[Wiki Loves Monuments] Social Media Tips to Increase WLM Participation

[Mohammad Hekmat]

Hi all,

We are only 5 days into WLM 2019 and so far it's been amazing! More than
28000 photos already! Kudos to all local organizers!

The international team has been promoting the contest on its social
media accounts
(Facebook, Instagram and Twitter). We do our best to reach out to as many
people as possible,but in many cases, due to language barrier, it's much
more effective to do promotion in the local language. We've noticed
increased activity on social media by national competitions and we
certainly hope this momentum carries over until the end of the contest.

Here are some tips to help you promote your campaign on social media:

   1. Link all your social media to each other so when you post on one, it
   automatically shows up on the other ones. Linking Facebook and Instagram
   accounts is pretty straightforward and you can do it from either platform.
   Instagram stories can be shared on Facebook stories as well. If you'd like
   to share your FB and IG posts on Twitter you can use IFTTT
   service. It has some limitations (e.g., for posts
   with multiple images) but overall it's quite useful.
   2. Make use of WLM stats page
   . It's a wonderful
   tool to keep track of your local contest. You can see the total number of
   uploads, number of users, and the daily breakdown. It also shows where you
   stand in comparison to other national campaigns.
   3. Stay active throughout the month of September. In addition to making
   posts make sure to like relevant posts and encourage those who are
   potential participants by commenting under their posts/photos.
   4. Use Facebook and Instagram stories to keep your audience engaged. If
   you have a large follower base, consider running a live event (e.g.,
   Instagram Live) for your audience to go live and ask questions.
   5. It's hard to constantly generate content. There are some easy ways
   that will help you make a post without too much work. The best way is to
   share someone else's story or post. One easy trick is again the stats.
   Everyday the international team shares the stats in a story. For example,
   today we posted "25882 photos so far and so far and counting, Ukraine 4156,
   Italy 3244 ..." This is a good way of keeping the excitement alive.
   6. Be proactive! If you see a profile on social media with monument
   photos invite them to share their photos through WLM. This is perhaps one
   of the most effective ways. Typically, I leave a comment like this: "Great
   pics of cultural heritage. Please consider sharing your photos on Wikipedia
   through Wiki Loves Monuments photography competition. It runs through
   Sep. 30 with the goal of visual documentation of monuments on
   Wikipedia." This encourages people to join and puts all the keywords
   (monument, Wikipedia ...) in a short message.
   7. It's all about word of mouth so ask your followers/friends to be your
   ambassadors and encourage others to join. Previous years' participants are
   typically excellent candidates to help with promotion.
   8. If you have access to people with large accounts ask them to tell
   their followers about WLM. This, if done correctly, can help a lot. When
   Wikipedia account on Instagram started following us and told about us to
   their followers we immediately got many new followers.
   9. Make sure to update your information on this page:
   https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki
   /Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2019/Social_Media
   

so
   we keep you in mind when promoting WLM on our social media
   10. Consider switching to a business profile on Instagram. It allows you
   to look at stats and performance of each post and the overall audience of
   your account. It's free and contrary to what the name suggests won't make
   you look like a business. You can select the category to be: Community
   Organization
   11. If there is a specific monument that you want to have a photo of,
   you can easily find people who have photos of that monument on social
   media. Let's say you want photos of Ruins of Kilwa Kisiwani in Tanzania.
   If you search #KilwaKisiwani on Instagram you will find 280 photos with
   this tag. Some of them look good for Wikipedia. You can then just leave a
   comment or send a message to the photographer and ask them to submit the
   photo through WLM. This works particularly well with countries that have a
   short list of monuments or the newcomers to WLM who don't have a large
   follower base.

If we have missed you or you feel you'd want us to mention you more
frequently, please send an email to wikilovesmonuments.in...@gmail.com.

Thanks and good luck,
Mohammad
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Re: [Wiki Loves Monuments] Creating list of previous WLM participants with Quarry

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Michael Maggs, 05/09/19 22:49:
I wonder whether you'd be able to construct a sample Quarry query based 
on https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/38807 that could be used on the 
English Wikipedia?


I could, but such things tend to become more difficult at the scale of 
the English Wikipedia. Already on the Italian Wikipedia some queries 
need to be simplified or they time out. So it's important to have in 
mind what audience is a priority and can have the most impact.


For a list of just 53 places, as you shared, it should be doable.

Federico

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Re: [Wiki Loves Monuments] Creating list of previous WLM participants with Quarry

[Michael Maggs]

Hi Nemo

That's really great.

I just love it when Wikimedians pick up on a suggestion and share more 
and better ways of doing stuff (and then we go off and document it on wiki!)


I've expanded the documentation page

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments/Documentation/Send_a_mass_message

to help those who don't know SQL or Quarry to send a simple Commons message.

You've done some more sophisticated stuff, sending messages to Wikipedia 
talk pages, and it would be good to document that in an easy-to-follow 
way, as well.  I wonder whether you'd be able to construct a sample 
Quarry query based on https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/38807 that could 
be used on the English Wikipedia?


It would be good, also, to have a query that focuses on most-needed 
articles that don't yet have an image. A Quarry query, for example, that 
extracts users who have edited these articles:


* English and Welsh Grade I listed sites with articles on the English 
Wikipedia that lack an illustration: http://tinyurl.com/ycvz6qpl 



Regards

Michael

Federico Leva (Nemo) 
5 September 2019 at 8:00 am


Thank you, I've added a few links over there.

Another strategy I used in the past is to message (Wikipedia) users 
related to places which take part in WLM:

https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/38807

This has the advantage that you can send a more personal/interesting 
message which mentions a topic they're interested in, see for instance:

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussioni_utente:Zwobot24

It works in Italy because users are often frustrated by the lack of 
monuments in their area (for the well known legal issues), so they may 
miss that new places have been added. To avoid sending a lot of 
irrelevant messages I focused on users with relatively few 
contributions but very focused on a relevant place; you may also want 
to target places without photos, or whatever priorities you have.


Mass messages were likely responsible for the small peaks of attention 
on September 12, 13 and 21 last year:
 



However I don't remember exactly how many of those users actually 
proceeded to upload something, so if you want to experiment new kinds 
of mass messaging I suggest you start small (e.g. 1000 messages) and 
check what impact they have before you proceed with many thousands. 
For very large deliveries (over 10k targets) you may want to check a 
sample of your targets to see if they've been messaged by others 
recently, to avoid fatigue.


Federico

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effe iets anders 
3 September 2019 at 9:21 pm
Hi  Michael,

Thanks, this is helpful to document. If you would be willing to 
update/expand the documentation here, that would be great: 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments/Documentation/Send_a_mass_message


In general, this is the place where we try to collect these best 
practices: 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments/Documentation 



Best,
Lodewijk



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Michael Maggs 
3 September 2019 at 8:19 pm
I just copied and edited the original template for the UK situation. 
Here's the UK version:


https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/38769

Just stepping through what to do:

1. Fork the above query, using the Fork button

2. Change both sections of yellow text to relate to your situation, 
the first with your old Commons categories and the single line 
underneath with your current category.  Note that you need the 
underlines between the words; spaces won't work


3. Copy the results. If too many, download as csv, then open in a text 
editor, to get raw text with one entry per line


4. Use the results as the target for a mass message on Commons.  
Unless you're an admin, you'll need help doing that, as non-admins are 
limited in the number of messages they can send.


4a. Start a new page on Commons, in your own userspace.  Set out the 
subject line and body text of the message you want to send.  Also 
include the list of targets. My example page is here: 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:MichaelMaggs/WLM-UK2019Message


4b. Post a request to the Commons Administrator's noticeboard 
(https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators%27_noticeboard) 
for an admin to send the message for you.  Here's my request: 

Re: [Wiki Loves Monuments] Creating list of previous WLM participants with Quarry

[marta . arosio]

That really was super helpful, thank you so much!!
Marta


Il 2019-09-03 21:19 Michael Maggs ha scritto:

I just copied and edited the original template for the UK situation.
Here's the UK version:

https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/38769

Just stepping through what to do:

1. Fork the above query, using the Fork button

2. Change both sections of yellow text to relate to your situation,
the first with your old Commons categories and the single line
underneath with your current category.  Note that you need the
underlines between the words; spaces won't work

3. Copy the results. If too many, download as csv, then open in a text
editor, to get raw text with one entry per line

4. Use the results as the target for a mass message on Commons.
Unless you're an admin, you'll need help doing that, as non-admins are
limited in the number of messages they can send.

4a. Start a new page on Commons, in your own userspace.  Set out the
subject line and body text of the message you want to send.  Also
include the list of targets. My example page is here:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:MichaelMaggs/WLM-UK2019Message

4b. Post a request to the Commons Administrator's noticeboard
(https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators%27_noticeboard)
for an admin to send the message for you.  Here's my request:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons:Administrators%27_noticeboard=prev=364449416

4c. If all's OK, a friendly admin will be along soon to complete the
messaging.

Hope that helps

Michael


Neville Borg
3 September 2019 at 7:50 pm

This sounds fantastic. Is there a foolproof way to do this for those
of us with no knowledge of SQL? :)

I've changed the categories to WLM in Malta, as appropriate. Is
there anything else I need to change?

Neville

--

Administrator
Wikimedia Community Malta [1]

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Michael Maggs
3 September 2019 at 4:53 pm

This was really useful information. Thanks!

I have used a modified version of this to invite 2500 people on
Commons who previously contributed to WLM in the UK.

Regards

Michael




Links:
--
[1] http://www.wikimalta.org
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Re: [Wiki Loves Monuments] Creating list of previous WLM participants with Quarry

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

effe iets anders, 03/09/19 23:21:
Thanks, this is helpful to document. If you would be willing to 
update/expand the documentation here, that would be great: 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments/Documentation/Send_a_mass_message


Thank you, I've added a few links over there.

Another strategy I used in the past is to message (Wikipedia) users 
related to places which take part in WLM:

https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/38807

This has the advantage that you can send a more personal/interesting 
message which mentions a topic they're interested in, see for instance:

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussioni_utente:Zwobot24

It works in Italy because users are often frustrated by the lack of 
monuments in their area (for the well known legal issues), so they may 
miss that new places have been added. To avoid sending a lot of 
irrelevant messages I focused on users with relatively few contributions 
but very focused on a relevant place; you may also want to target places 
without photos, or whatever priorities you have.


Mass messages were likely responsible for the small peaks of attention 
on September 12, 13 and 21 last year:



However I don't remember exactly how many of those users actually 
proceeded to upload something, so if you want to experiment new kinds of 
mass messaging I suggest you start small (e.g. 1000 messages) and check 
what impact they have before you proceed with many thousands. For very 
large deliveries (over 10k targets) you may want to check a sample of 
your targets to see if they've been messaged by others recently, to 
avoid fatigue.


Federico

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