In my more than 20 years of experience in public policy on the national and local (DC) levels, I've determined that the most important elements of effective advocacy are hearing from people, understanding what is important to them; storytelling; understanding government; having a posse; and to keep learning.
The ways to do the work has changed over time. When I began as a policy analyst working on local children's issues in 1997, neither Facebook nor Twitter existed. Email and texting were not ubiquitous. What was important, and still is, are connecting with people, hearing their stories, and engaging them in solutions.
One important note: What's most important are the five buckets. The details are simply examples.
Finding ways to hear from people, to connect with them is essential. Some ways to do that include:
Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
Buffer
#Storify
Canva
Free pictures
Tune in May 10 for a look at tools for electeds, appointeds, and staff. In the meantime, take a look at the other posts already blogged.
The ways to do the work has changed over time. When I began as a policy analyst working on local children's issues in 1997, neither Facebook nor Twitter existed. Email and texting were not ubiquitous. What was important, and still is, are connecting with people, hearing their stories, and engaging them in solutions.
One important note: What's most important are the five buckets. The details are simply examples.
Hearing from people, understanding what is important to them
- Reading local newspapers
- Reading electronic discussion lists (Yahoo, Google groups)
- Reading blogs and discussion boards
- Attending meetings and listening
- Following group activity on Facebook
- Following journalists, electeds, bloggers, policy wonks, advocates, community leaders on Twitter
Storytelling
Storytelling is a useful way to share information. There are many ways to do this including aggregating information (#Storify), blogging, and writing a report or issue brief.
- Use a dashboard (such as Tweetdeck) to track your feed, mentions, searches, and scheduled tweets. Use Twitter to add GIFs.
- Use GIFs, emojis, photos, images (don't use too many at one time)
- Use hashtags (no more than two at a time)
- Free
- Engage in conversations
- Plan events
- Use images, videos, GIFs
- Post media reports, blog posts
- Free
- Connect with others, share information, ask questions
- Publish articles
- Join groups
- Free
Buffer
- If you are posting to multiple social media platforms, Buffer lets you do that easily and effectively, all at one time.
- Free
- Storify is a terrific storytelling tool. It allows users to pull content from all over the web―tweets, links, images, video.
- Local example: Summit: Broadband in the Northern Neck.
- Other examples: Community turns out in support of cleanup funding for Anacostia River and Kenilworth Park and The May 5, 2017 DC Register tweeted.
Canva
- Create images easily. There are what seems to be a gazillion free icons and photographs along with typefaces, design templates, pre-set sizes, and the ability to customize dimensions. There is also a tremendous selection of size and design templates from which to choose.
- Can download in .jpg, .png, PDF
- Free and paid
Free pictures
- Freeimages has more than 400,000 images available to use for free. The quality varies from professional to not. The search tool works well to narrow selections.
- Pexels photos are gorgeous. They are free and licensed under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license.
- Look for additional sites in the Medium post 10 "Must Go To" Sites For Free Images For Blogs and search many sites at one time on LibreStock.
Understanding government
- Get your hands on the government's org chart and informal/unwritten decision processes
- Figure out who does what. This isn't always obvious, so ask!
- Get contact information for electeds, appointeds, and staff
- Establish and maintain good working relationships
- Get a handle of what's going on―meetings, legislation, regulation, etc.
Have a posse
- Find a colleague (or two or five) who can be a sounding board, explain things, etc.
- This scene from Working Girl captures what the collaboration is like, for me at least.
Keep learning
- Your posse can help with this
- Read, read, read. Some of my must-read sources are Medium, Fast Company, and several international papers and websites.
- Watch. I watch vids and read articles on TED. YouTube is also a terrific source. Some of my favorite channels are 92nd Street Y, Harvard's Berkman Klein Center, Commonwealth Club, and National Constitution Center.
Tune in May 10 for a look at tools for electeds, appointeds, and staff. In the meantime, take a look at the other posts already blogged.