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11 People Explain What Bi+ Visibility Means to Them

September 21, 2020

Article appeared first at Teen Vogue

A lot of stereotypes exist about what it means or looks like to be bisexual or identify under the umbrella of bi+. Ultimately, to be bi+ means to have an attraction to more than one gender. Misconceptions about bi+ people stereotype us as greedy, confused, or going through a phase. That biphobia can also be internalized personally by people who do experience attraction to and relationships with people of different genders, and affect how bi+ people feel about their identities.

Whatever you think you know or understand about bisexuality from tropes in pop culture, TV, movies, or even conversations with people might not necessarily be correct. To set the record right, the best thing we can do is listen to bi+ folks themselves, because it’s clear there are many ways to own your identity and experience bisexuality, pansexuality, or queerness.

Here are 11 people on what being bi+ looks like and means to them.

Raksha, 23, bisexual Indian woman
“Love is something I give easily and often. It’s a privilege to experience any sort of relationship with another human being and, to me, being bi simply means having an open heart and mind to letting all relationships grow without imposing an artificial upper limit on their intimacy. I’m proud to be fearless in love, growing from the pain and joy it brings time and time again. In short, being bi feels like the radical act of loving love.”

Matthew, 28, non-binary bisexual person
“Being openly bisexual is only something I’ve come into in the last few years. After many years of knowing I was bi but only sharing that with close friends, I began to see more and more discussion about bisexual erasure and invisibility. I realized in 2017 that I could use my privilege as a white, assigned male at birth person with supportive family and friends and a stable career to make myself more visible as a bisexual person by coming out online.

Today, my visibility looks like a line in my Twitter location field that says I’m bi, showing up to LGBTQ+ events and spaces in the city and beyond, and sharing bisexuality news and memes on my social media.

[I want people to know that] bisexuality is trans-inclusive. This is incredibly important and widely misunderstood. Being bisexual means that I am attracted to people of all genders, but that gender can play a role in that attraction. Identifying as bisexual doesn’t mean you’re a slut, it doesn’t mean you can’t make up your mind, it doesn’t mean you’re in a ‘phase.’ Your sexual orientation is something to be celebrated, not denigrated. Also, if a bisexual person is dating or having sex with someone of a different gender, it doesn’t make them any less bisexual.”

Maria, 23, bisexual person
“I first had feelings for the same sex at 5 years old and questioned my sexuality well into adulthood. Even at 23, I’m still not 100% sure where I stand. You’re allowed to love who you want and express yourself however you want and are under no pressure to proudly wear the bi+ label. Some people are visibly bi activists, and some people prefer to keep it on the DL. Both are okay! Due to the prominence of bi erasure, people tend to pick gay or straight as it’s just easier to navigate the world that way. That’s why being visibly bi is an act of education and resistance. You’re showing people, ‘Yes, you can be bi. You don’t have to choose. Whatever you feel internally, you can express externally.’”

Lizet, 24, bisexual Black woman
“Being visibly bi means not looking visibly bi or queer for me, because I’m in a long term relationship with a cis man and people assume we’re straight. It’s frustrating, and has taken years for me to stop internalizing biphobic messaging that invalidates my identity because I’ve ‘picked a side.’ It’s a constant struggle between wanting people to understand my identity and picking my battles with ignorant people. Bisexuality doesn’t look a specific way. It doesn’t matter if someone is with someone of their same gender or another, it doesn’t change their identity. We’re also not more likely to cheat or more likely to have STDs/STIs because we’re bisexual.”

Rachael, 31, bisexual sex educator
“I spent my late teens and 20’s in a long-term relationship with a cis man, and I thought my attraction to other genders ‘didn’t count’ since I’d only dated men. A few years ago we decided to open up our relationship, and it’s been really wonderful to get to explore my attraction and the connections I have with people of all genders.

There’s some bi-erasure, too, since people still often assume I’m straight because I’m married to a man, but society slowly seems to be catching on that the relationships we’re in don’t dictate our orientation. I think there’s this cultural idea that while we’re all assumed straight as a default, we somehow have to ‘qualify’ to call ourselves bi/queer/etc. It took me a long time to realize that there are no qualifications—your feelings about yourself and your identity are valid. It’s also okay to explore those feelings even if you’re not sure, and if you feel comfortable identifying one way now and feel you want to identify differently in the future, that’s okay too. I think sexuality is, and can be, fluid.”

Maddie, 26, non-binary bisexual person
“I have been openly bisexual for many years with all of the struggles and joys that come along with it. Every year I grow to understand myself, my desires, my needs and my dreams in a relationship a little more. Being bisexual and non-binary means being able to shed all of the gendered preconceptions I grew up with about what relationships and sex are supposed to look and instead get to know each cutie I meet as a person who I can connect with in a new way.”

Sasha, 24, bisexual woman
“My journey to owning my bisexuality involved a lot of challenging self reflection, but has ultimately brought me a lot of inner peace! I went through a period in high school when I was incredibly confused about my sexuality. I was president of my high school’s Gay Trans Straight Alliance, while also hooking up with a girlfriend of mine, yet I was somehow still convinced that I was straight. It’s important for me to be loud and proud about my bisexual identity today, because I didn’t have any bisexual role models growing up.

The more I’ve immersed myself in the bi+ community, the more experiences I realize I have in common with other bi+ folks that I don’t have with people of other sexualities.

Some of my favorite experiences this year were weekly Friday nights with my bi+ girlfriends at San Francisco’s new and only queer/lesbian bar Jolene’s, watch parties of our favorite new bi reality TV show Are You The One, and checking out the growing meetups in San Francisco specifically for the bi+ community! Bi+ people are the biggest subset of the LGBTQ+ community, which means there’s a huge community here ready to welcome you.”

Ry, 18, genderqueer bi+ person
“To me, being openly and visibly bi+ is simply unashamedly talking about being bi+. That said, I don’t think there’s any one way to be, and you can be confident and settled in your bi+ identity without being open and without being a symbol of visibility. What I want the world to know about being bi+ is that, just as it is with all things, it happens on a spectrum. Not everyone’s bi+ identity is the same.”

Olivia, 22, bisexual woman
“For me, being openly and visibly bisexual is about actively dismantling our ideas of what love, romance, gender, and sexuality look like. It’s about disrupting our ideas of what relationships can and should look like. As a bisexual high femme woman, it’s also about disrupting what queerness looks like. Queerness looks like me in a floral dress and a full face of makeup, just as much as it looks like me in Doc Martens and black lipstick. Queerness looks different for everyone, and that doesn’t make any of us less queer.”

Eva, 23, bisexual woman
“I’m pretty online about my bisexuality. I came out on my YouTube channel about a week after I came out to a lot of important people in my life. While I don’t talk about my own sex life on my sex ed channel, I’ve been open about my bisexuality, talking about struggling with internalized biphobia, sexual fluidity, and my journey finding my own queer community. Besides that, I’ve had the opportunity to work in queer-positive spaces and live in pretty accepting cities, so flagging as queer in order to be visible for myself and others is important to me. For me, that’s wearing pride pins, combat boots, my nose ring, etc.

What I want people to understand about bisexuality is we aren’t ‘gay lite.’ Bi+ people have a unique experience and our own unique struggles. Don’t create gay events or supports and just assume they’ll work for bi+ folks in the same way, and please see bisexuality as a full identity.”

Helen, 26, queer woman
“Being bi+ is a beautiful thing. It means opening yourself up to a world of beautiful human beings and releasing expectations built around partnering. It means it is easier to see good qualities in people — even if you aren’t interested in dating them — because your natural state is to be open to everyone.”

Storytelling lessons from a life of adventure

August 18, 2020

The interview conducted by Emma Wickenden appeared first at Charity Comms.

The hunters of the remote Russian tundra must have been surprised to see Sacha Dench drop James-Bond-style out of the sky, with what essentially looked like a giant desk fan strapped to her back.

Sacha, CEO of Conservation without Borders, was on a mission to fly nearly 7,000 km across 11 countries by paramotor to help save the critically endangered Bewick’s swans.

Battling freezing temperatures, enduring injuries and treacherous conditions, Sacha flew along the birds’ migratory route from Arctic Russia to the UK. Dropping in to talk to communities across the route, she sought to understand and reveal, through stunning visual imagery, what was killing the swans and what we could do about it.

While not formally trained in comms, Sacha (AKA the human Swan) has a natural gift for storytelling which she’s used throughout her career to spotlight issues – from the plight of the shark to her latest campaign to save the Ospreys. We caught up with Sacha ahead of our annual Storyfest conference, where she was our keynote speaker, to ask about her unique storytelling techniques.

CC: In a previous life you were a biologist devoted to educating people about sharks. Can you tell us a bit more?

SD: A few people listened to what I had to say, but when I became an internationally recognised freediver, then the media listened, and I was able to really bring attention to the sharks’ cause.

CC: Is that when you realised that being part of the story could be helpful and were you ever worried your extraordinary human story could overshadow the swan’s story?

SD: Yes, the seed was planted. But it turns out, journalists can’t cover the adventure story without asking ‘why?’ And because I’m flying at the same height and altitude as the birds and suffering many of the same threats and challenges, I could talk about it with conviction from the swans’ point of view.

CC: What stories have you found change hearts and minds?

SD: People were interested in my being the human swan. The mystery of the swans’ disappearance and the incredible stories of their journey got people engaged. But the most effective stories for inspiring real-world action were the ones of people living along the flyway, who were doing things to help. For example, the volunteers across Europe counting swans on the same days in every country – made the nomadic reindeer breeders want to help. Or the Nenets [the Samoyedic ethnic group native to arctic Russia] offering to shift what and how they hunt – in already difficult circumstances – made polish fish farmers offer to leave ponds full for longer to be safe havens for birds.

CC: What did you learn about storytelling from this campaign?

SD: Have empathy for your audience, even if they are the problem. Try to get inside their head and imagine a scenario that might make them change their mind (it’s unlikely just giving facts will do that). Allow them to be the ‘hero’ in that scenario, rather than the one in the wrong forced to change. Also, check your assumptions about who these target audiences are. For example, we hadn’t ever imagined that the hunters in remote areas shooting swans, would include nine-year-old kids. In some remote communities (where permafrost limits agriculture) hunting is the contribution of kids to family survival- they shoot on their long walk to and from school.

“Give everyone the chance to be the good guys in the story”

CC: Can you tell us a bit more about making people ‘heroes’ in your campaign narrative?

SD: I kept saying – let’s give everyone the chance to be the good guys in the story. Let’s reframe the situation. For example, with hunters in the field, I would land dramatically from the sky on the paramotor to speak to them over cups of tea and discussions about motor and navigation, a love of the arctic etc. The ones that helped fix my paramotor, showed me where to find edible mushrooms, taught me tundra survival or arranged fuel drops, later became the official ‘champions of the swan’ and are carrying on the work.

CC: You said that scientists already knew many of the things that were killing the swans – so why did your campaign focus on this question?

SD: The scientists didn’t like the idea of posing this question, as it implied that after 30+ years of research they had failed. But I insisted on making this discovery a central premise of the campaign. By letting people have ownership of the mystery, allowing them to identify their part in the situation, would make it more engaging and have longer-term impact than arriving and saying ‘we know swans are being shot here and we need you to stop’ which would have got a lot more doors and minds closed to the issue.

So, I would show images of the threats we were aware of, but the public message was that we were ‘all on a mission to find out what was going wrong for swans’. Telling this story got people’s imaginations going, made it a shareable conversation and a discussion point within communities. We invited people to share stories and photos with us. Start with creativity and questionings and speak to people as equals – their local knowledge is as important as the research data in finding solutions.

“Be radical in your communications because the world needs bold thinking right now.”

CC: This campaign was very brave. Can you offer tips for pitching radical campaign ideas to Senior Management Teams?

SD: When I had the idea for Flight of the Swans I sat on it as I thought my reasonably conservative organisation wouldn’t take it up. But they did. And probably because a few key people I broached it with were brave enough to back me first. I learned that more people are up for radical thinking than you might expect. Be radical in your communications thinking because the world needs bold thinking right now. If your own ideas aren’t exciting enough, encourage or back others’ ideas that are.

CC: Can you tell us about your next campaign – what will you do differently this time?

SD: In our next campaign, I will be flying with the Osprey and meeting people along the route for BBC and global media. Looking at how to bring the osprey back, but also looking at our planet from a birds’-eye-view. This expedition is in the runup to the next Global Climate Change Conference in Glasgow and is the first in our ‘UN 2030 Global Challenge’ series of expeditions that span the globe and keep the world interested and motivated to turn the climate and biodiversity crises around in the next 10 years.

This time I will give people smaller cameras and more practice in how to make cameras invisible – in some communities the camera became the focus. I had better interactions, learnt more, made longer-term friends when I landed with just one small camera. Also, I will tell more stories of what people had agreed to do to help.

The Real Story Behind Those #ChallengeAccepted Photos on Instagram

August 2, 2020

Protests across Turkey and a viral social media campaign in recent weeks have highlighted the rise of femicide — the murder of a woman because of her gender — and domestic violence in the country.

Pinar Gültekin, a 27-year-old Turkish woman, went missing and was found dead on July 21 in the city of Mugla. After Gültekin allegedly rejected her boyfriend Cemal Metin Avcis’ advances, he strangled her to death, burned her body in an oil barrel, and tried to hide it in the woods. The killing marked the 50th known murder of women in Turkey in 2020 alone and sparked outrage across the country. Women’s rights advocates and allies are urging the Turkish government to take action to prevent these deaths.

According to a 2009 study, 42% of Turkish women between the ages of 15 and 60 had suffered some physical or sexual violence by their husbands or partners. In 2019, 474 women were murdered, mostly by partners and relatives.

Gender-based violence is only expected to surge in 2020. Domestic violence and femicide have spiked due to lockdown measures to help stop the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, Suad Abu-Dayyeh, Equality Now’s Middle East and North Africa expert, told Global Citizen via email.

Protesters demanding justice for Gültekin and other murdered women were met with violent crackdowns by police and little commitment from the government to protect women. The demonstrators called on the government to uphold the Istanbul Convention, the first international binding agreement to prevent gender-based violence introduced in 2011, which few countries have enforced.

Women also turned to social media to raise awareness for the growing gender-based violence in Turkey. They relaunched the “Challenge Accepted” campaign using #kadınaşiddetehayır and #istanbulsözleşmesiyaşatır, which roughly translates to “Say no to violence against women” (kadına şiddete hayır) and “Enforce the Istanbul Convention” (Istanbul sözleşmesi yaşatır).

Originally created in 2016, the campaign started out to increase cancer awareness and has had many iterations since. Turkish women drew from the concept and posted black-and-white photos of themselves online to signify they could be the next to appear in a newspaper as a femicide victim. Women around the world joined in to use the hashtag as a symbol of female empowerment around the world but received some criticism for drowning out Turkish women’s voices. The campaign continues to bring more global attention to the issue of femicide in Turkey.

Source: Global Citizen

Facing Up to the Agent Provocateur Problem

July 26, 2020

This article by Steve Chase was first published on the International Center on Non-Violent Conflict.

It contains some additions by sogicampaigns

The term agent provocateur is French and literally translates in English to “inciting agent.”

While the term may be best known today as a luxury lingerie brand, in movement circles it refers to paid government agents who infiltrate social movements and pretend to be activists. These paid agents work at being disruptive influences within movements and discredit movements in the public eye by taking, or encouraging others to take, detrimental actions such as violence. Their ultimate objectives are to decrease mass participation in the movement, decrease sympathy for the movement, and to create plausible excuses to repress the movement with increasing violence.

This practice has a long history in many countries around the world, including the United States. It has been well-documented that the FBI and many local police departments, and some corporate security offices, have used such covert anti-movement tactics for decades. Why do advocates of a “diversity of tactics” not squarely face this reality? The likely reason is that agents provocateurs typically advocate for the same kinds of “low-level violent” tactics that they do.

There is simply no documented case that I know of where a paid undercover government or corporate agent has encouraged activists to engage in strategic civil resistance tactics and maintain their nonviolent discipline doing it. They do not see such movement actions as being in their interest. The actual tactics encouraged by paid agents provocateurs are dividing movements by denouncing nonviolent activists as not being sufficiently radical, and sometimes accosting and assaulting them. During public mobilizations, agents provocateurs yell at counter-demonstrators, punch them, break windows, burn cars, riot, and street fight with police.

How it all started…

In the times of the nonviolent independence struggle in India, followers of Gandhi were trained not to react violently when assaulted, but to respond to the opponents as best as possible, with love and compassion.
This approach not only made it more difficult for the British to use violence, but it dramatised the injustice they were struggling against and helped in the mobilisation of the support for given cause, both within India and abroad.

Ambush and/or Firefight – The crime of Cerro Maravilla

A seminal example of Agent Provocateur tactic occurred in Puerto Rico at the end of 70s.

An agent provocateur, Alejandro González Malavé, working undercover for the Puerto Rican police, enticed two young supporters of independence for Puerto Rico into a reckless act that cost them lives. One was Carlos Enrique Soto Areví, the son of one of Puerto Rico’s most important literary figures, the novelist Pedro Juan Soto. The second was a worker, Arnaldo Dario Rosado. Both were outraged at the colonialist treatment that Puerto Rico received at the hands of the United States . They wanted to demonstrate this in some dramatic way.

Their lack of practical political experience made them easy prey for González Malavé. The “agent” persuaded them that a noble act for their homeland would be to destroy some communications towers on the top of a hill called “Cerro Maravilla.” This was meant to express solidarity with imprisoned Puerto Rican independence fighters.

The three kidnapped a taxi driver and forced him to drive them up to Cerro Maravilla. But when they arrived, they found they had been led into a police ambush. As the armed police approached, González Malavé identified himself as an agent, and Soto and Rosado were killed.

The “official” story was that they had been shot in a firefight with the cops.

The power-holders that hire agents provocateurs know that undermining a movement’s nonviolent discipline, and encouraging the kinds of tactics also advocated by some well-meaning but strategically challenged activists, makes movements easier to defeat. Low-level movement violence is in the power-holders’ interest. If it wasn’t, how likely would it be that oppressive regimes all over the world would routinely spend significant time, human resources, and money trying to get activists in growing movements to engage in violent activities?

The power-holders’ understanding of movement dynamics makes sense. In her comparative case study research reported in her 2011 book Nonviolent Revolutions, Sharon Erickson Nepstad discovered that the three failed national civil resistance movements she studied had a significantly lower level of nonviolent discipline and, as a result, far fewer defections among the police, military, and security services than the three successful cases she examined. None of this surprises government agents provocateurs. Yet, advocates of movement violence seem oblivious.

Mission District Riots in San Francisco, 2012

During “Occupy” protests, some of charismatic strangers wormed their way into protest leadership, and eventually entrapped inexperienced young radicals to get involved in plans, which sometimes included violent acts.
The sole purpose of the provocateurs was to discredit the movement, which started to gain momentum, in the eyes of the public.

A strategy to counter Agents Provocateurs. Serbia, July 2020

In the beginning of July 2020, thousands of citizens gathered in front of the Parliament building in Belgrade, following the announcement of President Aleksandar Vučić that a new weekend-long curfew would be imposed due to rise in COVID-19 cases.
After 8 weeks of curfews and weekend-long complete lockdowns imposed in Serbia during March and April, this was the final straw.
The protests represented the most serious unrest in Serbia since the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) came to power in 2012.
As part of these protests, masked individuals, thought by many to be Agent Provocateur hooligans spurred by the authorities, instigated clashes with the police.
To thwart the Agent Provocateur tactic, protesters devised over social media the counter strategy to immediately sit down when violent clashes would occur, to that the Agents Provocateurs would become easily identifiable and police forces could arrest them without clashing with non-violent protesters.

It has always been a painful irony that the small but sincere group of Black Bloc anarchists who regularly engage in these types of “low-level violent” behaviors during mass nonviolent actions are unwittingly doing the dirty work of repressive regimes by voluntarily acting like agents provocateurs. Such unrealistic, but well-intended activists even create a fertile environment for actual paid agents provocateurs to operate within our movements. This doesn’t help us win. It makes success that much harder.

Because of this painful irony, there is an excitement about the growing efforts by various researchers and movement strategists to discover creative and responsible ways to shift the dynamic and increase the degree of nonviolent discipline in our civil resistance movements and thereby increase our effectiveness and chances of success.

Note: This very interesting article details how the Agent Provocateur strategy has been used online in order to incite

Reality Virtues

July 10, 2020

Hello, campaigner! Are you willing to bring your campaign to a whole new level?

There are so many ways in which a campaign can be made more interactive, fun and effective, and we try to actively work on collecting and saving them all on our site.

Therefore, before you move on, we recommend that you check out other content at www.sogicampaigns.org

And now, have you heard of VR (Virtual Reality) and AR (Augmented Reality)?

These two are identified as the new frontier of innovative campaigning. The viewing equipment is slowly becoming widely accessible technically and the offer in VR/AR products is becoming diverse enough to start considering it as a mainstream media.

The main advantages of VR/AR campaign is that it is:

Immersive – users wearing a headset are completely immersed in the content, meaning fewer distractions and more attention to the message. No more texting on whatsapp while watching a video on youtube!

Impactful – the intensity of a VR/AR experience is greater than traditional media, generating strong emotions in its users, which are linked to real behavior change.

Memorable – our brains are built to remember events linked to locations, this means that VR/AR experiences have a longer trace in the audience’s memory.

Novel – with high media and public interest in VR/AR early adopters can benefit from favorable media exposure.

Non-profits have been engaging in VR/AR experiments over the past 2 years, mainly for fundraising purposes:

Even though VR/AR films were mostly about fundraisers, there were initiatives that used these campaigning tactics for other purposes

Non-profits and campaigners are increasingly starting to see the potential of VR/AR to get people to become more deeply involved. Let’s have a look at some.

Alaska’s Melting Glaciers in 360°

You liked these? But, what on Earth can pass without our drag queens?

The Virtual Drag project is a virtual reality encounter with 3d scans of drag queens & kings in fantasy environments. While mainly of artistic nature, the project provides insights into what advocacy focused initiatives could get inspired by. Check out HERE

The VR/AR experience needs equipment that few people have yet at home, making it necessary to stop at a charity booth, a store, etc.. For the moment, the sheer experience of VR/AR is still enough to attract people and “lure” them to the set up. Once home equipment generalizes and the VR/AR offer expands, people will likely quickly become more blasé and it will be increasingly harder to draw people, making the heavy investment in video development a risky business.

The accelerated pace will also mean the costs will drop, which will be vital to making VR more accessible. Nonprofits dabbling in VR video at the moment are limited to those at the cutting edge and/or those with deep pockets, which is bound to increase the dominance of the bigger structures and thereby contribute to reduce diversity of expressions.

Thank you! To catch up with our latest news, do subscribe on our mailing list at www.sogicampaigns.org

Interactive storytelling

July 1, 2020

We have some great information for you about interactive storytelling, do you want to hear it?

Many experts who have studied how the human mind works, argue that storytelling is the most compelling technique that humans have invented to create social links and build cultures.

And for a long time this is how it looked like:

or even like

So what’s next, now that the world has changed.

We have resolutely entered an age when audiences no longer see themselves as passive receivers of information. Everyone these days wants to have a say. More often than not, everytime someone communicates, they must give the audiences the chance to communicate back. Invitations to like, share, comment and other “call to actions” all serve the purpose of transforming old time monologues into modern time dialogues or, preferably, multilogues.

But even this is already the 20th century.

Today the trend is not only towards participating in the discussion around the story, but to participating in actually creating the story. And that is interactive storytelling.

Why opting for interactive storytelling? Well, if interactive features will make your stories greater and more meaningful, that should be a good start.

And because there is a HUGE difference between talking AT someone and talking WITH someone.

Do you want to continue to explore this with refugees from Vietnam or through the reconstruction of Haiti?

There are so many good and interactive examples, it’s hard to decide on just one or two!

Here are some more!

Wanna drive through the chain of supply and forced labor in the contemporary era? Go through SLAVERY FOOTPRINT

You are maybe willing to go through planted dreams and relive the INCEPTION MOVIE

And another one!

When fighting for those who are discriminated against and oppressed, it is super challenging to humanise your adversary. Simply, why opposing the idea that all living creatures are born equal and should live accordingly? This website provides you the opportunity to meet combatants in augmented reality. SO, meet THE ENEMY

INSTEAD OF A CONCLUSION

As media narratives are concerned, interactive storytelling is without a dispute top-notch.

And maybe given examples will give you an impression this content is unreachable, bear in mind that today is possible to create high-quality, professional-looking interactive stories for free, or at a relatively small price, thanks to a wide breadth of storytelling tools!

We suggest you to search more HERE and go with some.

Sorry to hear this. Is there anything else you’d rather hear from us?

Tell as email

Well, bye then. Take care and stay safe.

Social media tactics to employ in 2020!

June 21, 2020

Social networks are without a single doubt a must for sending any effective campaigning message into the digital sphere. They allow us two-way communication with our target group members, give us the opportunity to measure and monitor the results of the campaign, but also to employ a wide breadth of content.

On this occasion, we bring you a Quintly article concerning the trends that we should definitely pay attention to during 2020.

1. Track your Social Media Analytics

Tracking social media analytics is one social media tactic that you do not want to ignore in 2020.
Why? Because tracking and analyzing your social media insights and analytics allows you to improve upon your social media and digital marketing strategy.

2. Utilize Messenger Chatbots

Using MobileMonkey, you can create and implement chatbots through Facebook Messenger.
Chatbots can be used for marketing, sales, customer service, and more.
You can program your chatbot to talk about anything; simply create the dialogue from within the MobileMonkey chatbot builder.

3. Increase video content

Video content has been around for ages, but it is only increasing in popularity.
With easily accessible apps like TikTok and Snapchat saturating the market, people of all ages are making and sharing video content.
People experience things more visually than anything, especially in social media. Sharing visually appealing video content has become the norm.

4. Collect user-generated content

Social media has provided a number of platforms for regular people to share their thoughts about – well – anything.
That includes their experiences with businesses and products.
Some of your customers are likely flocking to their social media channels to rave (or possibly rant) about your products and services, and the positive accolades provide content that you can use to your benefit.

5. Measure your engagement

Here’s a social media tactic you don’t want to leave in 2019 – measuring your engagement.
There’s no use in posting to social media if you’re just posting into a black hole.
It’s important to keep up with your engagement levels so that you know what your unicorn content is and what your donkey content is.

6. Invest in Social Media Ads wisely

Social media ads are an important strategy to make sure you’re expanding your reach and getting to as many users as possible.
But with the cost of some social media ads, it can be a pointless endeavor.

7. Use Social Media Psychology

There are certain aspects of psychology that go hand-in-hand with social media, resulting in certain types of content doing better than others.
You want to focus on your potential customers with your social media content.
Make it enjoyable; happy, compelling content is more likely to engage more users.
Partner with influencers to get your shares up; when influencers talk about your business or brand, it reaches millions of people.

8. Focus on Social Media Groups

Social media groups are places where people can come together based on shared interests or ideas.
Groups exist on a number of social media channels – like for example on Facebook – and are focused on thousands of different topics.
There are social media groups existing for every industry, for every strategy, and for every topic.

9. Create a consistent branding for your content

It’s almost the new year: time to stop being wishy-washy with your branding.
Having a consistent branding makes your content appear clean and neat and also makes it recognizable in social feeds.
That way, users are less likely to miss your content because they’ll immediately know what they’re looking at.

10. Be in the right social channels

There’s no use being in a social channel if none of your customers are there.
For example, if you’re a software company, you’re not likely to find too many people searching for your brand on Pinterest.
Making sure you’re in the right social channels is a social media tactic that can’t go ignored in 2020.

Offline campaigning during COVID-19? Some made it possible.

June 8, 2020

Italy was the scene of many scary and tragic events during the COVID19 pandemic these past weeks. This situation particularly affected the local LGBTI community, including many people who had to live through lockdown with uns families.
As in all parts of the world, the Italian LGBTI movement was responsive in the given state of affairs. ArciGay activists tirelessly provided online support to LGBT individuals, but also distributed food packages and financial assistance to migrants and sex workers who did not have access to even basic groceries.

Due to physical distancing measures and lockdowns, this year IDAHOBIT has been marked mainly in the digital domain all over the world, including Italy. Through lectures, announcements, online support. And so the aforementioned organization also organized several live lectures and prepared a series of articles for the LGBTI community regarding LGBTI-related topics.

Firmly convinced that the fight against homophobia and other LGBT-phobias lies in visibility, the activists figured out other ways to contribute to it, and be ahead of the curve in the given circumstances.

At the end of April the municipality of Reggio Emilia was distributing surgical masks to the general population at the entry of designated supermarkets, so that people going out for groceries would pick them up. ArciGay activist thought at first of being physically there – in respect with all adopted provisions – giving out small leaflets explaining what is IDAHOBIT about and put elastic bands colored in rainbow flag on masks.
As it would cause issues in regard to certification, Deputy Mayor for Equal Opportunities suggested – pins to hang onto masks!

This idea found great support from the authorities – nurses, public servants, university professors, school staff, sports associations … They all found time to take pictures with these masks and wore them to their workplaces every day. The action was joined by the local media, and even the Mayor himself!

The action resonated so much that even a member of the Italian Senate participated, and wore a mask with a rainbow pin to every Senate session!

During the COVID-19 pandemic, campaigners developed a number of ways to cover as much of the online sphere as possible with their activities and actions. But, some activists have also devised a way for IDAHOBIT to get its “offline component”, under lockdown measures and gathering prohibitions.
And in a country that is among the most severely affected by this virus.
Every day, students, patients, medical staff and senators could see that even such a dangerous virus could not weaken the alliance with the LGBTI community.

And that the problems of the LGBTI community remain and exist as long as the virus lasts, and that there are ways to bring attention to them without endangering everyone’s health.

Webinar recording – Let’s FUNdraise for solidarity !

May 9, 2020

The International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia on MAY 17 2020 will definitely be significantly different from many previous ones. The whole world is still affected by the COVID-19 crisis, and in the areas where the pandemic has slightly weakened, work is being done to repair the repercussions and ramifications caused by the epidemic.

Offline events will be mostly impossible. At the same time, many of us are busy caring for the most vulnerable in our communities and we desperately need funds.

So May 17th could be a good moment to organise a fundraiser event that could reach out to people beyond our close circle of common supporters.

We discussed this through examples and useful tools in our last webinar – Let’s FUNdraise for solidarity.

We hope it brings you inspiration and renewed momentum for action

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3rl07O0rdJxAI6ck4d8oWmNZezdr8O_k

“A rational conversation without lecturing” – How Irish feminist activists repealed constitutional ban on abortion?

May 3, 2020

With the global strengthening of the far right and policies advocating patriarchal patterns, for the last ten years we have witnessed a time in which women’s rights have been first on the strike.
This is especially the case in the US, where states are practically or literally banning the abortion procedures.
But there are other positive examples testifying to the trend going in the opposite direction. A trend that ranged from outright ban to majority acceptance of abortion as a women’s right.
It’s Ireland. How has the public managed to make this shift in three decades?
Irish activists Alibha Smyth and Tara Flynn recently spoke about the experience at Brave New Words.

Let’s take a look at what it looked like thirty years ago. The Eighth Amendment of the Irish Constitution has banned abortion since 1983. The women married learning that the embryo was a human being and that protected sex is virtually a sin. This situation led women to secretly go to the UK to have abortions, and have been acquiring contraceptives illegally, via Internet.

In 2016, Irish government summoned the so-called civic assembly, consisting of 99 members from different social groups, for the purpose of reviewing existing abortion measures.
And brave activists advocating women and reproductive rights gathered around the slogan Together for yes!
The result of the referendum is known – in 2018, over two-thirds of voters repealed the amendment.

How is this success explained?
Interviewees began the answer with one simple sentence that actually drives the essence – We listened to the target group.
Activists went out among the people, asked them what they thought, if they had any knowledge of it. They communicated, debated, talked.
And, based on the dialogue conveyed, they realised that they did not want harsh messages. That in the thirty years that the amendment existed, there was no room to articulate nor debate such issues.
This is why activists have decided to frame the issue of abortion so that it is seen in the light of the everyday life and the regular problems that the average Irish woman faces.
It was rational conversation, no lecturing, no imposition.

Activists also estimated that the abortion campaign would be striking and rounded if there was a personal stamp.
And there was the courageous Tara Flynn who spoke publicly about her experience of illegal abortion in Britain. Because she is already a popular face and a prominent TV and radio presenter, she talked about her experience in a humorous and personal manner, without condemnation, presenting that reproductive rights do not exist because of the whim but that they are an urgent need of all women.

An interesting lesson, but also an important incentive for all the activists around the worlds thinking that attitudes seemingly remain carved in stone and things are hard to change
On the contrary, Ireland shows that attitudes can change upside-down!
In a community dominated by deeply-entrenched religious doctrines, change came with a message entailing dialogue and discussion, in a non-intrusive fashion.
It seems simple, but experience shows that openly confronting an opinion with a contrary opinion is a very demanding job!
But, after all, in the case of Ireland, we can conclude that it has produced remarkable results.

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