K Street Cafe

Come hear Adfero Group’s own Sue Zoldak and Purple Forge’s John Craig discuss how organizations are using Mobile apps to organize, mobilize and engage their target audiences in grassroots advocacy, lobbying and campaigning.

Are you currently using Mobile to reach your organization’s assets? Find out more and sign up here.

Date: Thursday, November 10, 2011, 6:00 p.m.

Location:
Adfero Group
1666 K Street NW, Suite 250
Washington, D.C.

Schedule:

6:00 – 6:30 Meet & Greet
6:30 – 6:40 Introductions
6:45 – 7:30 Sue Zoldak (Adfero Group) & John Craig (Purple Forge)
7:30 – 8:00 Q&A

(more…)

The Occupy Wall Street protesters are the latest high-profile example of how underdogs don’t use their positions as effectively as they could. 

I give the protesters credit for getting off their computers and on the streets. Research we conducted with hundreds of grassroots professionals found that getting their volunteers into the trenches was their No. 1 challenge.

I also give them  points for understanding that being the underdog can be an advantage in the business and political arenas, especially during an economic decline. That’s what my research found.  I interviewed more than 1,000 grassroots advocates and the senators, members of Congress,  state legislators and business leaders whose minds they changed for my new book, The Underdog Edge: How Ordinary People Change the Minds of the Powerful…and Live to Tell About It.  Based on those interviews and survey responses, we have uncovered the seven key extreme influence tactics required to persuade those up the food chain. Upward influence matters because it’s about the results, not just noise.

We usually support the underdog, but my research found that not all underdogs are created equal. If you want the advantage of the underdog mantle, you can’t have a huge amount of resources, so the protestors made a mistake when they allowed the members of more than three dozen unions to march with them. Successful underdogs have few resources and don’t squander their resources. Few in America view unions as resource-starved underdogs, so the sympathy factor is negated.  (more…)

By Kalee Miller and Caroline Sheedy of Adfero Group

With 800 million active users, Facebook has earned the title of most popular social network around the globe. At the f8 conference a few weeks ago, CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg announced some big changes, the latest in the site’s constant evolution. It’s hard for a lot of users to adjust to the new features and, for organizations using Facebook in advocacy efforts, it may seem like things are changing just as they were getting the hang of things. Despite the growing pains, Facebook is a valuable tool that can raise awareness and inspire action.  

Here are a few rules to live by:

1.       A Few Can Activate Many

Engagement, not number of fans, is key. On average, every time someone shares a link to your organization’s website on Facebook, two to five people will visit it. In any online campaign, it’s imperative to utilize social context. People care about what their friends are doing and are heavily influenced by actions. If you can show Facebook users that their friends “liked” or engaged with your page, chances are high that you can get them involved, too.  
So, now the question is, how? 

 
• Use Facebook Questions. Asking your fans a question leads to viral exposure. If you ask a question, it will appear on your fans’ newsfeed. If they answer or follow that question, their friends can also see the activity. This is also a good way to get direct feedback from your fans. 
• Use Facebook to live stream your events or town halls. Free tools like UStream allow you to broadcast your event to all of your fans. Also, if you use event materials to let people know they can tune in on your Facebook page, you are likely to get more fans.
•  Make everything you can an event.  All of your organization’s events should be shared on Facebook. You should also use this tool for virtual events or calls to action (i.e. “Call your congressman by noon today!”).  Again, this allows your fans’ friends to see their action, making them more likely to join in. (more…)

Many Americans are consumed with football in the fall.  But the budget and economic crisis has advocacy professionals obsessed with a slightly different group—the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction—or the ‘Super Committee.’

The Super Committee is charged with recommending how to reduce the U.S. deficit by at least $1.5 trillion over the next ten years, and has until Thanksgiving to do so. Committee members say comments from the public are being taken seriously (here’s the web form to prove it), though some of them are also limiting participation: for instance, Senator Baucus (D-Mont.) is not taking messages from any one who doesn’t live in Montana — even though the mission is national in scope.

The limited time frame for decisions and the committee’s difficult task makes advocacy especially challenging. What’s an advocacy group to do?

Hopefully, most organizations have plans in place to handle a sudden grassroots need. But if your organization was not quite as prepared as others, don’t despair. Even in this Internet age, all politics is still local. (more…)

New Media Guru Urges Tweeting at Super Committee
(Roll Call)
Former Capitol Hill vet and communications agency president Patrick Hynes encourages citizens to utilize Twitter (along with Facebook and YouTube) to make sure the debt #supercommittee hears their ideas.

A Few Details About the Upcoming Twitter Analytics (MediaBistro)
Measuring your social media impact is more important now than ever: here are some tips on what to expect from Twitter’s new tool.

New Crowdfunding Site Promises to Be a Kickstarter for K Street (TechPresident)
Upcoming website YouLobby allows activists to pitch their campaign and accumulate donations. But will the idea sink or swim? You decide.

Gallup: Aim Social Media Marketing at Loyalists, Not Prospects (ClickZ)
According to Gallup analysts, “Since marketers are less likely to engage prospects directly through social media, they should encourage or guide their current customers to advocate on their behalf instead.”

This Is Why You Have No Friends (ClickZ)
We all know that quality is better than quantity when it comes to friends (and even Facebook fans.) But advocacy organizations still need to have a significant fan base in order to promote their messages and inspire people to act. Gary Stein explains how to become more popular on Facebook.

How Social Media Transformed a Nonprofit Medical Professional Society (The Nonprofit Quarterly)
How one organization successfully built a community of followers by shifting their media strategy.

With ‘We The People,’ White House Promises to Go E-to-the-People (TechPresident)
The White House is launching a petition tool on WhiteHouse.gov. But will it accomplish its goal of making the government ‘more open and accountable to its citizens?’

9 Tips for Building a Facebook Fan Base From Scratch (PR Daily)
How to take advantage of free tools and lean on your already-established presence.

Twitter Grows Public Policy Team With Former FCC Staffer Colin Crowell (techPresident)
Twitter and Facebook are both adding former Congress staffers and policy makers to strengthen their corporate team.

How to Create a Facebook Fan Base to Drive Social Advocacy (ClickZ)
Check out this free white paper from ClickZ, which will give you a better understanding of brand marketing and an approach for understanding the value of earned and paid impressions in a social context.

Cross-posted from Adfero

We’re living in a mobile age. You can’t walk down the street without bumping into someone on their smart phone. And now with the stunningly fast growth in sales for iPads, people are spending less and less time at their actual computers.

Wired magazine famously declared last year that “The Web is Dead.” In the article, Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff argue that we’re abandoning the web for sleeker, simpler services. They say that “these dedicated platforms often just work better or fit better into [people’s] lives (the screen comes to them, they don’t have to go to the screen).” People are no longer interested in seeking. They are interested in getting.

In today’s world, people are constantly on the go. And so naturally, staying connected and receiving information happens on the go as well. In fact, a recent study by Flurry found that people are now spending more time on mobile apps than they are on websites.  Consumers in June spent 74 minutes per day on websites compared with 81 minutes using applications. That’s a growth of 91 percent over the past year. The data speaks for itself: mobile apps are crucial in reaching audiences.

So what does this mean for advocacy? Web sites alone will no longer cut it. Sure, your online Grassroots Action Centers and the Web tools you employ for grassroots action (for example, providing the opportunity for your activists to send emails directly to Congress) should remain part of your overall advocacy strategy. But you have to look beyond the Web now. (more…)