We @Wantmorefish!

January 3rd, 2011 • Comments Off Conservation online, Copywriting, Marketing, Social media, Web media
Tags: campaign, conservation, marine reserve, Social media, website

For Langford Ink, these past six months have disappeared in a flurry of marine conservation work. In June 2010, a marine protection campaign was launched in the Bay of Islands. The aim: to establish a network of 100% no-take zones for a generation.

The campaign is called Fish Forever.

To be successful, Fish Forever needs to talk to the community: first, to promote awareness that there’s a problem and generate inspiration to engage with the issue, then to motivate the community to make a difference.

Langford Ink has managed the development of the brand identity for Fish Forever, project-managed the campaign website www.fishforever.org.nz along with the talented Dean Wright and set up and maintained an online persona to engage with our internet-based audience. This a review of where we’ve got to as we enter 2011.

Twitter first

Although New Zealand is a slow adopter of Twitter compared to other westernised nations, I decided that the very first place we needed to find friends was here.

@Wantmorefish came before Fish Forever, before the website and before the Facebook page. At first, I was concerned that having a different ‘handle’ to the main campaign name might be detrimental to the brand identity. Subsequently I decided it is a benefit – it provides a distinction between the group campaign (Fish Forever) and a real-life individual: @Wantmorefish can have opinions; Fish Forever plows a more politically-sensitive furrow.

Followers on Twitter are steadily increasing with time – no massive explosion of popularity but consistency in posting is rewarded. The audience is both homegrown NZ (@marinecentreNZ in Opua, @ranui_organics in Kawakawa) and, excitingly, global with follower-friends from places as far afield as Santa Monica (@thedailyocean) and Amsterdam (@NoFishLeft). The power of Twitter to communicate is mind blowing. However, it remains only a vehicle. It won’t magically get you donations, members, kudos: you have to do the groundwork and generate great content regularly.

There are some interesting avenues to pursue in the new year to achieve real measurable results from our Twitter campaigning that can help our community consultation and fund raising. The first of these is a #nzcommschat planned between @LangfordInk and other local communications tweeters (@AdageBusiness, @comment8tor) to explore how Twitter can be harnessed for the good of non-profit. Also, the Fish Forever web team is planning projects that can cross over from our website through the various social media platforms, into real life and back again.

In October 2010, Malcolm Gladwell got a few people worked up with his article on the ineffectiveness of social media with its ‘weak ties’ to drive people to real-time social activism: Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted. This article was brilliant for getting the bloggers, tweeters and Facebook fanatics to take a look at their objectives and debate about the concrete merits of their virtual world. @RWW gives a great summary here of the article and, needless to say, there are plenty of comments after to illustrate the popular viewpoints of the online community.

My view is that Twitter is far-reaching in scope but limited in depth; it has given the Fish Forever campaign an audience of like-minded groups across the globe and it has been an invaluable source of information about the ocean, marine science and conservation. It is heart-lifting to visualise (or ‘virtualise’?) the sheer volume of people who have a genuine commitment to protecting the world’s oceans. Last time I checked, @Wantmorefish was pretty excited about the prospects for marine conservation in 2011.

…then Facebook

Originally I didn’t want to be responsible for the Facebook page. The problem of washing my hands of this task was consistency: the Facebook page had to tie in with Twitter and the website. Given that I generate news items for the website by talking to our network of experts who support Fish Forever – items which I then tweet – I am also best-placed to manage the Facebook page to avoid double-handling. Eventually, I conceded that having jumped in at the deep end of online interaction, I now had to wear it. And it’s quite fun…

We have a growing number of ‘likers’ – 190 at last count I believe (good in-road, a long way to go). Facebook has far more penetration in New Zealand than Twitter so we can reach a good chunk of the local audience. We can put images up here, we can share other people’s news items from their Facebook pages, we can have a bit of fun with our comments and chat informally to supporters.

Facebook is intimate without being revealing. Hopefully, we engage on a more emotional level than we do on Twitter and through the more formal face of the campaign website.

What will 2011 bring for the Fish Forever online campaign?

We will continue to develop our campaign website quietly in the background and hopefully source funds to do the more major structural changes that will become necessary as the campaign evolves. We hope to connect with the extraordinary resource of www.marinenz.org.nz – the people who populate this site include some of New Zealand’s most knowledgeable and enthusiastic advocates for marine conservation. They have 1000s of unique visitors per day and could be the most influential connection we make in our online activities. This is something to plan carefully for and engage in fully.

From the web developments, our activities on Twitter and Facebook will become more diverse – key to a successful online persona is relevant and varied content. My two least favourite things about Twitter are: i) people repeating the same mantra over and over (@Wantmorefish tries hard to avoid this trap) and ii) people flooding my twitter stream with inanities, simply to have “presence”. [Notoriously @unmarketing tweeted once a minute as an experiment back in the early days, starting with 140 characters about his tuna sandwich. He fast became a leading exponent of social media, suggesting that saturation can be effective. However, he is #interesting and #hasabrain ... and if you're not familiar with the #funbutridiculous habit of the hashtaggers, you better join Twitter to find out more.]

On a serious parting note, Fish Forever has big ambitions for 2011, both online and – more importantly – offline in real time. The team has a big job to do: many important conversations to get teeth into, many complicated arguments and obstacles to overcome in the political arena, one big cash-rich player to negotiate with/battle and much funding to be sourced. You can help by a) joining up here b) signing our mandate here and c) by sponsoring us here.

Please join us in our fight for Fish Forever in 2011.