In the final push preceding the health care vote last week, the Democratic National Committee’s “Organizing for America” Web site provided activists with health care talking points to encourage them to write letters to their local papers in support of the legislation.
The site even provided a comment box that gave people the opportunity to write directly to their local papers without leaving the site. They encouraged users to utilize the talking points just for informational purposes. “Do not use these points verbatim,” the site read in bold. “Your letter must be original and should focus on your personal views and experiences.”
Well, not everyone listened carefully to the instructions. Over the course of the next few days, newspapers across the country printed the talking points verbatim. In all, 72 newspapers reprinted the exact words from the campaign Web site.
While you could argue that this is really the fault of a lazy press (some already have), it is certainly an example of successful messaging for any organization interested in advocacy.
Here’s what Organizing for America did right:
1) They provided clear information to help activists write their letters.
2) They made it as easy as possible to write letters to their local editors. You will lose a lot of people if they must actually find the newspaper email address and pen a separate letter. The site provided all of that information for them, and even included an internal email system that would send people’s letters directly into the email box of newspaper editors.
3) They coordinated the campaign with other social media outlets. President Obama’s Facebook page directed activists to the online form and encouraged them to write letters.
I just received a mass email from a Web marketing firm (that shall remain nameless) offering their social media services. The subject of the email was “Social Media Do’s and Don’ts.”
If your boss ever expresses skepticism about using social media, sit them down and show them this video:
Here’s the list of sources where they get their numbers.
You’d better believe it, says Matthew Robson, a 15-year-old British lad whose paper on how young people devour media is being read by online marketers around the world. Robson wrote the report, How Teenagers Consume Media, while on a two week summer internship at Morgan Stanley.
After reading the young Brit’s report, most of the information is obvious: Kids don’t read newspapers, boys play video games, and no one uses the yellow pages anymore. But his comments about Twitter are what are making headlines. (more…)
While I’ve been taking notes and learning from the social media ventures of many organizations around the District, there has been nothing but radio silence from that old Washington institution, the American Enterprise Institute.
I visited AEI’s Web site a while back, and found a dated platform with no obvious plans to engage in social media outreach.
Imagine my surprise today when I received an email that proclaimed, “AEIOnline is now following you on Twitter!”
Say what?
I checked it out, and sure enough, there was AEI tweeting away. Even AEI’s President, Arthur Brooks, is firing off tweets from his own account. He’s using hashtags and everything!
Surely if they’re on Twitter, there’s a Facebook page floating around here, I thought. (more…)
Surprise! That Facebook fan page you built for your organization has totally changed, and it may have happened right under your nose.
If you’re like many organizations with a Facebook presence, you probably spent a day months (or years) ago carefully crafting your Facebook fan page to look like an institutionally approved multimedia brochure. Your blog’s RSS feed was automatically posting on the side panel; your YouTube videos were displayed handsomely in the center; and the description of your organization’s goals, policy positions and political philosophy were clear and brilliant. Anyone who clicked on your page was greeted with a clean, carefully crafted page. (more…)
The US Chamber of Commerce is taking a stand against card check legislation that would abolish the secret-ballot system currently in place for employees who are voting on whether to start a labor union. Regardless of how you feel about card check, take note: The Chamber is using some very neat social media strategies to get the word out that will work for any cause.
On their campaign Web site, the Chamber makes it incredibly easy for activists to rally around the cause by offering a simple form that users can fill out, which will send a letter that addresses the issue directly to their legislator.
But wait, there’s more! (more…)
Nicole Williams of the State Policy Network has launched New Media TV, an online channel for social networking gurus who work for policy organizations, think tanks and advocacy groups. The channel will feature experts who will lead video discussions and share tips on how to better communicate using new online tools.
The ATLAS Economic Research Foundation’s Jason Talley will kick things off for New Media TV with a discussion about Facebook fan pages, Twitter and the social networking aspects of YouTube. Viewers will be able to discuss the video in a live chat on the site.
The presentation will begin today (Friday) at 3:00 pm EST and will be archived for future reference.
For Web 2.0 experts who want to appear on New Media TV, contact Nicole Williams at will...@spn.org.
Last week, The Cato Institute placed a full page ad in many major newspapers with a statement that showed there is not full agreement among economists about Obama’s stimulus plan.
But long before the ink was ever set to paper, thousands of people across the country had already seen the ad, and were commenting on it and sharing it with friends online.
By making the ad available to bloggers before it ran in the papers, Cato was able to generate a media buzz long before our main product even existed. Most of all, we gave bloggers the opportunity to scoop old media giants like The New York Times. (more…)
