Social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and blogs are powerful vehicles in promoting legislative advocacy to a large audience. Your use of the social media platforms with your messaging shows that psychology students have a large voice and are active participants in protecting and advancing the profession. However, social media etiquette is important. Here are some tips and ideas to make good use of social media when visiting elected officials.
1. Keep your Tweets positive or neutral, even if you don’t share the same political view or agenda as the elected official that you visit. If the visits weren’t particularly positive for psychology, here are ways you can still share the work you did. Express gratitude for the person’s time Share that you personally lobbied them on a particular issue Acknowledge that more work needs to be done in your state. Tweets should be about policy, not political. The rule you learned as a child should always apply, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”
2. Know the Twitter username of the elected official with whom you are meeting. Most leaders have Twitter accounts or Facebook pages. You can find it on the official’s website or through a quick Google search. Use that username in your Twitter message. This is proper Twitter etiquette, and also gives the account holder a notice that he or she has been mentioned in someone else’s tweet. For example, “Had a great meeting today with @SenSmith and staff. He supports including psychologists in the Medicare physician definition!”
Or: “Joined colleagues this a.m. in meeting with @SenSmith's office to ask that he cosponsor S. 1064. I hope he does the right thing.”
3. Check in with the official’s office before you Tweet a message about your visit. It’s good etiq uette and relationship -b uild in g to let staff know th at yo u may use so cial med ia to sh are high lights of the visit. It also giv es th at office advanced notice, and th ey can lo ok fo r yo ur Tweets in case th ey want to sh are or retweet on th eir own sites.
4. Ask before you share a pho to of an official or sta ffers. Each leader’s office has its own policy for so cial media use. So me lik e to retweet and sh are photo s and messages fro m th eir co nstituents. Oth ers p refer to only push out h ead lin es or key messages an d n ot retweet messages from visitors. Tak e time to lo ok at th e office’s Twitter page befo re your visits an d get a feel for how the o ffice uses social med ia. Wh ile elected officials typically aren’t camera-shy, staffers gen erally aren’t used to hav ing photo s tak en , let alone shared on so cial media sites. Ho wev er, sharing photo s of yo u an d you r co lleagues outsid e the office or in fro nt of the build in g is a great way to hig hligh t yo ur visit and you r work. Yo u can p ost p hoto s to Twitter or Facebook to in crease engagement. Research has sh own th at Tweets with photo s get 18 percent more click s, 89 percent mo re fav orited , and 150 percent more retweets!
5. Use the best hashtag. If you are involved an advocacy campaign, use the commonly accepted hashtag for that campaign in all the messages you post about your legislative visits, so that others interested in this issue can easily search and follow related tweets. For example, #HCRis the hashtag about health care reform; #ChangeMentalHealth is part of a campaign to reduce stigmas and barriers to accessing care; and #StandforScience encourages continued support and funding for scientific research.
6. Keep your messages short fo r ma ximum retweeting po tential.Twitter lets you sh are u p to 140 characters. But research sh ows th at messages mo st lik ely to get retweeted an d sh ared are between 100-1 20 characters. Break yo ur thought in to 2-3 tweets if you need to exp ress so mething lengthier.
7. Tweet at APAGS (@APAGradStudents) and APA (@APA), a s well as oth er organizations and coalition that you want to either update or invite to sh are your message.
* * *For more advocacy tools, visit www.apa.org/apags/resources/advocacy/toolkit.aspx. APAGS adapted this document with permission from the APA Practice Organization. Special thanks to Angel Brownawell. Revised March 2015.
10/22/21
Boosting your advocacy message through social media
How to Advocate on Social Media 2
http://www.ala.org/advocacy/social-media
Getting Started on Social
Each platform serves a different audience and has its own strengths and weaknesses. It isn’t necessary to be active on all of the major platforms; simply tailor your message to the platform that works best for you.
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Follow
Elected officials have social media for the same reason they have phone numbers and email: they want to hear from their constituents. Take advantage of these convenient ways to engage with them. Share news and positive stories about your library, say thank you, or make suggestions for the future. By following them, you can track what issues your elected officials are prioritizing as well as upcoming events, town halls, and debates. Also, make sure to follow ALA! -
Follow-Up
Some elected officials use social media more than others. You might not get a response when you Tweet at your decision-makers or leave your elected officials a comment on their Facebook page, but your message still gets through. When you meet them in person, let them know that you’ve been interacting with them on social media. When they can connect the messages with the people sending them, they pay attention. -
Share
Social media’s interactive environment offers a low-cost way for libraries to mobilize supporters, foster dialog with large audiences, and attract attention to issues that might otherwise be overlooked by traditional media. If you're using action alerts to send messages to elected leaders, use social media to circulate your calls to action and share information with your community. -
Know Your Library's Social Media Policy
Before you start posting, make sure you know what content has been approved for social media. If your library is run by your county government, you will likely have guidelines or restrictions about what political speech can appear on your library’s pages. You may need to call on your community and other library champions to help you get the word out on their pages instead. The more voices that carry your message, the stronger it gets across.
Quick Tips
- Be concise: Keep your posts brief, with a clear call to action, and include a link to background information if necessary.
- Tags: Tagging your elected officials or community stakeholders can be an easy way to draw their attention to your campaign.
- Hashtags: If you create a hashtag for a specific event or campaign, take time to find out if anyone has used the hashtag before.
- Plan ahead: Knowing what you want to post, what you want to say, and when it will go live can help strengthen your message. Be mindful of campaign milestones you want to amplify and other events taking place in your community that might drown out what you are trying to say, and then plan your posts to coincide with or avoid them.
- Be creative: Social media platforms are creative spaces driven by highly visual content. Posts with graphics are more likely to show up in your follower’s feeds - and videos can be even more powerful.
- Balance your content: Be careful not to overload your followers with too many posts about your campaign. Even in the midst of a heated budget campaign, limit the number of posts to each social media channel. Aim for three posts about content for every one post about your outreach campaign.
- Create a response plan: Whether it is a public outcry over a book challenge or backlash over an event at your library, identify the people you will call on to mitigate the crisis ahead of time. Maintain a list of who should be notified and the steps you need to respond.
How to Advocate on Social Media
https://www.quorum.us/blog/ramp-up-social-media-advocacy/
The answer is twofold. First, advocacy must meet legislators where they are, using social media as a form of proactive outreach. Second, associations must post resources to social media, promoting issues and campaigns they care about.
Engage Legislators Online
If the lawmakers who are in a position to help you achieve your policy goals are active on social media, you need to engage there as well. With an active social media strategy, you can capture legislators’ attention and start a two-way dialogue. At least 270 national and state associations were retweeted by a member of Congress in 2018, which means these organizations’ voices were amplified to reach thousands of the legislators social media followers. And tweeting at lawmakers is just a start. You can also take a data-driven approach to advocacy by measuring their follower counts, engagement rates, and activities online. This analysis can help an organization target key influencers and maximize its audience reach.
Craft
Messages for Legislators to Share
Two ways legislators commonly use social media platforms are to share constituent stories and to present economic impact data specific to legislation or the lawmaker’s district. You can contribute to both of these conversations by sharing success stories that your association helped to foster. Maybe you share a data point about how legislation affects a city in the lawmaker’s district, or maybe it’s a positive message from the industry you represent or a constituent partner. Rather than asking the lawmaker for something, you can be seen as contributing to the policy conversation. Consider two recent major legislative debates: tax reform in 2017 and the January 2019 government shutdown. In both cases, personal stories and economic impact data were critical for legislators who messaged a policy stance using social media. In pushing for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Republicans consistently cited examples of organizations and individuals who stood to benefit from the new tax plan and in many cases the specific dollar amount they estimated would be saved under the new law. During the shutdown, Democrats shared the experiences of federal workers in their local districts who were furloughed, as well as the financial impact on hundreds of thousands of federal employees going without paychecks. Messages on social media will never replace face-to-face interactions between legislators and constituents, but you can stay a step ahead of national conversation by monitoring and participating in substantive policy debates already happening online. Make sure your association is using social media to engage actively with your legislative champions, and craft messages that are helpful to lawmakers who can spotlight your issue or campaign.