Digital Revolution Toolkit

Each campaign starts with a goal. “What do I want to achieve?’’ should be your first question and you should not start until you have an answer. Sometimes you want to run an education campaign, sometimes you want something slightly more concrete. However, each goal should be quantified in some way. If you want a campaign on protecting workers, then you could aim for more engagement on social media, more interventions by political representatives in the legislature, an amount of collective agreements signed, etc. Quantify your goals so you can clearly identify when you have reached your targets, or if you have not, re-evaluate what can be done better.

Irish colleagues in the Fórsa trade union were engaged in an impending strike by community workers. The industrial relations goal was to get the right deal for workers; the campaigning goal was to build pressure on the government bodies that were opposing the deal. To support that, the digital goal was to reach a level of online activism that showed just how much support there was for the workers, and to force the government to see that. The tactic to achieve that goal was a social media campaign that tagged the relevant government ministers, using their membership lists to get cross-union support. It was also about giving clear messaging to supporters for them to use, and to create content that aimed to get high engagement alongside the more traditional updates about the industrial action. 

The outcome was hundreds of messages online targeting the specific politicians that were responsible for the industrial relations issue. It also saw the language used in online messaging being used by opposition parties and general supporters. This added to the media and political pressure, alongside the work being done by the industrial relations team. The government was coming under huge pressure to resolve it. The night before the strikes, a pay increase was offered, and the strike averted. 

When you have a clear goal, it is time to target your audience. Who is your audience? What do you want them to know? You do not need any advanced strategies, you just need to know that you are speaking to real people and want to engage with them where they are.

One of the most successful ways to engage people is to use humour and interact with them as human beings who want to hear engaging and relatable content that is more than just a press release. Many trade union posts come off as very polished and therefore out of touch, so you must adapt your message to the platform you are using. People do not only want to hear negative tones, they also need to hear messages of hope.

Most importantly, no matter how profound, important, and ethically grounded your message may be, if it fails to reach and resonate with its intended audience, its impact remains zero.

The worst thing you can do as a union is to assume that you have all the answers. That is why once you have collected data, and it is telling you something different than what you had assumed would be the answer… then it is time to adapt. Adapting to new information is the key to creating an efficient and effective strategy for change. Wasting time and money on issues that are not needed is a surefire way to lose a campaign.

As an example, Irish trade unions contracted a company to perform surveys of its membership in order to develop the right communication for its public awareness campaign for collective bargaining. The research showed surprising results, as the awareness of collective bargaining was already very high and the union decided that it would be a waste of money and time to work on a campaign that was not needed. The union then modified their campaign to focus on recruitment and organising, as that was deemed the best use of resources based on the surveys received. 

You now have your goal and your target audience, so what’s next? It’s time to plan and execute your campaign. 

For many trade unions, there are two types of campaign paradigms that are not mutually exclusive. There is inside access and outside power. Inside access is when you have the ear of decision makers or institutions and can lobby or influence from within power structures. Outside power is when you push outside at the barriers to progress until they smash. Both campaigns create change, and the strategies need to be chosen carefully.

Here are some things to keep in mind:

• How long will this campaign last? Campaigns cannot run in perpetuity and still be effective, you don’t want to find yourself in a trap of “raising awareness” for 17 years. A proper campaign should be time-limited and goal-oriented. 
• Map the stakeholders that will help you in your campaign, from those who may be interested, to those who will remain relatively neutral to those who will try to block your campaign. 
• Develop your message and tone and keep that consistent with your communications strategy and graphic charter.
• Choose the tools you will use for this campaign; they should be both digital and physical but need to stay targeted and coherent. Will you do most of your work over WhatsApp? Will you use petitions? The choice is yours. 
• Measure results at different points through digital analytics to see to what extend your campaign is being followed and shared. If you are disappointed, try to modify your content based on your posts and actions with the most interactions.
• When the campaign is finished, always perform an evaluation so that the next campaign is better and builds upon success and corrects mistakes. The work you do here will make you more effective as time goes on.

On a final note with campaigns, it is important not to give up too easily. When new tools are tried, sometimes leadership has expectations that are unrealistic. When the tool inevitably does not deliver right away, sometimes the tool is scrapped, or focus is placed elsewhere. It is important to learn from mistakes, and also remember that the most successful campaigns often have years of build up with creating coalitions, capacities, and actions.

Online campaigning allows trade unions to reach so many more people than if they just focus on boots on the ground. However, there is a phenomenon of ‘clicktivism’ where people support a campaign but do not do anything else to effect change. Liking a Facebook page is a good indicator of support, but trade unions want to mobilise their membership so that everyone feels like the union is their union and they are fighting together.

If you have petitions or surveys sent out to members and supporters, you can then invite them to different discussion groups or to events. 

As an example, the ETUC put forward a petition against European fiscal rules that would bring back austerity across Europe. Every person that signed the petition received updates about demonstrations in Paris and Brussels along with a live feed on the day. Workers were invited to march alongside trade unions to stop austerity from returning.