Big growth in ‘fans’; LS badge for Facebook; Palestine campaign takes off
The number of people who are fans of LabourStart’s Facebook page in English has leaped from 1,710 to 1,879 in just two days – a growth of 10%. If this rate continues, sometime in the next day or two we will reach 2,000 fans. This would mean leaping over five other sites in the ‘league table’ I published here on the weekend, putting LabourStart in 19th place instead of 24th.
Also over the weekend I quietly launched a LabourStart ‘badge’ which people can use on Facebook. You can learn more here. It looks like Derek, myself and one other person have successfully done this to our Facebook images. Should we promote this more aggressively?
Finally, the Palestine campaign is doing very well relative to other recent campaigns. Here are the totals:
- Georgia 3,617 (25 days online)
- Iraq 3,411 (55 days online)
- Botswana 3,363 (49 days online)
- Palestine 3,138 (only 4 days online)
- Colombia 2,819 (35 days online)
- Korea 2,746 (12 days online)
- Russia 1,697 (46 days online)
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I’ve already had several comments about the badge, so I think it might be worth pushing on our FB pages and in a mailing to correspondents.
Stuck in an airport, so you get the dubious benefit of my thoughts on the Palestinian campaign. 🙂
One thing that still strikes me (in a good way) is the apparent and obvious effect the recent Canadian solidarity campaign is having on the level of Canadian participation in other campaigns. The Canada numbers for the Palestine are roughly equal to those for the UK and the US, which have populations twice and ten times Canada’s respectively.
It’s clear that the one campaign has had a huge affect on our Canada numbers. I think we need to continue reminding ourselves of the need to find a global campaign that grabs attention as well consider targetting specific countries/regions for an expansion of our base by coming up with a campaign that we think will have some traction there.
Of course there’s more involved than just the issue or union and it’s ability to capture the imagination and go viral in some small way. Things like whether we have an established base in the target country, that state of the labour movement there etc. But we should be continuously evaluating the potential I think.
On that note: I still think a global campaign aimed at banning the trade in and use of asbestos would have some legs. We just need a sponsor.
On the Palestinian campaign specifically: the overall numbers and rate are not bad at all, but the Hebrew and Arabic numbers are a bit of a disappointment. Is there anything to be done?
Regarding the low numbers for Hebrew and Arabic – I have publicized using social media (Facebook, Twitter, UnionBook) and my personal email address book the fact that we now have campaigns in Hebrew – but this has not produced much of a result. The comrades at WAC Ma’an are also doing what they can to promote this. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation: we have tiny mailing lists in Hebrew (63) and Arabic (64), so there’s really no one to mail to — and the growth of these campaigns would contribute to the creation of proper lists with hundreds or thousands of supporters. Let’s just keep pushing these to people we know who read Hebrew and Arabic and hope the list grows.
I’ve a couple of hours in a hotel room this morning before my first appointment today, am trying to hit all my Spanish and French FB friends with a wall posting in the appropriate language about the campaign.