Spoiler alert – #ripcurrents did not trend.
Outcome – Over 645,000 people have viewed the videos, with a noticeable spike during our campaign.
The June 27 #ripcurrent campaign coordinated by Make the Minute Matter was a success, despite not trending. I’ll get to all the numbers and facts soon, but let me start with two stories to demonstrate why we succeeded.
Local Engagement Works:
Five years ago, at the beginning of the summer, I put out a #ripcurrent video to about 1,000 women in my community through an online meeting place. Thought nothing more of it until early fall when I was approached by a fellow mom at the school run. She told me that she had watched the video and it saved her life. She was caught in a #ripcurrent over the summer and remembered what to do. Just as many of you are known as ‘water safety people’ in your local communities, I’m told regularly that when I post, people listen, because they know me – we’re part of the same community sharing the same experiences, whether attending school and sports events, being recognized because of my long walks with my large dog, or banding together for a meal train when tragedy strikes one household. Importantly, I don’t abuse my position as a local ‘water safety expert’, I’m not harassing people at the pool, I’m not posting daily or even monthly, and I’m certainly not passing down judgement from on high and making people feel guilty for what they don’t know, but when I see important information that fits the needs of my community, I speak out. Living near Lake Michigan, with it’s dangerous #ripcurrents, posting a reminder of how to identify and escape #ripcurrents at the beginning of the summer makes sense. Every last one of you can be a water safety ambassador for your family, friends, and community. You know the local dangers. You understand the local culture. You speak the local languagge. You are an integral part of your community. Every time you engage your local community responsibly you are saving lives.
Global Strategy Works:
Being part of a global movement is inspiring and educational. Participating makes all of us better at reaching our communities. Life Saving Chaplaincy Australia is relatively small, with only 84 Twitter followers and 162 Facebook page likes. Terry Legg related that this was the first time they have participated in a #hashtag campaign and had a very positive learning experience. This small organization had comments from Argentina, Philippines, Kenya, England, Canada, South Africa, Belgium, and Cameroon. One of their friends posted to another 6 nations. We have no idea how far those comments and posts went, how many shares or retweets, how many people they reached, how many lives we saved by sharing life saving information. It shows what we can accomplish if we have a global strategy for communicating. When we work together to deliver consistent messages about water safety, we reach so many more people than if if we act alone. When we share information about how to best reach a wide number of people, we all learn and become more effective. A shout out to Roger Sweeney of Irish Water Safety for pointing out that timing #ripcurrents with a full moon (high tides) would be a good idea and then showed how it’s done, integrating the campaign into their National Water Safety Awareness campaign. A shout out to Ross MacLeod of RNLI for suggesting a specific time frame for this global event, something that hadn’t occurred to me. When we work together, we learn so that we can we reach people more effectively and save more lives.
The Numbers:
Just on my own I tweeted, posted on Facebook and LinkedIn, and sent an email blast. Being very conservative and accounting for overlap in audiences, I can reach 7,000-10,000 people. But then the glory of social media kicks in. Posting in key LinkedIn groups reaches another 30,000 people. My posting to 1,250 Facebook followers reached 2,600 people with 194 engagements with the potential for more shares. You can see how the effect of each contact is magnified.
Now add up just the Twitter followers of the 40 odd organizations and individuals that I know participated. We reached over 300,000 people directly. If we apply the same level of magnification I have with my network, and granted this is very loose math that is statistically indefensible, that works out to sharing life saving information with almost 1.8 million people on Twitter alone. That does not include Facebook, Linked or the number of people reached by Dr. Stathis Avradmidis’ newsletter in Greece and through the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health email blast. We didn’t even touch Instragram. We know social media has enormous power, we need to harness that power. National Geographic reported that social media reached 306,800 people with a significant spike during our campaign. Add in TV and digital reach and there have been 645,241 visitors to the site.
What went well:
- We tweeted in 9 languages – English, French, German, Hindi, Hebrew, Mandarin, Spanish, Urdu, and Vietnamese. Drowning is a global issue. Consistent messages in as many languages as possible gets more life saving information to more people and emphasizes the global nature of the epidemic.
- We broke out of our silo! A huge thanks to partners in global health who participated. Engaging organizations outside of the drowning prevention field is key to reaching more people and changing attitudes and behaviors. A special thanks to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who included #ripcurrents information in their daily email summary about global health issues. Global Health NOW, Global Health Tweets, FCB Health, and the WHO all participated. An unexpected retweet from Arrive Alive in South Africa put the message to 128,000 followers, reminding us that people want to share information that is of value to their audience.
- Consistent messaging. The primary message was “#Ripcurrents are deadly. Learn how to spot and escape #ripcurrents all over the world https://bit.ly/2KhRiw9.” Organizations adopted to their local audiences, but #ripcurrents was consistent and the primary message was most commonly used. Consistent messaging makes it more likely people will remember life saving information.
- Linking to participating organizations. The primary link was to the videos on National Geographic, but I linked to the organizations who have already shared the information on their websites to send more traffic to their sites with their additional life saving information. Thank you to RLSS UK, USLA and the World Health Organization for putting this life saving information on your sites.
- The participation for a last-minute and ‘let’s see if it will work’ event was very positive. Imagine how much we could accomplish with a concerted and well-organized campaign. For those who didn’t participate – because only about a tiny percentage of those I reached out to did participate – I ask “Why not?” This was life saving, well-researched information from a recognized and respected source on a neutral website. If we can’t pull it together and shelve the egos and bureaucracies for neutral, researched, life saving information people die.
What we learned:
- Aside from #SCOTUS and the unrelenting deluge of negative news which makes trending difficult on any day, an HIV awareness hashtag beat us out at 1,200 tweets at our appointed time, which gives us a numeric target for our next campaign.
- Twitter tried to lock me out on both accounts because of the frequency of my tweeting. The systems in place to identify bots can work against us. To succeed we need more people tweeting, not more tweets. Plus, no one likes to be whacked over the head with information, it ruins our credibility in the long run and turns us into spam. We need wide participation to succeed.
- If we work together with a global strategy and use consistent messaging adapted for local engagement, we can make a difference. We can save lives.
My enormous thanks to all who participated:
Albuequerque Teachers (USA)
Arrive Alive (South Africa)
Chris Brewster (USA)
Colin’s Hope (USA)
Dan Graham (UK and South Sudan)
Deborah
Drowning Prevention Network (USA)
Dr. Becky Sindall (South Africa and South Sudan)
Dr. Rob Brander (Australia)
Dr. Stathis Avramidis (putting in a newsletter in Greece)
Etienne Krug
Face In Water (USA)
FCB Health (USA)
Global Health NOW (USA)
Irish Water Safety
ISLA (USA)
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (daily email blast)
The Josh Project
Karin Brand (Sweden)
Liberal Fish
Lifeguards Without Borders (USA)
Life Saving Chaplaincy Australia
Lifesaving Society BC & YK Branch (Canada)
Life Saving South Africa
Make the Minute Matter
North Worcester Life Saving Club
Norwegian Lifesaving Society
Princess Charlene of Monaco Foundation (Monaco and South Africa)
RebeccaSaveKids (USA)
River and Sea Sense (UK)
RNLI (UK)
Ross MacLeod (UK)
Sandra
Sobrasa (Brazil)
Sossegovia (Spain)
Swim Strong (USA)
Swim Vietnam
Surf Life Saving GB (UK)
Surf Life Saving Mauritius
Surf Life Saving New Zealand
Terence Parkin (Deaflympics and Olympics 34 medals)
USSSA U.S. Swim School Association
WaterSafety UAE
Water Safety Wizard (USA)
WCDP2019 Durban (South Africa)
If I missed you, please email me at rebecca@maketheminutematter.org so I can add you to the list and thank you for helping!
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