Hi everyone, good to see you, if not can't see you. Hello, hello, nice to see everybody rolling in. Alright, we got the UK, represent. Arizona. Very ocean themed. Okay. Landlock. Yeah, landlock. The ocean is still important. I respect it. That and rouge. Thank you. We got Brazil. Mexico, Louisiana, France. Amazing, Nigeria, New York. Long Island. Yes, we got a lot. We got the whole world. We got the whole world. We're just missing Antarctica. Japan. Yeah, thank you guys. There's so many of you f
rom kind of rough, time zones, so I hope it's not too, too late for some of you. I know it could be potentially the middle of the night so I definitely appreciate you guys joining us. Hi, Matai. Good to see you. We have a alumni member of our World Ocean Day Youth Advisory Council joining us today. That's wonderful. Thank you guys so much. From Suriname to Texas. That's wonderful. Awesome. Well, As you guys are still introducing yourselves, I'm just going to go over our general agenda for today.
So again, welcome. We're gonna introduce our lovely panelists, how a little bit of a discussion, and then hopefully have some time for Q&A and then a few announcements at the end. I see at Black Girls Dive Foundation, wonderful. Thank you guys for joining us. We have 3 Lanka, Kenya. Oh, I'm so excited. Yeah, so if you guys are joining us for the first time, if you've not been attended a session of youth advocacy training before welcome. We are very happy to have you. This is session 2 of 4. So
if you missed session one, don't worry. All of the recordings for all of the sessions will be available on the World Ocean Day YouTube channel and you can you know, catch up on what you've missed. You can watch other sessions from previous versions of the program that we've had. And yeah, just feel free to let me know if you have any questions. And as we're going into our discussion as well, feel free to if you have any questions use that Q&A feature and we will try our best to get to all of you
r questions. So first up, we're going to introduce our first speaker. This is Ariel Maldonado, a creator of one of my personal favorite Instagram accounts. Go green save green. I've been following her for a very very very long time and just does a really wonderful job of, you know, connecting with folks on different sustainability topics and policy outcomes, decision solutions, all sorts of stuff. Just a wonderful science communicator and I'm really excited to chat with her today. And Ariel, I'l
l let you, you know, introduce yourself a little bit. Yeah, so I have been doing this since 2018. I made the account because when I started kind of really getting into climate, I actually really wanted. To follow an account like mine and I searched for weeks. I was like somebody's for sure done this. It's like so obvious and nobody had done it and to them, I started doing it and like a good, a big reason too was like, I was actually, very like shy. I was almost like a closet environmentalist bec
ause like I didn't grow up with anything that kind of would have made me like more likely to do this than anybody else. And so I was just really nervous and like how people would receive it, people around me. So it was kind of a way for me to like talk about really in depth things and also like not have to show my face and be like, hey guys, blah, blah, blah. So like memes were kind of how I like built up my following and I have gotten so many opportunities through this page. It's been crazy. I
didn't realize that it was such a intensely needed niche to be able to like so clearly communicate complicated things in such a simple way. So yeah, that's me. Yeah, thanks so much, Ariel. We're really happy to have you. And our second speaker is the wonderful Kate Inslee, one of my co-workers with the Ocean project at World Ocean Day. I've been working with Kate for the last 3 years and she does wonderful work with us and with a bunch of other organizations. So Kate, I will let you introduce yo
urself as well. Amazing. I am impressive that you got my name. So I'm Kate Sutter formerly, but I did get married. So Inslee is the new last name. I've been working in the ocean space for over 10 years. So I worked at the Ocean Agency and I did Google Underwater Street View. I've done ocean work at Music, American Museum, Natural History. I've and currently I work at only one. Which is started by us in that geo photographers as a nonprofit and I also work at World Ocean Day. So there I do a whol
e bunch of comms work. I do branding and marketing and I'm not nearly as funny as Ariel but I'm trying and I find inspiration so I do manage a lot of large accounts but not by my own growth, my own growth. I've been put in that role to keep to keep the growth up. So I am pretty good at that part. So I think we're gonna be a dynamic deal together. Yeah, definitely. I'm excited. So Our first question, I think, is Kind of a tricky one. It's almost common sense, especially when we're having this con
versation under the context of young people and youth in Gen Z because you know, why is it important to include promotion and publicity in your conservation efforts? I feel like just doing that is a very in almost second nature kind of a thing for young people who've grown up on the internet, but I would like for either or both of you to kind of talk about, you know, what is the importance of utilizing social media and communication to talk about conservation and you know are there any particula
r ways that digital media can impact conservation outcomes, whether that's, you know, policy or a special day like World Ocean Day and if either of you have any specific examples, I think that's a that's a good place for us to start so I'll let either one of you kind of take that. You wanna go first, Kate? Okay, I'll go first. So I mean the biggest and most obvious for me is I work at only one and that's a big part of our work there is advocacy so we push petitions and by finding these people on
line because right now online is just where people are at. So you got to meet them where they're at. We can really grow numbers and we've been able to hand off some like incredibly impressive petitions of like half a million people to our representatives. And half a million people have not nothing and they really really take into account those numbers. So it's from an advocacy and policy standpoint, like there is power in numbers and the numbers are on social media. Whether you like it or not, p
eople are there and it's an incredibly powerful marketing tool. So, I mean, you might have also, you know, seen a nonprofit and they don't have social and immediately you're like, that's a bummer. I don't know. I don't, how do I follow along? Because I don't really want to add my name to an email list, but social is a great way where you can pick and choose when you want to see it. So right off the bat, it's like it's so important to just like get people behind a movement just using creative on
social. Yeah, I would agree and I've also like heard and like learned. That people need to see something repeatedly for it to sink in. So you might not like, you might see something. Once and you're like oh okay but it didn't really sink in and like I think it takes something like at least 7 or 8 times for something to sink in and like social media It's very easy to kind of like re talk about topics. We talk about them under different lenses within different contexts. And you know play with the
approach so like I really love you know when people do like reels that they just sit down and talk to something and they kind of point to the video behind them. I also love like infographics. I think the biggest thing is like people share. Images not captions so like I think it's really important that anything anybody shares anything that you would want should be in an image and you know I kind of have recently grown out of and into like, I kind of hate when people are like I want to raise aware
ness because I'm like we should be raising action like we should be raising awareness around what you can do and so I think just you know saying oh this is a problem this is a problem and then not necessarily also doing the extra step of saying but here's how you can do something or here's somewhere where you can follow or like whatever. I think that that's kind of producing like this mass bystander. So I've definitely been myself toying with the idea that like I do want to talk about things but
also like you know it's very clear that a lot of people are catching up to the urgency that is, you know, climate change, environmental destruction, ocean issues, whatever. So, you know, if people are interested in that, I think it's kind of on us to sort of like read that and hopefully deliver. 100%. Yeah, I absolutely agree with both of you and I think that, you know, Ario, you kind of touched on something that was I think really important for this conversation just in general about you know
social media and communications is you know, raising awareness is very important, but again, if there's not that action component, it's like you know, there's gotta be some sort of follow up here, right? That's kind of leading to the second question here, you know, like how can it impact conservation outcomes? How can it, you know, actually have that tangible effect? And if there's no call to action, if there's nothing that you're asking of your audience, then, you know, they learn this informat
ion, they can do without what they want, but you know, if there's not something really specific that you're asking of them, you know, they might just be sitting on that information and not do anything with it. So. Definitely very important. Yeah. It's honestly, there's also a fine line that I've noticed is I started asking something of anyone all the time and they got tired of it. They're like, oh, you know, hate posted again asking me to sign a petition. I was like, okay, I get it. So it's impo
rtant to like punctuate your your social your feeds with just like some fun I call it fluff content just like that's why you go to Instagram, but have a laugh or you know you're not asked to do anything. So whenever you do promotion it also is important not to like slam things down people's throats because that can be you know pretty easy because you're excited about it but not everyone is gonna be as excited so you need to like slow baby steps get them get them into it. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. So
, yeah, so I was, not ocean related directly, but I was a part of a campaign to get the Biden administration to get the Biden administration to pause permits on liquid natural gas. So you might have seen it a couple of months ago. So you might have seen it a couple of months ago, get the Biden administration to pause permits on liquid natural gas. So, you might have seen it a couple of months ago. Permits on liquid natural gas. So, you might have seen it a couple of months ago. It's like LNG, fe
lt like a lot of people, you might have seen it a couple months ago was like L and G felt like a lot of people suddenly were talking about this the gist of LNG the 2 s version is basically that like they will liquefy gas and then store it and then like ship it all over the world through like boats and stuff. It releases a ton of methane. It's super bad. And so I participated in this like social media campaign where I was getting people one aware of what LNG was because it's not something that pe
ople knew to why it was so awful and 3 like right now we're at a critical point where this project is able to be paused, reassessed, move forward. Hmm. Okay. So it wasn't just like, oh, this is something that's gonna happen anyways. It was giving people the context of like right now is a moment and like we're not gonna have this window forever and I think you know telling people. That instance, you know, this window isn't open forever. It kind of signals to people, well, they're not going to be
asking this of me forever. Hopefully it puts a little bit of fire into their butt, you know, I definitely recognize that there's like some issues that do need like long term solutions, but I think for sure like contextualizing again like why it's bad, how quickly it is, how urgent it is, you know, this can be done. I think it's really important to give people like hope of like you can impact this some way somehow. And we did it because they did pause the permits and you know that was a big thing
and so now they're Okay. Thanks to you, honestly. Yeah. You are a hero. Me, Yeah, no, it was a great campaign to be a part of. A lot of people did a lot of great things on it. And I think, yeah, I mean, it was definitely a testament. And like, we were all super excited to read the New York Times article one day of like this got paused and it literally talked about the social media campaign. It like referenced that in the article. So that was crazy to be a part of. That's awesome. That's really
awesome. And yeah, I think you really touched on the important point of recognizing your audience too, cause like everybody has a niche, especially depending on where you are. In the world, right? All of our audience we saw is like from every corner of the earth and there are super local issues that you know don't necessarily need to have this big huge campaign but it's all about tailoring your content. To the people that you're actually trying to reach. And we're going to talk about that coming
up. So specifically though, you know, talking about the use of social media as a tool to kind of Use as this way of, you know, raising awareness and connecting with people and calls to action and stuff. Specifically, are their tools and resources that help you use social media? Do you think that there are aspects of social media that are overused, underutilized, and do you have any specific groups? Organizations, individuals that you use for media inspiration? Well, either one of you kind of ta
ke that. First. I'll go. So I guess. For me, as a meme maker, I have a meme app. That I use. I'm so dumb to say that out loud. No, it's not dumb. Which one do you use? Hmm. Hell yeah! I pay 5 bucks a month and I wrote it off on my taxes cause and so yeah, I use me. I think there are other ones out there. I just kind of started using that one and then like stuck to it. I also use apps to like Squareify my image. I think that's how like if you follow my page you know that I do like a lot of text h
eavy stuff so like I'll screenshot highlight resized so that it's like as much text as possible and that happens with like square apps so I can be like, okay, I need this to like fit again or else it's just like a big block of text that's like cut off and like kinda awkward. I feel like some of your funniest memes are like size 3 font. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, exactly, yeah. I think for sure those are kind of like the things I use. I've done social media in other capacities and then I think a lot of lik
e canva can be really useful. Yeah. I think like Campus very useful if you are willing to play with it and have fun. Otherwise it kind of just looks like a real estate flyer and it's like not very exciting engaging. Yeah. So I think if you're willing to like do bright colors and like change up maybe you start with a template if you're really like I'm stuck but then you kind of like change it bit by bit and like you know, I think those. Yeah, I think those are really good tools for sure. A lot of
their templates are really boring, so just be wary. And spice it up if you can, all great tools. Go ahead. The other thing about Canva too, okay, I'm just gonna jump in is that Canva is free for nonprofits. So if you are a registered 5 0 1 c 3 nonprofit you can get canva for free the pro version which is a wonderful tool that I don't think a lot of people are aware of that you can get it for free. If you're a nonprofit. So I just wanted to like throw that out there. To anybody who is like assoc
iated with one of those kinds of groups, but yeah, Kate, go ahead. It's it's also free for any users so the premium part is free for an nonprofit. So anyone can use it. A couple other tools that I use is like a scheduler because it can be pretty time consuming and take over your life if you have to post every day. And so I use buffer later is also another one. Where you can just do a whole bunch at once and then they post automatically. So that's that's another helpful tool. I this is kind of a
an interesting different one. It's called Hemingway. It's called Hemingway app. I think is the is the site and you can put in text and it tells you how complex it is, right? So it will tell you what grades level it's at. And you try to aim between grade 6 and a grade 8. So some, so sometimes you can put in text and it's like this is post-grad level and that's just not gonna hit with social media. So you wanna make sure it's kind of at a level where anyone can understand it. So that's a little mo
re, you know, complex. But it's something you do want to think about. Just so you're making sure people actually get it and understand it and love it. Yeah, and actually that's a good point, Kate, to with Hemingway app. If you are working on a campaign or an event, that It has a really wide audience where you might have folks who do not speak English as their first language making sure that your copyright is accessible to folks who you know don't have English at a postdoc or post-grad level is r
eally, really important. So that also helps with with that aspect of things. And. And there's some great organizations out there. I know we haven't hit on that. Earthrise is bigacular. They're very heavily branded. I'm good friend with earthly education that's at earthly education. She does some really GG to some fun kind of mmified but kind of serious look at the climate that's like less branded but I take a lot of inspiration from them. Yeah, I love earthly education as well. Ariel, do you hav
e any other groups that you look to for inspiration? I definitely, a big part of like what got me started was honestly like those now this videos and AJ plus and then like when I I think I started before impact and future earth, but when I came across them like I was like, oh my god, this is super crazy and like again, I love context like I love getting into like rabbit holes I like getting really into the weeds of things so anytime anybody can really provide like context for something that I do
n't know anything about. I really love it and I really like the way that they. Present that kind of stuff. I also agree about like language. I think that like language needs to happen and I think A lot of people, a lot of creators online would definitely be open to like potentially translating work. I think it's kind of like hard to ask you know. What language do people want this in? Because like, you don't really know, right? And so I've definitely had some people be like, hey, can I translate
your meme into, you know, I think the most common ones are like Portuguese and Spanish. And I'm always like, yes, do that and like. Send it back so that I can post it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's, I'm gonna send it in the chat here. There's a group called Climate Cardinals, which is a youth lead group and they do translations of scientific papers on climate change so that all of that information is available. In as many different languages as they can. I think it's mostly volunteer based, so I don
't know, you know, if every single resource that they have available is available in all of the same languages but yeah climate cardinals I'm gonna send it in the chat in a second but yeah I think you know there are a lot of tools if any of you guys have any other questions about the specific techniques of things, we can talk about that in the Q&A, but we're gonna move to the next question, which is kind of moving on from those more technical things, but what when you're running a campaign speci
fically and you have like an end date for this action that you have planned or the event that you're running or whatever it is that you're promoting. How do you actually take that and kind of work backwards to create a promotional strategy? Are you just on social media? Do you use other channels of communication? Is it all digital media? Do you use print media? Like, how do you kind of go about tackling a promotional strategy. Yeah. So I basically exclusively work in like the online space and al
most exclusively actually Instagram. So like I cannot speak to all the other ones. And I will get kind of like, hired out to participate in different promotional stuff. I. Like to make sure that I understand what it is that I am promoting. So my background is not in science. Like formally education-wise, like I don't have a batches of science or anything like that, which at first I think made me really self-conscious. But now is probably my biggest asset because I think that's where my strength
comes into play where I have to fully understand something in order for me to be able to break it down into like, oh, I don't have like the educational background or the context or anything like that. So it helps me sort of break things down to like that language that kind of everybody can understand. You know, you can't teach something unless you understand it yourself. So I think for sure that's like the biggest thing that I do when I think about like how am I putting this together, what are d
ifferent ways that I can approach it. There's no one way that somebody is going to receive something, right? So like If I'm doing a promotional strategy, I know that I'm gonna have more like more than likely more than one post or at least more than one image. And so if that's the case, like how can I use maybe like I might use humor in every single one, but I might use like different visuals like talking about the exact same thing and how can I kind of like the visual language of like a meme and
how can I you know, relate the relationships. Of the objects within a photo to like the concept. So yeah, like. Sometimes you use size sometimes like the iceberg one is a really easy one right because like we can be like what people think environmentalism is and then it's like recycling 0 waste and then it's like what it actually is and you actually have all the stuff underneath it like that kind of visual language is like sort of what I'm talking about. And I'm definitely more with only one at
least very much in the policy side. So I'll start and do a huge campaign like start to finish and it's like things to think about is one is who are you trying to target right is who what kind of people what age what background what's their political there's so many things to think about Once you have that, you can think about, okay, what content would they pause at, right? Cause even just stop it, letting them look at the content is great. But then how can you get it to the next level of like g
oing to a link in bio, which is a whole nother ball wax we can get into later. But then you can also take it offline. So Instagram is huge, but also you kind of are stuck with the algorithms and if the algorithm is not great that day, then your stuff really won't be seen. So then I think about, okay, what other platforms? Example, threads, not it, at least for me, and I have not noticed it. So I'm not gonna like spend my time on that for now. Twitter, that's kind of on a downfall right now. So I
'm also not going to downfall right now, so I'm also not going to spend my time. TikTok, that's really getting really big. I'm gonna look for influencers in the space. If you have any, you know, small budget, a lot of times if it's a good cause, a lot of creators will. Partner up and try to help you spread the word. Hashtags are helpful just for tracking purposes just if you want to see how many people have caught along. Are supporting the campaign and the cause. So there's all of that to think
about and then if you want to take it offline are you gonna do offline events? Are you gonna do handout posters? There's like a million things to think about and sometimes it's overwhelming. So you want to kind of pick pick a lane and stick to it and if that's Instagram. So you want to kind of pick pick a lane and stick to it and if that's Instagram awesome great start there and if that's Instagram awesome great start there and if that's Instagram awesome great start there and and just work on t
hat. For a little bit. And then one other thing is important is to figure out like if you give your elevator pitch, right, for your for your promotion. If someone has literally 5 s, what are you going to tell them? And what are you gonna ask them to do? Because at the end of the day, that's your key messaging and you're gonna want to keep going back to that because it's really easy to get sidetracked. So again, I could do a whole master class on this, I think, but for the most part, elevator pit
ch. Think about your target audience and and find a path and stick to it. Yeah, very much so. Thank you both for putting that kind of in context because I think both of you kind of said that it can it can be kind of overwhelming putting together a strategy for sure, especially if it's, you know, a bigger, international broader campaign where you know you have this audience like I was saying before talking about determining what your target audience is that's what this last question here is. So,
you know. We talked about using different platforms and you know if you have a campaign that's really local, you know reaching out to a regional newspaper to have an ad or like an article or an opinion piece in there. Is something that you can do. But if it's, you know, you're not really sure where to start with that, you don't know. Exactly who you should be going after for your specific campaign. How do you actually kind of figure out who you want to talk to? How do you do you determine your b
est target audience? Do you wanna go first, Kate? Yeah. It's this is tricky, right? Like this, this is the ultimate question is like, how do you figure that out? I have an example here. So I'm working on a campaign right now that's targeting to stop the expansion of petrochemicals in Ohio West Virginia and Pennsylvania. So right off the bat I have a location of like where that campaign is going to be which is helpful. Sometimes it's way more broad than that. And then like, okay, the most powerfu
l people on my petitions would be conservatives. So I'm looking for conservatives and middle-aged. So it's okay. Where do you conservative and middle age people live? Like where are they? Facebook, right? So you're immediately trying to like think about where they are. And then when I'm making actual images, I was like, okay, conservatives, you know, American flags, colors to think about. Just like general ideas of where how would they pause, right? It's not a bad thing. It's any political affil
iation is fine. But what can I really do to to grab these people? So you're just trying to, it's honestly like a puzzle, right? You're constantly Some things aren't going to work and that's okay. Definitely some jokes work with others and some just fall flat. Again, all of this is still a win for you because you're learning from it. It's hard to think that because if the post is really poorly, you're like, oh no, that sucked. But no, it didn't. Like that's incredible information and you know you
can know moving forward. Like this isn't it? I need to adjust and pivot and it could be like a different image. It could be a different a different way to you know maybe I should try Twitter and not Facebook. Excuse me. And again, it's mixed, but you're a detective. Try to figure it out. And it's, and have fun with it, right? That your, once you get your target audience, it will be pretty obvious. But sometimes your target audience is gonna be really hard to get and that's like kind of the poin
t. In which case it's a game. So try things. Yeah, and I would say that for me, like, unlike Kate who is trying to do a target audience. Normally people come to me because like they feel that I have access to the target audience. So because, you know, I have people that are following me that like say another organization wants access to what that looks like for me is they might say We want to talk about. Kelp and like regeneration as like a topic, right? So then I have to sit and think, okay. Th
is is kind of perfect because my page I Try to avoid things like fast fashion, veganism, plastics, not because I don't care about them. I think they're very important issues, but I think that everybody talks about fast fast fashion and there's so many channels dedicated to veganism and so For me, I'm really interested in talking about the things that people are not talking about. So when someone says, I want to talk to you, about Kelp, regenerative agriculture. The weirder the better. I'm like,
you came to the right place. The weird together and you came to the right place. And so I know what I bring to the table is not me saying I do not care about any of these things. It's me saying like, I want to cater to a market that I don't feel is being catered to. And so when I think about that, I say, yeah. This is like the the facts of it like these are these are the boring facts that like maybe this is why this is not a hot button issue. Next. How can I make this seemingly boring issue funn
y or sexy or like a like a provocative or you know, how do I get people thinking about it beyond just, oh, regenerative agriculture, snooze, you know, so like the stuff like that. Yeah, I think that's a really good point, Ariel, and it all kind of depends on, you know, what your audience is because for you, it makes sense to kind of avoid certain things because other people you're like at niche is filled. I don't have to worry about that because I know so many people are talking about it. All ab
out and then like you said trial and error honestly like just figuring out what works best for you so absolutely So now we're going to get into more of the messaging side of things when we actually are thinking about, you know, how to put together you know, why does this thing matter? You know, all of those like checklist points, that you were talking about before. Why does it matter? Why is it so bad? What can we do about it? There's a lot of different approaches that people can take to . Splai
ning all of that for whatever the issue is at hand and, you know Different people respond differently to different things. So when we're talking about, you know, as a young person who is leading a campaign or, you know, to do promotion on social media using different communication skills. What are some things like what are some skill building things that young people should be trying to do to, you know, strengthen their ability to storytell, to get this information out there like what are the qu
alities that you think are most important for a storyteller advocating for conservation cause? Yeah, I will definitely. I think one of the most important things is If you are gonna commit to storytelling today in 2024 about like environmental issues in any capacity doesn't matter whether it's oceans or agriculture or literally anything. You have to understand that you are not just committing to providing information. You have to understand that you're committing to moving the needle and helping
change the culture. So much of like successful storytelling means that we have to think our relationships, right? So like the most famous ocean environmental picture is that turtle with a straw, right, in its nose. That picture for, you know, There are so many pictures of like. Things that humans have done that have impacted animals that haven't been great, but for whatever reason, like that picture really helped resonate with people and be like, oh my god, like my actions like impacted that tha
t straw with somebody's nobody knew who it was but like you know, now I think it's really trendy to say like. oh, straws don't matter, like they're not the biggest thing, but I think that we would all a lot of us would be lying if we didn't say that like straws were how we got our in. And like maybe you started with straws and maybe now you're like advocating for way bigger things and you realize that straws are not the biggest bad guy but for whatever reason like that was what resonated with yo
u so I think you know understanding that like if you want to talk about why we should conserve the you know habitat of a seahorse. Saving the habitat of a seahorse is not really gonna like impact anybody. Like in their day to day. Whether that like for most of us, whether that seahorses habitat, like lives or falters is not going to necessarily impact your material life. So you're really not talking about, okay, what's the issue with this like habitat and why should we save it? But you're talkin
g about, okay. This habitat is not just this habitat. We have to think about the broader implications. We have to think about domino effects and it's not just those seahorses that go down. It's all these other things. And like There's a lot of people. There's definitely an argument to be made that regardless of whether humans benefit or not, like we should just protect things because other living things. Like need it. But I think if you're trying to like include the story like telling element, i
t is important for people to know how does this impact me. So you can say like we're gonna destroy this seahorses habitat, it's gonna go up the food chain. That's going to impact fishermen, that's going to impact all these indigenous groups. It's going to impact all these communities around the world and countries that have see like that do a sea heavy diet, seafood heavy diet you know so you have to really again contextualize like why does this matter how do we challenge and you have to underst
and that like as a storyteller and if you're challenging and changing the culture there will be push back. So like I don't want to say it's not for the week, but it's not for the week. And if you and if like your, you have to like learn to not take things so personally, right? And you have to remember that like none of us, none of us in this call, maybe a couple people, but a lot of people in like the developed world did not, you know, come out of the womb like perfect environmentalists. So like
you have to think about your journey and like how you got to where you were. And recognize that there are other people going down that path. And when you're talking online, you're meeting people at like all different points of that. Some people are in the beginning of their journey and some people are way ahead. Yeah. Yep, totally. I guess I have 3 big points for storytelling here. One. Is you are telling a story online. So cite your sources right now. There's just like misinformation everywher
e and and it's so important even if it's at the end just to show where you got your information because a lot of people are spewing God knows what and it's it's you're going to bring legitimacy and authenticity to it. Just by having something backing backing what you're saying. That's important. Something that's Like, not overlooked, but I think critical is great imagery and I'm just gonna name a few, you know, it's hard to get good imagery for free, but there are sites out there. There's stuff
obviously such as which World Ocean Day is gonna be doing in competition with later. So keep your eyes out there. Shameless plug. And I also a while back, created something called the Ocean Image Bank. That's when I was with the Ocean Agency and there's thousands of images you can download high res of the ocean obviously not all climate things but those are free for use non-commercial. So they're in Canva has some great stuff. There's just some great things that you can do to really make your yo
ur stories splash because it's expensive sometimes to get out there. And actually get your own content. And like my last point here is Keep it short and sweet. It's super easy to get on, you know, on your soapbox and start talking because you're excited about it. But I think everyone on TikTok, you get, you give them like, give a video like 3 s and then for some reason it doesn't scratch part of your brain, you keep going. So you want to make sure it's fairly short or at least you'll loop someon
e in fast. So then you can tell your story in a little more depth. But for the most part, I think one of the one of the general rules that I follow is the simpler the better. Get your point across, keep it moving, and people will love you for it. Yeah, very, very important points from both of you and I want to add a principle that I always bring up during this session of advocacy training is Ethos Pathos logos. If any of you have, you know, done literature studies, a lot of the times, that's som
ething that comes up and post is you know how do you appeal to somebody's sense of authority like I need to do this because this is the right thing to do. Pathos is appealing to somebody's emotion. So that's something like a real the the video the turtle with the straw of its nose like that's a highly emotional visual you have empathy for this creature that's in pain And then there's logo switches appealing to people's logic. Like, okay, if we continue down this path of creating a climate disast
er we're not going to have any food, water, you know, viable planet to live on. Like, you know, there's a lot of different ways that we can go about like applying logic to these things. So I'll write that in the chat in a moment as well, but I also want to talk about these next 2 questions you both kind of talked about on some of the pitfalls or mistakes that people can come across when trying to tell a narrative. So I would like to focus on this third question. How does authenticity and transpa
rency enhance the overall narrative of what you're trying to get across. Yeah, okay. So for me, I think. Pitfall and authenticity. I think like people will say Oh, I have an opportunity to talk about this and they won't always ask am I the best person to talk about this and I think that like There's a fine line, right? So there's a fine line between like, hey, we need as many people talking about this as possible. We need to get all eyes on this and then there's also sometimes like Do I really k
now what I'm talking about? And are you by just repeating things that are like said back at me? And like sometimes, you know, that means that you might instead of just automatically like saying yes, it might mean that you need like an hour or 2 to like get around it. It might mean you need a couple of days, even a week, but I think if you don't really know what you're talking about and you can't really answer any questions. I think people then are like sort of suspicious of like why are you talk
ing about this? Do you care about it, you know? So. You know, the more, again, I think the transparency thing comes down to like context. So like the more that you know and the more that you can break things down, the better. And it seems more like, oh, this person does care about this because like when you care about something you learn about it and you nerd out about it. And if you can't really nerd out about it and you're really only like think about those videos where, you know, we see them
on TikTok and Instagram where somebody's trying to like raise awareness, but they only talk about like the most basic things that everybody's talking about and like they don't really go. Slower or not slower, but like they don't really go more in depth. And it's just like, hey guys, like I love the ocean and like you should not do this, blah, blah, blah, but like, you know, I think authenticity comes with like depth and like information and like a willingness. To show other people that like you
2 are learning and that like you want to bring them along in this learning journey with you. Yeah, and even if you want and if even if you know you're not an expert at the at the start, be like guys, I am not an expert, but I learned this incredibly cool fact. So like own it like because the fact is you're spreading this knowledge. Sure, you're not an expert on it and maybe you're not like the forefront of of teaching people about it, but you're excited about it so you can also just admit upfron
t and that's being very authentic and people love kind of feeling that they're on your level as well. Like let's all look like let's all geek about this fact about new to ranks right now together and then we can all go research more. About it and get back together and talk about it on a WhatsApp group kind of stuff. So authenticity is key, especially in this world of TikTok where people just want you to be you. And, and just to see your personality and they don't want some like scripted, you kno
w, I mean research is good, but they don't want like this kind of formulaic. Boring, boring social to look at so just be you and be upfront and no no need to worry about looking stupid. Yeah, very much so. And I also, I think that there is a very odd expectation of climate advocates specifically that in order to make change concerning the climate crisis, you have to be a climate science expert. Advocates of the climate crisis are always grilled with these crazy super intense questions about like
greenhouse gases and super specific statistics for things and I think that's just really unreasonable to ask of every single person and this is applicable to any social economic political issue. Ever in the world anywhere that if you care about something and you know it's important even if you're not a hundred percent an expert on something again like you both said being transparent being clear and just saying like I know this is important I still want to talk about it even though I don't know
110% of the background on it I still want to talk about it because I know it's impacting people in a negative way. It's impacting the planet in a negative way and that's really important. So yeah, I think owning that transparency is absolutely key to this conversation. So now we're gonna get into some of these other questions. Kate, you mentioned earlier your kind of fluff content. So I would love for you to kind of explain what you're talking about when we talk about that and then, yeah, just t
alking about. How do you balance fluff versus educational funny versus serious? Like where do you kinda draw the line between those things? How do you find that balance for both? Yeah. Honestly, go green save green is a perfect mix of them all the time. So that's like gonna be interesting to hear from you because it's literally stuff that I would share but it's also serious and has a point whereas a lot of my other accounts my fluff really is like a beautiful video of dolphins jumping. Right? It
's stuff that you want to see. You want to share with your friends. This is this incredible share to your story, but there's not actually any action attached to it. So. It's there to kind of buffer, put a buffer in my feed to make make people actually want to come here without feeling like they're being totally, you know, told what to do every time I post. And again, like that's the kind of stuff that usually does really well. So it's viral videos. There's a million different examples whereas Wh
ereas educational stuff is as you know in the title it's it's educating someone so this could be infographics this could be an explainer this could be even just a fluff, content with a call to action. So like a beautiful turtle swimming through the ocean and at the end it's like a petition to sign 30 by 30. So you can start to mix them. I originally more or less my algorithms been a little wonky so I do around 30% educational right now and you know the other 70% is fluff that will skew really de
pending I'd like to keep it more like 60% 40% educational so it's a little more educational but right now I'm just not getting the reach that I used to. So it changes all the time. It's really you kind of look at comments you get the vibes of like what people are looking for have I not posted any anything educational in a while. Then I'm gonna throw some educational, some fluff content in there vice versa. So it's a constant game. There's no actual secret sauce to it. It's just figuring it out.
Honestly though, go green save green might be the secret sauce. So I'm gonna let you speak to that. So. I kind of Mixed educational and fluff, I think is the secret sauce is that like. I think there are topics that like deserve respect and not to be like humored. And I think that like those are pretty obvious, you know, like I'm Not gonna mean certain things, but I think for the most part unless it's like If it's not something that you know I think is disrespectful to like add a humor twist to i
t, then it's fair game. So like. You know, I think for sure, mixing funny can help people. The biggest feedback that I've gotten, whether it be DMs, comments, people reaching out to me via email, whatever, is that like. It helps me to receive scary information with the dose of like humor because then i 1 don't feel so scared about it. It doesn't feel the same as like when you're reading a really terrifying article or like maybe I am sharing a terrifying article but I'm also kind of being like lo
ok it is serious but also like you know, don't stress in the sense that like this is not solvable, typically my salute, my memes will also have like some solution that maybe is not being implemented. So it's trying to find like the silver linings or like pathways. Maybe we haven't figured something out yet, but it seems like we have, you know, through research like answers to how we could move forward. And so, you know, I think if I'm scary sharing a really scary article thinking about the Insta
post of and the memes that I'm making like what parts of this could be funny, how could I kind of help calm readers down a little bit. And then also when I'm posting just straight up fluff content, because I don't always post educational content. I just post like tweets or my own memes. I I wish that I was organized enough to like set out my posts and make posts for a week and then call it a day. I am not. I've tried it many times. I've worked social media jobs that were not related. I have tri
ed in so many good I cannot like I have to make my stuff off the cuff like the most I can do is like the day before It's a comedian's way of life, guys. You just can't plan for these things. It just comes to you. Yeah. 100% and if I'm not feeling it like I can and I have to know when to say I need a break because I get burnt out like I don't always have the dancers. Yeah. So I think when I think about fluff and just, plain funny content, I think about like shared experiences, right? So like what
are challenges that are very unique to people that are into nature, people that are into learning, people that are like into the environment, you know, I'll make all kinds of things. Like, I think I even made a meme once of like, when you're going on a hike and you step your foot right on a puddle of water but you like don't go all the way in. Thank you. That's such a like niche thing but so many people were like oh my god you know and so like I think in that instance when I'm talking about lik
e our interactions with nature or like stuff like that you know or like oh my god like I'm full of PFAs like it helps people feel like they're not alone and like it kind of makes you feel like you are a part of this community and hopefully you're relating if you see me as an environmentalist and I'm able to share like experiences that I have that you also have hopefully you feel like you can connect to me and not me as in like Ariel because my face isn't on there, but like whatever you identify
as like an environmentalist So funny. It's true because all the funniest TikTok's the ones that you like thought no one else experiences but turns out there's not a single original thought out there. Exactly. Die laughing. No, truly. There is no such thing as an original. No, it's true. And honestly, Ariel, I think what you've said about this kind of touches on our next question too, talking about going viral and it's kind of up in the air like you can't really predict the kinds of things that a
re gonna go viral because like talking about memes my favorite you're like oh we're full of PFAs the Spiderman meme where there are like 3 of them like pointing at each other and it's like filled with microplastics. Millennials filled with like, I don't remember. Something bad. That's dustus or something. Oh my god and then like boomers filled with lead. Yeah, all like pointing at each other. Yeah, And. Okay. It's just so funny and you know stuff like that with humor I think is more likely to go
viral but you know it's kind of impossible to kind of figure out and then I do wanna make sure that we have time for QA because we do have some really really wonderful questions in here. Yeah. And this last question on here does kind of have to do with one of the questions. In the Q&A right now, so I do want to talk on, how do you deal with negativity aerial you kind of already talked about like getting burnt out from stuff as well. And I know that kind of can be a contributing factor to some o
f this stuff. So yeah, how do young people kind of stay away from, or at least deal with that negativity. So this is actually really interesting question. When I was coming up, I came up with some other influencers that are like big in this space now and they showed a lot more their faces. I think it's a lot more common. For influencers in the climate space to show their face and be like, hey guys, I'm talking about this and I got that advice a lot myself and I know myself and I repeatedly would
tell them like thanks but no I find that like if you can't attack me personally, you're just attack the page and I have the mental like ability to separate my page from me, but when I see people attacking your identity because you're saying, hey guys, like check this thing out blah blah blah and then they're like you and attacking whatever it is whether it be your gender, your race, anything like that. Like it feels a lot more personal. So I would say really think about like. You know, let's sa
y you get a hundred 1,000 followers, like can you handle, look at accounts that have that many followers and look at like the negative things. We don't, we don't. Can you handle some people saying that to you? And if not, like there are so many pages out there that have nothing to do with it and it is so much easier for me to like roll off my back negative things and don't get me wrong there's been days where I wanted to throw my phone at the wall and be like you guys don't deserve this but I th
ink for sure I think for sure like Not making it about me making it about we has been like a really really helpful thing and I would definitely tell anybody like really think about it. Do why are you doing this because the unfortunate matter is that like The easiest idea is what we see, right? So like if we see everybody saying, hey guys, blah, blah, blah, most people are gonna think that that's the way to success. But there's a lot of other ways. And like, you know, maybe you don't need to show
your face. Maybe you don't need to like put yourself out there to deal with that kind of negativity. And also there's always gonna be haters like Always and my life is fairly short, so I'm going to block any people who just like start spamming my page because that's so great that you have time to do that but I don't have time to respond and deal with this so thank you for thank you for everything for your comments, but I'm going to move on and block you. I appreciate it. Yeah, the block feature
is, is very important tool to use these days, especially in the time of all of the disinformation and conspiracy theories and stuff that's 1 of these questions here in the Q&A in an era of disinformation within social media, how does one build up and gain credibility? How can the viewers keep a lookout for disinformation? I think honestly blocking folks who are spamming your page with nonsense is a great way to start but do you guys have any kind of insight on on credibility and disinformation?
Yes, I have worked on several disinformation campaigns and personally for me, the way that I hope that I've been gained credibility and built that up was the fact that I show articles, right? So I'm not just making memes and saying like, oh ha ha, like this is how, you know, single family housing is actually a big climate issue and you're like, what? I didn't know anything about that. And like, if you don't know anything about that, you might think that I'm lying, right? You might not realize l
ike, oh, urban sprawl and all these other things. So. Like if I make a meme about something I try to talk about it I almost always talk about it because it very easily can a meme be turned into something that it's not or be contextualized into something that it's not so if I share the funny thing, I give you the 2 s version so that you get the gist of it and then I go to the in depth version. I include the article title. I usually include where the articles from. I like include the author so you
can go yourself and Google this and say like hey this is this article that I read this is this author where can I find more information on that? I've always had mad respect for you. I see those screenshots of those papers and I was like Boom, there it is. Yeah. Yeah, argue it. I mean, you can, but good luck. Yeah. Yeah, so that's personally how I do it. That's why I think context, more and more context always. Yeah, and I when I do fax letters, I always just put a source, right? So anyone can g
o and look and if they really want to, like I do my due diligence, but if you really think it's wrong, go look at BBC. I hear it's a pretty credible site. Do your own research totally into it. I'm all for it. So just at a source if you think it might be controversial Yeah. Yeah, very much so. I also see this question in here. Lots of companies have environmental policies and promotions on a shallow, shallow level to make them see more appealing. How can we expose this and differentiate between a
uthentic and less impactful projects? So what this is talking about is green washing. If anybody watching this does not know that term that is very important in this space to make sure that we are aware of these kinds of We're disinformation campaigns. It's kind of related to that last question. So, if either of you want to talk about how we recognize and dissuade greenwashing, go ahead. You know, I don't, so yeah, that's a whole beast, but there are laws being enacted right now in Australia las
t week. Which is amazing. Huge. There's a new anti-greenwashing law. So. Amazing politicians are finally getting involved about even the UK. I think there's some banks that need to stop, you know, putting out wrong information. So it would be interesting just looking at the legal side. I know that doesn't help recognizing it, but. That people are working towards. Flagging it and making sure it doesn't happen. Yeah, I think for sure like In some ways, there's like this weird logic that like in so
me ways companies greenwashing is showing that like how important this is, right? So like they've taken the step to acknowledge like people care about sustainability, but they're not necessarily taking the step to say like we're actually gonna go all the way. So I think, you know, take that for what it is and say like if we have driven them driven up enough demand to get them to think about it like how can we basically keep that like banging that drum and be like no we need more and I think that
comes down to like learning and like you're never gonna know how to differentiate an authentic and a less authentic project if you don't go into like the Nitty-itty gritty. nitty-itty nitty-gritty details Yeah, the nitty degree. The nitty gritty details of like what that is and like. Again, you just kind of have to be willing to nerd out like that's kind of like the end of it and like there's no there's no shortcut to that you know and like I can't say, hey, there's this page or this influencer
that's talking about this because We all have such different scopes and niches that like they might only know about like tree planting projects, but they might not know about like coral restoration projects, you know, so everyone kinda has to find their own path with that, but there's no shortcut to getting into it. I love the hot take that greenwashing is actually the start to something great because they are recognizing the power of people prioritizing sustainability, right? So they know it's
important. They're just not willing to put the time and effort into it. They're just being the shallow parts of it. So it is bad, but is it start to something good? Yeah. And it's a stepping stone for us to be able to push them to do better, exactly. We only have like a minute or 2 left. So I don't think we're gonna be able to get to all of the questions in the QA, but we really appreciate you guys putting those questions out there. If you do have any questions you would like to chat about, fee
l free to send me an email at L Johnson at the ocean project. Org. I just want to go through a couple of announcements before we say goodbye for the day. So don't forget session 3 in session for our next Saturday and the Saturday after same time, same place. I'm very excited for our event planning and fundraising session and our campaign organizing session. I think they're going to be great. We also have, as I mentioned, last weekend our 2,024 World Ocean Day action theme, which is catalyzing ac
tion for the ocean and climate, bringing all of these ocean and climate concepts together and doing 12 months of action with every month on a specific issue-themed focus. So for March and April, we're all about Global Plastics Treaty, making sure that world leaders come together and we can get a treaty. Signed and ratified that says we need to stop this practice of creating all of this waste and just, yeah, Global Plastics Treaty is our focus for March and April. And then we also have gotten a l
ot of about certificates for this program. So yes, at the end of the 4 weeks after session 4 on the thirteenth of April, we will be sending out a feedback survey. We do not have a official deadline for the feedback survey yet. I will let you all know when that deadline is when the survey is sent out. But if you are able to complete a full, completed survey by that deadline, we will send you some certificates of completion. So keep an eye out for that. We'll keep you updated on that process as we
're getting closer to the end of the program. But for now, I just want to say a huge thing you again to Ariel and to Kate for joining us. It has been wonderful and I'm really excited to continue this conversation online again. Be sure to follow Ariel at Go Green, Save Green on Instagram, follow us at World Ocean Day on all platforms as well. And yeah, just thank you guys so much for joining us for this conversation and I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your weekend. Thank you everyone. So
fun to talk to Ariel. Yeah, thank you. Bye! Have a good weekend. Thank you everyone. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week.
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