SOCIAL MEDIA, AN INTRODUCTION NE UNION WOMEN’S SUMMER SCHOOL Donna L. Schulman, SMLR, Rutgers, University

What is Social Media?  a new set of internet tools that enable shared community experiences, both online and in person.  It allows people with basic computer skills to tell their stories using publishing tools such as blogs, photo sharing, podcasting, wikis, social networks, to network.  it can help us filter and organize the overwhelming amount of information on the web.  Social media tools make it easier to create and distribute content and discuss the things we care about.  It can be used for personal passions, advocacy, business, and fun.

Types of Social Media - BLOGGING  Journals written by individuals or groups of individuals.  Allows for lots of writing and images, flexible.  Most blogs allow for comments from their readers.  Simple Complicated to do.  Use Blogger, Wordpress, Moveable Type. Also called CMS – content management systems.  Popular with journalists, people passionate about an issue who like to write or photograph.  Some labor organizations incorporate blogs into their web sites. Important to keep up-to-date.

Types - TWITTER  A text service owned by Twitter, Inc. It is free.  Allows users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters, including punctuation + spaces.  All “tweets” are public! You can follow certain  Also called “microblogging”  You can send and receive messages on the Twitter web site,  Or through your PDA/smartphone (this may cost $)  Twitter has helped bring back the Haiku (short poems of 17 syllables )

Types – FACEBOOK, MYSPACE  Social Networking Platforms  Originally developed for personal use for younger people  Now used by nonprofit organizations, businesses, causes, etc.  Global  Set platform—limited flexibility, dependent on company’s rules.  Privacy issues.  Extremely popular.

Types – PHOTO SHARING  Share and store photographs (and videos) with friends and people with common interests.  Hosts photos that you can use for your blog, Facebook, etc.  Free and fee-based.  Flickr.com, Photobucket.com, Picasaweb.google.com  Some sites, like Flickr, encourage networking activities like creating groups, tagging favorites, etc.  Flickr Creative Commons:  Flickr: The Commons:

Types: Wikis  A way of sharing information and expertise in a structured format. Collaborative groupo web site.  Wikipedia, WikiHow ( Memory Alpha (the Star Trek wiki), WikiLeaks (  Free and fee-based.  Software - PBWiki ( others availablehttp://pbworks.com/

Types: Social Bookmarking + Reading  Document and share your Internet Bookmarks + Favorites  Delicious (  My Delicious page:  Catalog your books online, see what other people are reading  LibraryThing (

Top U.S. Social Network Sites  Facebook (2) % of global Internet users on 7/28/10  YouTube (4) – 23.38% of global Internet users on 7/28/10  Twitter (8) % of global Internet users on 7/28/10  Blogger.com (11)  MySpace (13)  LinkedIn (17)  Wordpress (20)  Flickr (23)  PhotoBucket (39)  Yelp (48)

Getting Started  1. Create a Plan  2. Create + Develop Content  3. Making Friends  4. Keep Them Coming Back

Resources  TechSoup - tech advice for nonprofits -  New Organizing Institute – community and labor organizing techniques  research/one-pagers research/one-pagers  Strategic Organizing - blog focusing on using technology for organizing - organizing.org/

PROJECT  Your Union president has asked you, as a graduate of the NE Union Women’s Summer School on generational issues, to develop a plan to integrate Social Media into the union. (S/he has no idea what Social Media is, but thinks it sounds cool.)  You need to come up with 2 plans:  A Fantasy Plan, the best there could be, with an unlimited budget.  A Real Life plan, that your union may be able to implement.  To come up with this plan, consider the following questions:

Project - Goals  What are the goals + objectives + challenges of your union?  Which SPECIFIC Social Media tools would help achieve these goals, overcome these challenges?  Is your union already using Social Media tools? Is your international? Which ones?  Are they goal-oriented?  Are members involved?  Could they be used more effectively?

Project – Target Community  Who is your target community? Members Staff Officers Committee Community Coalition partners Employer(s), management  What are the ages and economic status of your target community? What Social Media tools are they using or could be using? Would a survey be helpful? Would they be interested in learning how to use Social Media? Could the union provide training?

Project - Resources  For each Social Media tool you recommend, think about:  How much time would be involved in doing updates, answering comments, monitoring for problems?  How many people would be needed? Who? Skills required? Tech staff – needed? in-house? Consultants? Volunteers – members, retirees, school interns, etc.  Remember – you are envisioning a Fantasy plan and a Real plan!

Project - Payoff  What would be the benefits of using Social Media in your union? (you don’t have to think about all of these activities, these are suggestions).  For Collective Bargaining?  For Organizing?  For Member Mobilization?  For Coalition Building?  For tell your story to the Community? (even to Management?)  For Fun (as in making the world a happier place?)