Need some tips on using social media in your union?

Here are some of the best social media resources for unions (articles, papers, podcasts & presentations) on the web.

Social Media for Unions E-Book

This is my favorite overview of social media for unions.  It is from Alex White, who is  the campaigns and communications coordinator for the Australian National Tertiary Education Union (Melbourne Branch) and founder of  Creative Unions. It discusses how unions can use social media well, how to communicate rather than sell, and best practices with Facebook, Twitter, etc…  To access this free e-book, you need to join his list (a good idea anyway, as his updates are also very useful and informative).  If you only have time to read one overview, this is the one.

3 Pressing questions facing the future of social media

Discusses the broader implications of social media.  “Now that we can get constant updates on just about every aspect of our friends’ lives, how do we receive that which is relevant?”  This timely discussion attempts to tackle this by considering the following three questions:

• How do we live continually connected without being continually distracted?
• How do we filter the stream to get what is most essential?
• How much social media can I actually consume?

17 Twitter tips

With so many people and organizations on Twitter, how do you emerge from the crowd and become a consistently listened to ‘Tweeter’?  Here are a number of short and useful pieces of advice from a recent Mashable conference.

14 Ways Unions Are Using Twitter

Want some quick social media inspiration?  Blogger Glen Gilmore put together these different uses of Twitter for unions and provides a tweet example for each one.  Helpful in seeing just how you can use Twitter in your Local.

Trade Unions, Web 2.0 and Social Media

Useful slideshow presentation from Walter Pantland of cyberunions.org directly focusing on how unions can best use social media.  The slideshow design is basic but it is a very good overview – especially the 2nd half of the presentation where he discusses how to set everything up and what the most useful tools are for doing so.

Cyber Union podcasts

A series of weekly podcasts begun in May 2011 on how to build your Local’s strength with new internet technologies and social media.  The initial podcasts cover how to build a website, building an open source labour movement, alternatives to skype…

How to use Social Media for your Union: Minnesota AFL-CIO

Covers many of the key issues that will come up in setting up social media: setting effective social media policy for your union and deciding who will manage it. It also has a very clear group of 2-3 page overviews of how to use various social media.  Very handy basic reference.