Google+ and how it could help with political activism online

With the exception of underwear, Google seems to have become directly involved in every aspect of our lives. By introducing the Google+ social network a couple of weeks ago, they now aim to become a hub for our personal interaction online with our friends, as well as our social circles.

How’s Google+ different from Facebook and twitter?

One of Facebook’s strongest points is the home screen;  a simple way of finding out what’s going on with your friends and loved ones. We might be taking it for granted, but the level of interaction on Facebook is quite phenomenal. You can share a photo or video, with a title, description, and your own comment. After that, people can ‘like’ it and comment. So it becomes a stream of interesting, relevant topics, each with its own interaction.

However, on Facebook, you have to ‘friend’ people to interact with them. This means that they will be able to access your photos, updates, etc. Of course you can have different levels of security, but a) it’s a bit too complicated for the average person not willing to waste time on settings, and b) people can tell if they’re on a limited profile and it becomes quite awkward (we all know that feeling).

On the other hand, there’s twitter. Here you can follow anyone and everyone, it has nothing to do with whether or not you know that person. It’s ideal because you customize your timeline to the extent that almost all of the tweets showing up are of interest, because you’ve chosen whom to follow. However, all you have are the tweets with links. You don’t have ‘likes’ that indicate how many people support the update (you have retweets, but it’s not that same), and you don’t have comments organized on that particular update (each with the possibility of ‘like’ing it as well).

That’s where Google+ comes in. You add people to your ‘circles’ – you can have as many as you want, and add the same person to more than one circle. You don’t need to be friends, so just choose whoever you’re interesting in following. When you open Google+, you get a home screen almost identical to that of Facebook: updates by people with images or videos, description, ‘plus’es (exactly like Facebook’s ‘like’). The big difference, however, is that you have the different ‘circles’ to choose from.

For example, you can create a circle called ‘Alexandria’ where you follow any of the people you know of (but don’t necessarily know personally) who will be updating about anything going on in Alex. You might think this is like a twitter list, well in a basic way it is, but if you have a list on twitter with Alexandrians, the tweets show up in reverse chronological order regardless of their content, and the interaction with the individual tweets is not visible.

With Google+, you can click on the Alexandria circle on the left to filter all of the updates on the home screen, and you’ll see the updates with the thumbnails (or the videos to be viewed directly), and the ‘plus’es as well as the comments. Moreover, it’s automatically sorted according to the updates with most interaction relevant to you.

This is obviously assuming that everyone you’re after is on Google+. With over 20 million users already, and the ease of joining and inviting, it’s hard to see why you would face a problem. Also the mobile app (I’ve installed it on my Android) is pretty slick.

So that covers the major differences in comparison with Facebook and twitter. The following are some other features that I don’t see as important, yet they’re worth mentioning:

• Messaging, which Google called ‘Huddle’ is an attempt to make it easier to send and receive messages with people on Google+. It is similar to Facebook messages, only there’s a separate mobile application to save taps and give you direct access to the messages. It’s meant to be lightweight, and you can send messages to circles. Time will tell how useful this feature really is.
• Video chat with multiple users is an impressive feature. Realistically, though, I doubt it’ll catch on
• Backup photos and content to be shared later, or remove your entire account – something Facebook doesn’t let you do

As a social network, it’s got a sleek interface and some neat features. But let’s get down to business, we all know that socializing is what you do when you’ve got spare time, but Egypt and the Arab world are busying revolting.

How could we use Google+ for political activism online?

While Facebook was always the tool for discussion with friends and acquaintances, twitter took political activism online to a whole new level. The main reasons include the ability to follow those who bring you relevant updates, the simplicity in tweeting and sharing images straight from your cell phone wherever you are, as well as constant updates when on the ground at the scene.

Now that Google+ combines a bit of both, if it picks up in Egypt and the Arab world, it could be huge.

Firstly, you can use the circles for political activists. For example, you could have a circle for ‘Journalists in Egypt’ where you follow about 30 of the journalists who are actively updating. You will then have the opportunity to ‘plus’ any of the updates, and engage in comments. Other circles could depend on geographical location, so that if things get ugly in Suez, and mainstream media ignores them as usual, you could keep on eye on that circle to see the most significant updates (with less interactive/relevant updates not getting in the way and being pushed towards the bottom).

You can also create circles on the fly depending on the ongoing events. For example, if there’s a sit-in at Madrid’s main square, Sol, going on for the week, you can drag a few of the Spanish activists who you know will spend the entire week at the demonstration. Any content shared will be visible – but only if you filter by that circle, which means you’ll only see it when you feel like it.

Another advantage could be Huddle, the messaging system. If you are coordinating with a groupwho are active and on the ground with you, you could add them to a circle and easily message them directly if needed. Any sort of political group should make use of that so that if any member faces trouble, he or she could let the entire group know immediately by getting their attention, but at the same time without having to broadcast it to the world.

Facebook, then twitter, and now Google+

As an organization, regardless of its nature, Google+ facilitates the collaboration on the different tools already offered by Google, such as Calendar, Docs, etc.

If Google+ picks up, as it probably will, it won’t replace Facebook or twitter. In my opinion, it’ll make Facebook focus on friends and loved ones (as oppose to have 1,000 ‘friends’ on your list who you couldn’t care less about). It’ll also affect twitter by making it specialize in broadcasting news and minute-by-minute updates, but not discussions and arguments.

It might just fit into that pocket and complement.

In conclusion, I think Google+ could actually reduce the disadvantages of Facebook and twitter, making all three exist side-by-side. If the web spreads to the majority, then I think all three social networks, but especially Google+ and twitter, will be huge.

Let’s not forget, however, that political activism online can only do so much – it all comes down to taking the streets. That’s where revolutions happen.

Case study video: ME app social media campaign

A case study of ME, a mobile application that acts as an infotainment portal. This video shows how we were able to generate interest from the target audience to download and and register to use the free app, provided via Mobinil. It was a bit of a challenge because the app is mainly in Arabic and targets the masses, many of which are not easily accessible via social media,  and are not entirely comfortable with mobile applications.

In Egypt, some professionals in the field of new marketing jump to the conclusion that you can do almost anything with social media, but as Tarek Nasr argues in his blog post, we’re quite a distance from the new world. Having said that, I think this campaign showed that you can still make remarkable achievements. And it’s the people who decide.

Case study video: Azza Fahmy social media campaign

A case study of one of planet360‘s clients, Azza Fahmy. This video summarizes how we managed to create a buzz around the latest culture collection, using social media. This basically shows that with a bit of work, it is rather straight forward to put together a campaign using standard tools. It comes down to knowing your target audience, what they value, and consequently, how to engage with them.

At the end of the day, the decisions are made by the people. It’s not about manipulation, it’s about knowing what they want, and transparently providing it to them.

Live Social Media Case study: Facebook Cause vs Fan Page

For any campaign to be successful, you and your team need to be dynamic, and react to the events as they unfold. In this post I will continue the case study of the live Social Media campaign against Marks & Spencer, focusing on the Facebook cause, that we have decided to replace with a Page.

Creating a Facebook cause for the campaign was attractive for many reasons:

• A ‘Cause’ seems much more appropriate than, say, a ‘fan’ page
• You ‘join’ the cause, as oppose to ‘like’ing something (especially if talking about a sad/dramatic cause!)
• Facilitates donations to the cause (if applicable)
• Shows the recruits carried out by the active members, creating a mini competition that is beneficial for the campaign overall
• Offers various ways of communicating, including bulletins, posts and messages

Create a Page on Facebook

For those reasons, we chose to create a cause and attempt to spark enough of a buzz around it to make it go viral. However, we hit a bit of a wall with the following:

• The layout and interface are confusing. Regardless of your level and familiarity, you’re bound to feel lost and insecure
• To join a cause, you have to first authorize Facebook to allow it to connect with your account – a page that inevitably throws people off and scares them away (the huge majority do NOT have the application installed on their Facebook account beforehand)
• The cause takes you to another domain, and it takes a few witty clicks to make your way back to Facebook, which is like asking for people to be without air for prolonged periods of time
• You can only invite 75 friends per day, which inevitably hinders your expansion efforts

After some thought, we decided to start a Page and called it Stop Marks & Spencer in Egypt. Now the following are the advantages that you will encounter in Pages in comparison to Facebook Causes:

• Very familiar interface, very easy to use
• Allows you to invite all of your friends (albeit selected one by one)
• All it takes is a little ‘Like’, without authorization, requests, or anything of the sort
• After 25 Likes, you get what Facebook calls a vanity URL, which basically means a slug to make a user-friendly domain (in this case, facebook.com/MarksAndSpencerEgypt)
• It offers you the ability to integrate some powerful Facebook applications. Not the least Static FBML which has allowed us to add the content of the website to the tabs across the top. And this is only the beginning, because we can keep adding, removing and altering tabs as we see fit

Therefore, Whenever you are running a social media campaign for a cause, stick to the fan page. In this particular case, having a Cause as well as a Page may seem distracting at first, but it has coincidentally blessed us with the advantage of even more results leading to our campaign when you search ‘Marks & Spencer Egypt’ in Facebook!

Welcome tab of the Facebook Page is a powerful tool

It has been tough to gain fans and catch up with the followers of the cause, but this has been mainly due to the events unfolding in the political arena in Egypt. It’s important to keep the different platforms in sync, so that they’re not each isolated in a different direction. Phase 2 of the campaign is coming up in a few days’ time – stay tuned.

Citizen journalism: My voting experience in Egypt’s elections

The Egyptian parliamentary elections are infamous for controversy and tension. This time around, it was yet another example of forgery, violence and chaos from the ruling National Democratic Party. However, with social networks and technology where they’re at, these particular elections were the chance for citizen journalism to shine, and that’s precisely what occurred.

I used some basic tools to share my voting experience, here’s how you could do the same:

• Bambuser on Android
  Using my Google Nexus One, I’ve broadcasted videos live using Bambuser. Creating an account in Bambuser (or Qik, both almost identical) takes a minute, after which, all you need to do is install the software on your phone, and you’re good to go! One of the advantages of Bambuser is that it recommends a certain resolution and quality based on your connection speed. I hid the phone in my pocket to avoid any problems, although in hindsight, I probably could’ve recorded it all openly. There are many phones supported
• twitter
  Needless to say the micro-blogging giant is the way to go for citizen journalism. I have an active twitter account and therefore already have a base to build on. It is important to stay in the loop with the event’s hash tag (in this case #EgyElections), and notify people ahead of time that you will be broadcasting live. I also have my twitter account linked with Bambuser, therefore a tweet is automatically generated as soon as I start recording
• Facebook
  Like twitter, Facebook could be linked to your Bambuser account, which automatically posts the video to your wall when it’s ready. This allows for Likes and comments, which takes engagement to the next level. When you’re finished, you’ll notice that ALL of your videos have been posted, so it’s good practice to remove the one or two that you could do without
• Adobe Premiere (or any video-editing tool)
  Another advantage of Bambuser is the ability to download the flv file and use it for simple editing. No need to worry about making it look professional, just focus on making it simple, straight and to-the-point. Dump all of the different videos in the timeline, making them as short as possible, and run through long, tedious moments
• Vimeo
  When complete, if over 15 minutes in length, it would be too long for a standard YouTube account, in which case Vimeo is a good alternative and highly recommended. Upload your video, filling in the title, description and tags, and you’re ready to roll!

Citizen journalism is not only a privilege, but also a responsibility, especially given how easy it is to document and present your experiences across the different media. My video is quite boring, so I hope you all do a better job!

It is only a matter of time before old-fashioned dictators and their thugs fail to control the population, and the web will be the way in which we will all exchange information and simultaneously mobilize. This is only the beginning, and it’s all uphill from here.

How to create a basic awareness campaign with Social Media; a live case study

Design by Taha Belal

When you want to carry out a campaign to raise awareness about an issue, and/or encourage action, Social Media should be one of your main tools. In this post, I want to share with you how a group of colleagues and I are putting together (yes, as we speak) the campaign to raise awareness about Marks & Spencer’s support to Israel and Zionism, in an attempt to disrupt its plans to open new branches in Egypt later this year. With limited time and resources, we wanted to do the basics, and build on it from there. Many find themselves in similar situations, and therefore, I wanted to share you with the case study live, as it is happening.

This post assumes that you have done your research and have your facts ready. Ideally, you would have some sort of strategy, but let’s assume that there’s nothing set in stone, and we want to get as much out there as possible.

With each step, I’m referencing our ongoing campaign against Marks & Spencer.

1. Domain and web page
   It’s absolutely necessary to have a web page (if not a full fledged website) with its own domain. You could sign up for a subdomain with WordPress or a similar service, but having your own domain would be significantly more effective. In this case, we bought http://marksandspenceregypt.org (as well as the .com that forwards to the .org). The advantage here is that, with time and a bit of work, the page could very much come up in search results for M&S in Egypt. Moreover, it’s a domain that M&S themselves would want, which makes it even sweater!
2. Designing and developing
   No branding is necessary, but you should have some sort of logo to make the campaign recognizable. It is best to ask a friend who can draw in Illustrator or Inkscape to come up with something simple in 30 minutes – anymore, and you’re risking time loss. Remember that it is important to keep the momentum.
   If you have the time and the dedication, make it a blog (using WordPress, of course. You can see my tutorial on setting up your own website/blog with WordPress). However, if you don’t think you’d be able to keep up (and in most cases you won’t be able to), then a static website/single web page is gold. Make it straight and to the point – no one wants to read much (and you can always add links to the sources for those who doubt you). With the M&S campaign, we’ve listed 15 facts with a link at the end of each one. We might put together a simple video illustrating the points, which would obviously be even more effective.
3. Ability to share page
   If sharing is three clicks away, then it’s a waste of space. Visitors must be able to spread the title of the campaign, as well as the URL, with a click of a button. With M&S, we’ve added the tweet button, and the Facebook share, positioned at the left of the browser constantly. At any point, users can send out a tweet (mentioning the twitter account – discussed below), or make a wall post on their Facebook profiles. You might feel tempted to provide links to all of the social networks out there, but who are we kidding? All you need are the two big boys, don’t waste time/space on the rest (remember that simplicity is key).
   It would be a smart move to make the first image that appears in the HTML of the web page be the logo/header of the campaign. That way, when people share to their Facebook walls, the thumbnail automatically selected by Facebook is an appropriate one.
4. Links to Social Network profiles
   After creating a twitter account and Facebook cause (see below), you ought to place corresponding icons to your profiles on each. That way, one someone visits the website, they immediately know that they can follow you on twitter and/or your cause via Facebook. You’ll notice that we’ve placed the twitter and Facebook icons at the top right, next to the header.
5. Create a twitter account
   While you could use an already active twitter account, it is best to create a new one solely for the campaign. That way it is specialized and gives you the privilege of  asking for support without providing valuable content in return (as would be the case with any normal twitter account). Moreover, it encourages people to follow your account so that they can take part in the initiative, as oppose to supporting someone who happens to be doing it.
   Make the logo the avatar, write a concise bio and link to the website. Give yourself the freedom to blatantly ask people for support, after all, you’re part of a cause, not trying to fool them into buying your product. Also change the colors and background so that it doesn’t look generic (takes a minute). Our twitter page @MarksSpencerEG has followed those guidelines closely.
   Generally speaking, start following those who you know personally, as well as the ones who would seem to be interested in the cause. Also, follow everyone back, it’s a neat little thank you for choosing to follow you. When your number are close to each other, this means that a) you’re likely to reach more followers, and b) it implies that you tend to follow people back, which will act as a motivation for people to follow you.
6. Create a Facebook Cause
   From your Facebook account, search for ‘Causes’ (an application), and create a new cause. Fill out all of the information and add the logo you already have. After that, invite the friends you know are most likely to join (adding a personal message to ensure it), and allow it to publish to your profile. This should create enough buzz to get you 20 or so members to start off with. After that, invite 75 every day (the daily limit) until you’ve gone through all of your friends. Check out our Facebook Cause.
7. Tweet, post and spread the word
   Tweet 4-6 times a day. Any less and you’re not taking advantage of the direct connection you’re established with the people, and any more and you might repel people who’d feel their timelines have been cluttered.
   Share the website on your profile every 2-3 days, and you could consider making your status link to the website, and changing your profile pic to the logo of the campaign.
   More importantly, use traditional means (emails, phone calls, SMS, etc.) to reach out those you know and ask them to tweet the page, follow on twitter, share on Facebook, join the cause, and spread the word.

The more time and effort you invest, the better. But generally speaking, the points above are relatively easy to implement and can get you up and running in little time.

Now don’t forget to visit MarksAndSpencerEgypt.org, follow on twitter @MarksSpencerEG, and join the Cause on Facebook!