOUR WIKIPEDIA INITIATIVE?

At least a couple of national unions and more than a few local unions have been the victims of attacks on their online reputations by way of their entries on Wikipedia. Crowd-sourcing of the entries on the world’s biggest and best general encyclopedia works wonderfully most of the time. But, now and then, it seems that unions are the victims of organized attempts to damage them. Those efforts rely on the fact that workers (members or not) who want to know something about a union, or the movement in general, will wind up getting their info from Wikipedia.

I’ve watched a couple of these battles go on for, literally, years, with the union involved not wanting to spread the word about what is happening for fear of drawing attention to the content of the attacks on their online reputations. This means, perhaps, that they lose some of the advantages to having a substantial and rich entry on Wikipedia.

Thinking about this, I played on Wikipedia for a half hour and discovered that we have bigger problems than attacks on individual unions. The portrayal of workers and unions scattered all over Wikipedia is more than occasionally problematic. Sometimes it may be clear, at least to someone in the know, that an entry, or part of an entry, is ideologically anti-union. Sometimes it’s not so clear. Sometimes the “analyses” look to be genuine; sometime they look very much like something that is part of an organized effort.

Companies/employers employ or contract people to manage their online reputations. This we know. They troll social media and other websites and respond to attacks on corps and their brands and products and services. We also know that, on sites like Trip Advisor, they go to war with each other, undermining the competition. We further know that union “brands” (how I hate using that term in this context) online are under attack, subject to hostile commentaries – some of which are clearly organized. In many cases, it is clear that the attacks are ideologically motivated. But is it much of a stretch to assume that some are employer-organized?

We know that employers, historically, have been in the habit of putting out fake organizing materials and creating company unions and all that. So, why not also add “corrections” to a union’s Wikipedia entry, or insert comments from an unhappy “member” in a discussion forum?

Informally or formally, a Labour Wikipedia Initiative might be worth thinking about. “Wikipedia Initiatives” have been mounted by a number of professional associations. (What gave me the idea was a speech by the president of the American Sociological Association. See http://tinyurl.com/cq4t2cs.) The goal: to ensure that what appears on Wikipedia about a profession or discipline is accurate. The means: a large committee of volunteers. If sociologists can organize themselves to protect their reputations and that of their discipline, surely we can manage it.

VACATION BROWSING

Frontline SMS v.2 was recently released. If you’re already using texting to reach members, upgrade now. If not, take a gander and ask yourself why you aren’t using this wonderful, free piece of software. See: http://www.frontlinesms.com/. Speaking of smart phones and such, Elaine Bernard, executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, wrote to pass along some examples of union phone apps (software applications). ETFO CB 2012 is the bargaining updates app from the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario and is very cool. Elaine also recommends a few U.S. union apps: the Steelworkers’ health and safety app, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees’ (AFSCME) convention app, and the SEIU international’s political action app. Globally, there’s the IUF app (International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations). And soon there will be LabourStart apps for a few platforms (BB, Android and iPhone).

My fave is the UFCW “shop union” app (United Food and Commercial Workers), which allows you to find a UFCW-organized store near you, wherever you happen to be. See http://tinyurl.com/7g3kseu. My least fave app idea is the “Bosses: want to know who’ll join the union? There’s an app for that!” See http://tinyurl.com/cd4l6ts. Reading it will make you laugh, then cry, and will probably cost you some sleep.

Also in my WebWork mailbag was an e-mail from Donald Courchesne, a member of Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 3906, at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He sent along some URLs for sites he thought might be useful. The first is an analysis of web viewing habits, and documents the trend towards greater and greater use of smart phones by internet users. How phone-friendly are your union’s communications? See http://tinyurl.com/d9lmk8k.

The research paper done for Microsoft called “Tweeting is believing?” (see http://tinyurl.com/d8e8yqb) is a bit towards the academic end of the readability spectrum, but it has some great tips for strategies that will increase your union Twitterfeeds’s online cred.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is something that’s often confusing, when it isn’t overwhelming. SEO is explained and strategies suggested in a nice, simple (well, simpler than usual) graphic format here at Search Engine Land: http://searchengineland.com/seotable.

For a guide to the effective use of Google Analytics, Donald suggests this article by Justin Cutroni, currently Google’s analytics advocate: http://tinyurl.com/d6ap38p.

But of all the sites Donald referred me to, the most fun, and richest, is Fever Bee. Read  “The 11 Fundamental Laws of Building Online Communities” here, at: http://tinyurl.com/c62dtjx. It’s pretty much a checklist for anyone looking to set up or grow an online community. Give it a gander; it might just become your work plan for this fall.

BITS AND BYTES

“Get Internet Access When Your Government Shuts It Down” is the title of an article on PCWorld Magazine’s site. Who knows, this stuff might come in handy one day. Perhaps one day soon. See http://tinyurl.com/4lcy8t5.

Does your union have a site or blog designed specifically to, on a daily basis, provide rank-and-filers with the info and arguments they need to spread the word? Probably not. Here’s a great model for one: http://unisonactive.blogspot.ca/.

I find it hard to describe the following site without going on and on, mining my vocabulary for new superlatives, so I’ll just say this: Witness is a goldmine of social justice videos. Check it out at http://www.witness.org/. I have similar things to say about Cyberunions.org. It’s been a while since I recommended it. Time to remind everyone of it. If you’re still on vacation, its podcasts are perfect for the beach or for late-night listening in bed.

TIE-Netherlands is a union-friendly NGO and Orsan Senalp is an ambitious trade unionist, judging by his argument for a worker-to-worker, shopfloor level mapping of the production/distribution process on a global scale. If this is the future of trade unionism, I will never, ever retire, because I want to see this and be a part of it. See http://tinyurl.com/7cmh6y3.

Alex White’s work gets referred to here a lot, and for good reason. Here’s his take on three of the best union campaign websites around. Look and learn, at http://tinyurl.com/bmjcln5.

It’s always good to close on a sober note, if not a downer. Jill York is director of the International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, folks who do a lot of good work trying to ensure that the internet remains accessible and useful to us all. Her piece “Manipulating Social Networks,” for al Jazeera, nicely points out some of the downsides to using social media in a crisis situation. See http://tinyurl.com/d82xzw8. It might seem extreme to compare a strike with what is happening (as I write this) in Syria, but, on a smaller scale, much of what she describes is doable by many employers. Doable? “Been done” would be a better way of putting it. It is being done as we speak, perhaps. It’s only that such things don’t get a lot of attention in the media. But talk to the RMT Union in Britain about their experience with strikers being given misleading directions to picket locations and you’ll soon get the idea.