Social media strategy
Aim:
To initiate, in a somewhat ironic sense, our own grass-roots
community that is ‘astroturf savvy’ via twitter. Our twitter account aims to engage
the audience of our feature website by inviting them to participate in spotting
astroturfing online. The group will draw attention to suspected cases of
astroturfing on the web regarding politics, consumer products and social
movments by linking to them and using the #astroturfing and #gotcha hashtags. In
doing so, we hope to create an online community of anti-astroturfers that will
cooperatively work to enhance their collective web literacy. The account will
also lead back to our website’s astroturfing gallery which will break down the
reasons that we might suspect astroturfing in this case.
Why Twitter?:
We believe that Twitter is the most appropriate platform
from which to build this community as it allows anyone to join the conversation
and is able to simply link back to our feature website if an audience member
would like further information on the topic.
Methods:
o
Follow appropriate commentators, media outlets
and consumer groups
o
Retweet and comment on others’ suspicions
o
Direct people to the upcoming feature website/blog
o
Tweet our own discoveries of online astroturfing
o
Tweet updates about the development of the site
o
Direct message commentators for input
o
Use of #astroturfing and #gotcha as a gathering
point for the community
o
Ask the opinions of relevant consumer groups if
an instance occurs during the campaign
Planning:
The aims of our social media campaign and the demand for
timeliness in our news values means that tweets and retweets cannot be
specifically planned. It is the role of Marnie, Andrew and Stephanie to surf
the web as well as monitor the #astroturfing hashtag in order to pick up on
relevant events or commentary. This includes articles in the media in which we
can tweet questions to a journalist as well as ask for the opinion of an
organisation that might be negatively being astroturfed. The rest of the group
will also have a less pivotal role in tweeting any relevant material that they
might come across during their research.
KPIs:
o
Three #astroturfing or #gotcha tweets per week
o
Two retweets or comments on stories per week
regarding #astroturfing
o
Accrue 50 followers to form our own online
spotting community
o
4-5 user contributions to the twitter community
by the time the website is up and running.
Conclusion:
A write-up of the campaign will document our level of
success and will be part of the feature website on its launch day. The Twitter
feed will also be a part of the main website in order to direct our audience to
a platform where they can become involved.
We are aware of some of the potential risks of our approach,
as some companies might see the campaign as a witch-hunt. However, we would
defend against this by linking back to our feature website so that we might
defend our suspicions with more detail using some of the research we have
conducted on reasons one might suspect a case of astroturfing.
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