Connecting is easy. Maintaining a connection is hard. It's not enough to have an audience simply watch Sin by Silence. We want our audience to be affected by its message and become stewards of change - those who take up the flag of the cause and help influence others to create positive social change. The film is the first connection. The next steps needed to further the audience's engagement in the issue by developing support groups and community engagement initiatives that continue long after the film has ended.

GOAL:

Continue the connection made with the audience from the screening to leverage positive change and encourage others to take up the cause.

STRATEGY:

1. Use the Sin by Silence website as a portal for resources, connections, latest news and information.
2. Use social media outlets distinctively, utilizing what each does best.
3. Create a sense of intimacy, engagement and friendship, despite the numbers.
4. Create action-oriented objectives and engagement through story.
5. Listen to our audience's needs and continue to learn how we can help them engage at a deeper level.

OUTCOMES:

We wanted to take SinBySilence.com beyond a typical website about the film. We wanted to create a portal for change. A two-way connection for the audience to learn the latest news about the film, connect with resources and organizations, and gain support for their own efforts.

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Audience members from a screening can often be diverse with specialized expertise - nurses, lawyers, social workers, educators, students, advocates, and more. How do you help different fields work together to exact a positive change through social networking? Gina Bianchini, a Silicon Valley CEO and fellow advocate, created Ning as a place to create your own social network site. She also helped guide Sin By Silence to create our own online network, utilizing Ning, around specific campaigns connected to the "Get Involved" section of the Sin By Silence website. We were able to choose the features, and member driven content, designed for our stewards of change.

To date, we have a close-knit community of almost 300 members and see this as an important place to listen and engage in a deeper way with the challenges and issues of campaigning against domestic violence. Our next steps include expanding the network to include support materials to help University students working to Stop the Violence with best practices for utilizing Sin By Silence in their own activities and communities on campus.

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With more than 400 million active users worldwide, Facebook has become known as the most popular social network website. With half of those users logging in everyday, Facebook has been the most popular way to get our audience engaged with content. There are several important things we discovered engaging our audience on the Sin by Silence Fanpage:

1) Facebook is the easiest engagement tool to track interaction. Insights reveal information about fanbase demographics, how often people responded positively to your posts, how many times people watched the media attached to your fan page, and the kind of data needed to create a successful campaign.

2) Our fan base went up nearly 300% during our community outreach tour, averaging 20 new fans per event.

3) Our Facebook fans are most interested in "emotional" content, not informational content, averaging 12 interactions per post.

 

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Twitter is one of the fastest growing web application to date. A real-time information network powered by people from all around the world that allows you to share and discover what's happening in less than 140 characters. There are quite a few twitter statistic tools out there that aim to analyze "your influence." This is what we discovered:

1) Twitter creates a new informational avenue to engage a community.

2) We found that our audience was primarily interested in being connected with direct and reliable information through URL links. We average 150 clicks per week from our posted links.

 

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LinkedIn Groups is a great place to find and join communities of professionals that are actively engaged in the fight against domestic violence. Our strategy with LinkedIn Groups was not to create yet another online Sin By Silence branded social networking group, but to listen to existing groups engaged in the fight against intimate partner violence. Social Media strategy cannot just be about funneling information and creating a channel for others to listen to. It is a place to have meaningful conversations and build relationships that you may not otherwise have had the connection to. We found Linked In groups to be a great place to gauge needs within specific professional communities. Utilizing these groups can sometimes reveal a lot of "noise," but there are also informed discussions, the sharing of resources and invaluable global perspectives. Engaging in these groups as a member and contributor, allowed us to listen and offer links and solutions that brought professionals back to Sin By Silence that would not have previously been connected to the film.


If you would like the latest information about Sin By Silence's online campaigns, check out our network, become a fan or follow us!