The Secrets to a Successful Online Campaign

How can Social Web tools help you in an advocacy campaign? Tim Fullerton of Oxfam International recently discussed his organization's successful campaign to persuade Starbucks to give a fair share of profits to Ethiopian coffee growers.

In her blog Have Fun, Do Good, Britt Bravo outlines some of the steps Oxfam took and the online tools they used to reach their goals:

1. Oxfam emailed people on their activist list asking them to email Starbucks about signing their licensing agreement.
2. Oxfam then asked suporters to call Starbucks.
3. They organized a protest and asked supporters in the area to join.
4. Oxfam filmed the protest and posted it to YouTube.
5. One campaigner asked Ethiopian bloggers to embed the video on their sites. Oxfam then emailed supporters, asking them to watch the video and comment, generating 15,000 to 20,000 views.
6. Starbucks responded with their own video depicting their side of the story; when popular Web site Slashdot mentioned the videos, views doubled to about 50,000 within a couple of weeks.
7. Oxfam created a Flickr petition asking people to take photos of themselves with a sign pledging support to Ethiopian farmers.