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How Social Media Can Be Used In Your Advocacy Efforts

Social media is a quick and easy way to connect to people all over Canada, and best of all – it’s free! You may know people in your community who want to help in your efforts to improve the quality of life of those with kidney cancer. But by using social media, you can extend your network even further and share information with people beyond your immediate circle of family and friends.

There are multiple social media outlets. Here are a few examples of how various outlets can be used:

Facebook

Facebook is a social networking website where users can add friends, send their friends messages and update their personal profile to notify friends about what is happening in their lives. Users can join and create groups according to their interests or areas of expertise, upload pictures and videos, and post links to their favourite websites.

What you can do: Join the Kidney Cancer Canada Facebook group and connect with others around Canada with similar goals. Invite your friends to join too. You can also post relevant and interesting articles and videos about kidney cancer so your friends can see them and share with their friends as well.

Twitter

Similar to Facebook, Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send and read messages known as tweets. Twitter is less personalized and tweets can only be up to 140 characters and therefore, need to be very brief. Tweets are posted on the user’s profile page and delivered to the user’s subscribers, known as followers.

What you can do: Sign up for Twitter and you can give real-time recaps of your kidney cancer advocacy efforts. Find out if your local government representatives have Twitter accounts and begin ‘following’ them. This is a great way to get close and learn about some of their interests before you meet with them.

YouTube

YouTube is a video sharing website that allows users to upload and share videos, with their friends and the general public. The content is generated by users and can include movie and television clips, music videos as well as short original videos.

What you can do: Check out Kidney Cancer Canada’s YouTube Channel, where you can see and share the real-life stories of other patients. Also, speak to Kidney Cancer Canada about uploading a personal video of your experience with kidney cancer. Remember, before posting a video, double check to make sure it does not include any copyrighted content. When meeting with your local government representative, you can direct them to Kidney Cancer Canada’s website to learn more about kidney cancer.

Tips for success

Kidney Cancer Canada