Defending Human Rights: A Resource Book for Human

Identify yourself – in the ‘information overload’
of the world wide web, it is important to clearly
represent your organization and your campaign so
that it can be understood quickly and easily by a
viewer. Choose a name which describes your work
and avoid long acronyms. Attach your organizational
or campaign logo to your online accounts and
communications.
Become a trusted source – use your social media
platform to spread your campaign message, your
original content, and also to redistribute relevant
content from other sources. By consistently sharing
relevant content on the topic of your campaign, you
will become a trusted source within the community
of people interested in the same topic. In this
way your campaign and organizational brand is
strengthened and becomes a recognizable authority
in your area of work.
Network and Interact – engaging in social media in
a consistent way will bring you into better contact
with like-minded organizations and individuals.
You may find that you can interact with large
organizations or high-profile personalities and
decision makers if they use the same social media
tool as you. When fruitful, take the conversation
‘behind closed doors’ and share key information or
discuss collaboration via private messages, emails,
or phone calls. Social media is a forum in which you
get back what you put in: the more you engage and
interact the more others will respond and interact
with you.
Be creative – social media is a new phenomenon
and the site of much creativity. Be creative in the
way you use social media tools for your human
rights work. Do a multi-day awareness-raising
campaign with different content prepared for each
day. Invite your audience to respond with personal
stories in video-blogs. Offer a prize for submissions
of artworks, stories, or poetry. Brainstorm with
your organization and also watch what other
organizations are doing in their social media
strategies.
Go offline – recognize that not all of your
beneficiaries and stakeholders may be able to follow
you on social media. Look at using SMS distribution
through programs like FrontlineSMS to spread
your message to beneficiaries and stakeholders
through text messages. Encourage people to spread
your message via word-of-mouth or to become
community-level ambassadors for your campaign.
Feed your social media activities and content into
your traditional organizational strategies, and viceversa.
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