Inside LabourStart

Google gave us some credit to lure us back to using their keyword-based advertising, so we took them up on it.

I ran an ad for UnionBook which was shown 2,363,293 times – though only a tiny fraction of that was searches.  Google also shows ads when people view their emails, etc.

The ad was clicked on 626 times.  The total cost (covered by Google’s credit) was US$137.55.  The keywords which attracted the most interest in our ad were elgg (2.75% of those searching for elgg were interested in UnionBook) and trade union (1.35% of those clicked through).

UnionBook has picked up 95 new members since the beginning of July.

The ad read:

Union member?

Check out UnionBook, the social network for trade unionists.

www.unionbook.org

Yesterday I set up a conference followup group on UnionBook.  This group will allow people to post links, documents, and so, to hold discussions — to do everything one would want to do after a conference.  I’ve only informed some key people about it so far (8 of whom are now members), but plan to promote it more heavily later this week once we have all the email addresses of conference participants.  Let’s use this group as a test to see if we can get UnionBook to be useful.

At the LabourStart correspondents meeting last Sunday in Hamilton, someone suggested we look into BuddyPress as an alternative to Elgg.  It looks interesting, but I’m not convinced we have good reason to migrate (even if we can migrate).  So I’ve put it out there via UnionBook, Facebook, Twitter, etc and will see if someone thinks this is a great idea and can make a compelling case for it.

I closed down the Iraq oil workers campaign in all languages – it had been running for more than 3 months.

I’ve setup the Serbian edition of LabourStart, and am currently working with a comrade there to get it off the ground.

Last Friday I recorded my sixth podcast, this time on the subject of hashtags and how they were used at the LabourStart conference.  As of this afternoon, 376 people have downloaded it and listened to it.  I also wrote up an account of the conference and posted it to my blog.  Then I updated the conference page to include links to my article and the podcast relating to it.

I sent out mass mailing promoting our book of the month, my podcast, two articles about the conference and our ActNOW newswire.  As a result of this, we sold a few books and got a couple more sites to adopt our newwire.

Well, that was pretty amazing.

I’ll be publishing a lot of material about the conference in the next few days on the conference website itself – http://www.labourstart.org/2010

Meanwhile, today I’ll add some odds and ends about stuff I’m doing as I do it.

UnionBook: Just launched a $150 Google adwords campaign — this money is a gift from Google, so we should use it.  UnionBook has been growing slowly but surely over the last few weeks and this may give it a boost.  Also publicized UnionBook in my daily wire post/tweet/Facebook update.

Book of the month: We’re promoting this starting today.

Campaigns: Have asked permission to close down the Iraqi oil unions campaign, which has been running for more than three months.

Internationalization: We have a volunteer in Serbia who is keen to help us get our Serbian language edition off the ground; today I sent him the file for translation.

Conference followup: I’ve added links to articles about the conference, videos, photos and Tweets here.  Also removed the ads for the conference from the front page of LabourStart and UnionBook, and from the LabourStart correspondents sign in page.

I’ve posted my draft notes for the two talks I would have given at SIGTUR in Brazil this week.  (I gave one by videoconference just now.)  Here they are:

• UnionBook
• Online campaigning

Some brief news items from the last few days …

Participation in SIGTUR event in Brazil: Volcanic ash has prevented me from flying, but we’ll be using Skype videoconferencing instead.  My presentation will be on LabourStart and online campaigning.

UnionBook: Glenn Thompson of the Australian union AMWU will be making a presentation on this to the SIGTUR conference and promoting its use.  We need to get automated registration working again — I hope to have that sorted out today.

Campaigns: We have two new campaigns on the way, from the Philippines and Taiwan.  Details soon.

LaborComm Turkey: It appears that the conference, including my presentation, will be broadcast live online.

Today I managed to get one of the key features of UnionBook to work again — The Wire.  I got a lot of help from the Elgg community on this one so I can’t complain.  I’m also picking up new skills at using Elgg, which will be good for the future of this site.

The Wire is a very cool feature of UnionBook because, as I re-learned today, I can post a short message there which automatically appears there, then as a tweet on my personal twitter account, and then as my status on Facebook.

The next thing that needs to be fixed is the user registration.  I’ve setup and installed a plugin that forces new users to tell us their union and which allows us to moderate all new applications — but it doesn’t seem to be working at the moment.  I’ve written to the author of this plugin for help and I hope to have this sorted before I leave for Brazil tomorrow.