Boosting your advocacy message through social media

 Using Social Media for Advocacy and Legislative Visits 

www.apa.org/apags/resources/advocacy/toolkit.aspx. 

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.