The past couple of days, awareness of Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army has went viral with a movie made by Invisible Children, an organization focused on stopping Joseph Kony.
Although there has been controversy about the whole campaign, the use of social media has been fascinating to watch. In just a few days, views of the centerpiece movie on Kony jumped from 8 views to 58,000 to 2.7 million to 8.2 million views on March 7, 2012.
It is no surprise that social media enabled this strategy to gain so much traction in just a few short days. Smart use of the tools, like empowering readers to participate in speaking to "culturemakers" and policymakers to ask them to do something about Kony via Twitter, helps spread this campaign like wildfire.
What can my and other organizations learn from this?
Without an organization embracing social media in the first place, the opportunity to speak into a social media phenomenon is lost. An example like this shows quite clearly that culture is already using social media tools and it will be that much harder if we don't use it. (An aside thought: What if hundreds of our leaders and volunteers were able to speak into this by offering a different viewpoint by adding the hashtag #stopkony or #kony2012 to their tweets?) Getting on the bandwagon right now is too late. We must be social media ready.
Clarity of content/cause is key. The Invisible Children's site and content really made this campaign succeed. I was impressed by the professional presentation and the clear message when spending a brief few minutes on the site. I have not watched the movie, but it has been shared to me via Facebook and Twitter over 10+ times with recommendations to watch it.
Is your organization ready to speak into something like Kony2012 or create a cause that can spread like it? If not, how can you get to the point so that your organization can? Would love to hear your thoughts.
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| Photo by SPangborn |
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| Vimeo stats of the Kony 2012 movie |
It is no surprise that social media enabled this strategy to gain so much traction in just a few short days. Smart use of the tools, like empowering readers to participate in speaking to "culturemakers" and policymakers to ask them to do something about Kony via Twitter, helps spread this campaign like wildfire.
What can my and other organizations learn from this?
 |
| Canadian Member of Parliament, Tony Clement was influenced |
Without an organization embracing social media in the first place, the opportunity to speak into a social media phenomenon is lost. An example like this shows quite clearly that culture is already using social media tools and it will be that much harder if we don't use it. (An aside thought: What if hundreds of our leaders and volunteers were able to speak into this by offering a different viewpoint by adding the hashtag #stopkony or #kony2012 to their tweets?) Getting on the bandwagon right now is too late. We must be social media ready.
Clarity of content/cause is key. The Invisible Children's site and content really made this campaign succeed. I was impressed by the professional presentation and the clear message when spending a brief few minutes on the site. I have not watched the movie, but it has been shared to me via Facebook and Twitter over 10+ times with recommendations to watch it.
Is your organization ready to speak into something like Kony2012 or create a cause that can spread like it? If not, how can you get to the point so that your organization can? Would love to hear your thoughts.
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