Those still wondering why the NLRB has taken such interest in social media policy should review a recent SEIU’s blog entry titled #WIunion Social Media Highlights. The post lists twelve “social media milestones” achieved during the Wisconsin budget battle and provides a glimpse into what might await an employer still unprepared for an assault by a Twitter savvy union. Many social media and net tactics explored in Wisconsin have been employed in corporate leverage campaigns and traditional organizing drives for some time. And the SEIU list includes adolescent old-school tactics like the Walker/Koch prank call and revelations about a state senator’s mistress. What’s new is how pranks and smears were quickly lofted into the mainstream media by a determined cadre of progressive bloggers unfettered by even the pretense of journalistic integrity. SEIU also credits progressive bloggers with tirelessly refashioning and “humanizing” the Wisconsin story using photo diaries, independent short films and real time updates. But the top Wisconsin social media story is the maturation of Twitter into an explosive, expansive organizing tool. Twitter was used not only to motivate and move boots on the ground but also to craft a sense of global support for the Wisconsin protestors. Even if only a few hundred people around the world (out of six billion) responded to a Twitter blast, those few respondents legitimized, globalized and granted historic significance to the protests, especially when tied to Twitter driven protests in the Middle East. Twitter was also the preferred vehicle to immediately blast phone video of any attempts to remove or constrain protestors, effectively cowing law enforcement. Unions also fully capitalized on the moment by using Twitter, Facebook and other on-line tools to conduct political fundraising, instantly and dramatically tightening their financial grip on flight weary Democratic legislators. New on the horizon, union strategist Alex White offers even more sophisticated uses of social media for his fellow unionistas in Five useful and free tools to measure your union’s social-media impact Now unions can go beyond Twitter organizing and email blasts to analytics that gauge the effectiveness of a messaging campaign while monitoring the effectiveness of their competitors and targets. To anyone who has yet to connect the dots – social media organizing is, like the NLRB, rewriting all the rules for future union efforts. Be very afraid.
