1. Social Advocacy for Breakfast
with Alan Rosenblatt

2. Social Advocacy for Breakfast
Alan Rosenblatt, Ph.D. (@DrDigipol)
arosenblatt@americanprogressaction.org
April 21, 2012

3. Social Advocacy for Breakfast
Dimensions of digital communication strategy
1-D 2-D 3-D
Information Action Community
One-way Two-way All-way
Communication Communication Communication
Audience Interacts Audience Interacts Audience Interacts
with Information with Campaign, with Each Other
Organization, or
Government
Email Lists & Transactional Social Networks &
Brochure Websites Websites (Information Social Media
(Broadcast & Exchange, Donations, (Grassroots &
Narrowcast) & Action) Grasstops)

4. Social Advocacy for Breakfast
Sherrington’s dog
 Sir Charles Sherrington (1904)
 Pressure points
 Stimulus
 Threshold
 Multiple pressure points
 Sub-threshold
 Additive summation
 Whole > Sum of the parts

5. Social Advocacy for Breakfast
The way things were
Campaigns email Activists send Congress gets
activists (very email to the email (but no
few forward it) Congress one knows for
sure)
• Email is a closed communication loop
• Email was the only online channel to reach Congress

6. Social Advocacy for Breakfast
The way things are now
Campaigns email Activists sent to Activists send Congress can’t
activists & email/petition page, email to Congress ignore because
promote on social twitter petition, & msg via social the world can see!
media Facebook wall, etc. media

7. Social Advocacy for Breakfast
 It’s all about…

8. Social Advocacy for Breakfast
It’s true: social media can reach the grassroots

9. Social Advocacy for Breakfast
But more importantly: social media reaches influencers
• Traditional influencers
• Press
• Policy Professionals
• Policymakers
• New influencers
• State/issue bloggers, organizers, e-newsletter editors
• Social network influencers
• Influencers extend & enhance your influence (trusted 3rd party validation)

10. Social Advocacy for Breakfast
Size isn’t everything

11. Social Advocacy for Breakfast
Engagement is everything

12. Social Advocacy for Breakfast
 Growing your…

13. Social Advocacy for Breakfast
Get followers, then deepen your connection
• Connect – Follow people you want following you
• Following people who tweet about the same topics as you
creates a 15-30% chance they will follow you back.
• Engage – Reply to people you want following you
• Not everyone notices who follows them, but everyone notices
who mentions them. Reply w/ information & links you know will
interest them. Ask questions & converse.
• Recommend – Retweet/#FF followers you want
• Recommend people you want following you to your followers by
retweeting them & w/ #FF (Follow Friend).
• Repeat – Repeat steps 2 & 3 after they follow you back to deepen
your connection.
• Remember, it is about exchanging VALUE

14. Social Advocacy for Breakfast
Find influencers to follow – Directories
• Directories of influential tweeters
• TweetProgress.us - Progressives
• WeFollow.com – Keyword &
location
• Tweetbe.at – Keywords
• TwitterStates.com – Location
• Listorious.com – Twitter Lists
• Use directories to search for people
to follow
• Register on the directories so
people find you

15. Social Advocacy for Breakfast
Find influencers to follow – Drilling down into Twitter
Find an issue expert
• Follow who they follow
• Follow their followers
• Follow their lists
• Next iteration

16. Social Advocacy for Breakfast
Clean your list – Unfollow dead weight
• Twitter limits
• Until you have 2,000 followers, you can only follow 2,000
• Beyond that, you can follow 15% more than follow you
• Purge followers to maintain room to grow
• People who don’t follow you back (unless they are interesting)
• People who never retweet others
• People who SPAM, shills, etc.

17. Social Advocacy for Breakfast
Find dead weight to unfollow
• TwitClearner.com is a tool to
find dead weight
• Log in and run report
• Review report and unfollow
dead weight

18. Social Advocacy for Breakfast
 Targeting…

19. Social Advocacy for Breakfast
Finding government on social media

20. Social Advocacy for Breakfast
Twitter petitions: Act.ly

21. Social Advocacy for Breakfast
Anatomy of a tweet – Targeting a senator
.@ChuckGrassley read our report on repealing #DADT (http://bit.ly/dadt)
& vote FOR Defense Auth Bill. FYI @desmoinesdem @OneIowa #IA
#p2
•140 characters is enough
• 9-second soundbyte
• Syllogisms
• Links to more content
• Haikus
•3 ways to make a link in Twitter
• @mention, #Hashtag, URL
•Example: targeting a Member of Congress
• Trackable link to measure click throughs
• Use key audience hashtags
• Alert watchdogs on Twitter

22. Social Advocacy for Breakfast
Targeting by hashtag
• How often is it used?
• Busy – Large audience, lots of
noise
• Moderate – Best hashtag
• Slow – No audience
• How many people are using it?
• Many people – Big public
conversation
• 1 or 2 people – Private
conversation
• What is the ratio of RTs:Tweets?
• Ideal for network effect

23. Social Advocacy for Breakfast
 Measuring…

24. Social Advocacy for Breakfast
Metrics of success
• Audience engagement
• You want RT, #FF, shares, comments, likes & 1+
• Audience quality & size
• You want influencers, press & policymakers
• Driving traffic to your website & email lists
• You want clicks & views

25. Social Advocacy for Breakfast
Measuring influence

26. Social Advocacy for Breakfast
Measuring your reach on Twitter

27. Social Advocacy for Breakfast
Monitoring social media

28. Social Advocacy for Breakfast
Measuring URL clicks

29. Social Advocacy for Breakfast
A word on Pinterest

30. THANK YOU!
To follow up with the speaker:
Alan Rosenblatt, Ph.D.
arosenblatt@americanprogressaction.org
@DrDigipol
@HaikuProgress
DrDigipol.Tumblr.com
BigThink.com/blogs/Digital-Politics
YouTube.com/DrDigipol
Presentations will be available at www.ncrc.org/conference
by
April 30, 2012