Social media can help amplify advocacy efforts by reaching more people, in more places, faster than ever before. To use social media effectively, you should have a clear plan in mind of who your audience is, which social media platforms are most suited to that audience, and what results you hope to gain.
What is using social media for digital advocacy?
Digital advocacy is the use of digital technology to contact, inform, and mobilize a group of concerned people around an issue or cause. The purpose of digital advocacy is to galvanize supporters to take action.
Digital tools have become a central component of almost any movement. Some of the most-used digital advocacy tools include websites, blogs, Facebook, Instagram, X, email, and texts. Literally hundreds of social media applications exist that could be used for digital advocacy, but to get started, spend your time and resources where your supporters are most likely to be.
Why use social media for digital advocacy?
The advantages of using social media include: low (or no) hard costs for set-up; potentially wide reach; quick/instantaneous sharing of messages; and new opportunities to listen, engage, and monitor progress.
When might you use social media?
Any time you are working to engage people that utilize some form of social media, you may want a social media presence to amplify your ability to reach supporters quickly.
To use social media as part of a direct action campaign, it is helpful to have set up the social media tools and gathered supporters in advance of making a specific request. No matter where you are in the process, you can use social media to help support your cause.
You can join and participate in social networks at any time. However, timing is important to consider when carrying out specific tasks. Email is typically better read on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mid-morning and mid-afternoon, for example. So think about and research when your potential supporters are most likely to receive and give thought to your messages.
Before beginning to use social media, consider your goals. For example, are you hoping to: recruit volunteers; brand your organizational staff as experts; disseminate information about an issue; promote an event; solicit donations; get people to take particular action; and/ or tell stories about your work?
Who should use social media?
Almost every advocacy campaign can benefit from some form of social media. The perception is that social media reaches young people primarily, but its growth is explosive and far-reaching. People of all ages around the world are using social media.
Specialized tools exist to help organize volunteerism, donate, fundraise, bring people together for rallies and meetings, to boycott or support businesses, participate, discuss, and subscribe to updates.
Four skills needed to use social media to drive social change:
- Focus – hatch a goal that will make an impact
- Grab attention – stick out in an overcrowded, over-messaged, noisy world
- Engage – make people connect with your goal
- Take action – empower others, enable them, and cultivate a movement
- From The Dragonfly Effect, by Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith
How do you use social media for digital advocacy?
Conduct a brief strategic review
Clarify your main goals and your social media objectives. In the cluttered world of social media, the most important thing to remember is to stay focused on your advocacy objectives – what are the actions and outcomes you want to achieve? Don’t get caught up in pursuing every “shiny new tool” or participating in ways that don’t support your goals (directly or indirectly).
Research and evaluate where your supporters are most likely to be online. With digital advocacy, you’ll want to identify who is most likely to support your cause, and go to them wherever they are—use the social media tools they use.
Evaluate what time and resources are available to you and your team.
Be realistic about your ability to engage on any specific platform. Determine which platforms your target market is using most, and focus on those. Choose a central channel for online advocacy efforts, and use additional social efforts to point people toward your main channel. Determine how you will measure success at the start of the project. Begin by envisioning “the big picture” outcomes of how you’d like your social media efforts to turn out, then develop specific success metrics that will help you evaluate each platform you plan to use. Be sure to develop SMART goals -- specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and time-based. Fortunately, it is easy to track data through many free analytic tools for websites and social marketing tools, which are often built into the tool itself. (Once you have decided upon which social media tools you will use, you may want to explore what built-in analytics they offer, and whether you will need additional analytics or monitoring capabilities. For example, some of these monitoring sites may be of use: Google Analytics, Google Alerts, HootSuite).
Social media lessons from the Obama campaign:
Start early
Build to scale
Innovate where necessary
Make it easy to find, forward and act
Pick where you want to play
Channel online enthusiasm into specific, targeted activities that further the campaign’s goals
Integrate online advocacy into every element of the campaign
“The Social Pulpit: Barack Obama’s Social Media Toolkit,” Edelman Digital Public Affairs, January 2009
Sign up for social media accounts
Select one central social media platform. This will likely be your website or blog site or your Facebook cause page. If you don’t already have something like this, create it. It will be the hub of all your online advocacy work, at least initially.
Then, choose the combination of social media tools that will be most likely to help you communicate with and engage supporters and potential supporters. Use the information from your research in step 1 to decide what you can pursue with the resources you have now.
List of Tools / Instrutions for Set-Up
Your overall strategy—based upon your knowledge and expertise of your cause and your supporters—will determine how you use digital tools and what follow-up steps you will take to spur needed action. Following is a list of easy tools you can use and links to instructions for set-up.
Websites
These sites can help you create “drag and drop” or “point and click” websites with no technical skills. (You can create a blog space within each of these.)
Blogs
Learn how to set up a Facebook page for a cause.
Using Social Media
There are many social media platforms that you can use to engage the public and build your client base, such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Almost all social media sites will allow users to join for free, although some advanced features might be available with a paid account.
While some people might use multiple social media platforms, each of these platforms draws a slightly different audience. When considering what platform to use, you may want to consider the audience that you want to reach.
Analytics. Many social media platforms will offer some type of analytic services. Analytics may include things like the number of people who viewed your posts, “liked” or clicked on your posts, or shared your posts. Analytics can be useful for determining what types of posts tend to get the most attention.
Managing Multiple Accounts. It can be daunting to maintain several social media accounts. If you have multiple accounts, there are several things you can do to make the workload a bit easier:
- Consider using a platform such as Hootsuite to streamline your social media posts. A platform like Hootsuite will allow you to simultaneously post on multiple social media platforms.
- You can also schedule posts in advance. For instance, if you have a fundraising drive coming up, you can schedule several posts in advance leading up to and on the day of the drive.
- Some social media platforms allow you to add multiple people to the account as “Editors” or similar administrative roles, to assist with managing content.
If you are struggling with identifying regular content (e.g., relevant news items) to post, consider signing up for a Google alert. You can have headlines with pre-identified content sent to your email, which will cut down on the need to seek out relevant news to share.
Become familiar with the tools
As you are creating accounts, familiarize yourself with the typical behavior of users – know the “dos and don’ts” and customs of the platform.
Resist the urge to solely promote your cause. Instead, listen and monitor the activity of other users, just as you would do if you were walking into a room and speaking to people in person. Once you have a good sense of the ongoing conversation or interaction, begin to engage. Likewise, as you begin to interact with others, develop a tone of voice that is authentically your own – you don’t want to come across as promotional, corporate, or bureaucratic. Share your point of view in a way that is open, positive, and enthusiastic. Be sure to credit others when repeating information.
When you are ready to ask something of the community, do so in a clear and direct manner.
Develop content and systems for managing your digital advocacy efforts
Building followers and engagement. Building followers (the number of people who follow or “like” your social media page) and engagement (the number of people who interact with your social media content) is easy, with a bit of effort. While various social media platforms work differently, here are some general tips for building followers and engagement:
- Post compelling, interesting, and engaging content.
- Post frequently. Social media platform analytics can be useful in determining how the time of day impacts engagement with your posts. Generally, evening and weekend posts tend to have high engagement, as that is a time when many people are naturally on social media.
- “Like” or “follow” the pages and accounts of related organizations, as well as relevant county, city, and federal government offices. For instance, if your organization works with LGBTQ people, you may want to follow similar organizations, such as PFLAG Chapters in your area, the Human Rights Campaign, GLSEN, and the Trevor Project. Re-post, share, or re-tweet their posts, when possible. When an organization that does similar work follows your page, be sure to follow theirs back.
- When you see someone “like” your social media post, invite them to follow your page, if the platform you are using allows you to do so (Facebook has this feature).
Engage with comments and promptly respond to questions. Make sure to moderate discussions to the extent that you can.
To stay on top of your social media objectives, develop a single content plan or editorial calendar of topics to post, which will include the timing of advocacy requests and key dates for desired outcomes. This can be a "skeleton" framework -- you can always add to it as time goes on. Allow enough flexibility to react to current events and topics the social community cares about. Your ratio of non-self-interested material to self-interested material should be roughly three to one.
Integrate and streamline social media efforts, while retaining an authentic presence on each platform. Meaning, don’t “spam” your users with the exact same content, but do consider opportunities to share key information across platforms easily. For example, you might post an article to your blog and automatically tweet that new content is there.
You’ll also want to integrate any online efforts with your offline efforts (printed materials, public relations, media outreach) to maximize success. Make sure you include social media reference points on printed materials, and promote content from printed materials online.
Monitor your efforts and tweak as needed. Remember to use the tools you have set up to monitor your traffic. Use Google Alerts, Facebook stats, and RSS feeds to stay informed and be responsive.
In Summary
Keep in mind that like all technology, social media is constantly changing and growing, and you will need to keep evaluating your social media plan to make sure that you are maximizing your reach and meaningfully engaging your audience.