One
Voice
Advocacy in a Social Media Age
Advocacy ...
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By Ami Schnauber, vice president, advocacy and public policy
C
an you count your legislative representatives among your friends on Facebook?
Do you follow them on Twitter? Do they follow you? Does this all just sound
crazy to you?
The fact is, more and more, people – even legislators – are turning to social media
to connect, communicate and get information. If you aren’t utilizing social media
platforms to connect, start conversations and advance advocacy messages, then
you’re missing a big opportunity.
Our partners at Phone2Action, developers of the
advocacy platform we use, have done extensive research
into the use of social media by lawmakers. Phone2Action
is a civic engagement platform that connects advocates
directly to their public officials, allowing them to easily
voice their opinions on policy matters.
For the past two years, LeadingAge NY has
utilized an online advocacy platform that
allows texting, Facebook posting, and emailing
directly from your cell phone. This new tool has
allowed advocates to text a few specific words
to a number and instantly be connected to our
advocacy campaigns.
The advocacy platform has proved popular. This
year alone, advocates generated more than 2,200
e-mail messages to 253 legislators. Well done!
The largest number of letters were related to the Governor’s proposed minimum
wage increase. Our advocacy efforts ultimately led to a modified minimum wage
increase that: 1) included a slower implementation of the increase; 2) respected the
different economies in the upstate and New York City regions by providing wage
differentials; and, 3) included Medicaid funding to offset the costs to non-profit
health care providers. We were also successful in securing capital funding for
development of independent senior housing.
As always, we didn’t get everything we wanted, and I often wonder what more we
can do to advance our advocacy efforts. Analysis of data from our recent budget
advocacy efforts makes it clear that we can do much better on the social media
advocacy front.
While we collectively sent thousands of e-mail messages, we didn’t do so well, in fact
we did terrible, with Twitter and Facebook messaging. This budget season, only 14
Twitter messages and 4 Facebook messages were sent.
The lack of a social media presence on our advocacy issues is disappointing because
it is a significant lost opportunity. Facebook and Twitter have a multiplier effect that
email does not. An email that was sent to a lawmaker is a single message, a Twitter
or Facebook message will be liked, reposted, retweeted or commented on by a
number of your friends, then their friends, then their friends …. Get that same post
on the lawmaker’s Twitter or Facebook feed and you’ve started a conversation among
the lawmaker’s followers. That is powerful!
Our partners at Phone2Action, developers of the advocacy platform we use, have
done extensive research into the use of social media by lawmakers. Phone2Action is
a civic engagement platform that connects advocates directly to their public officials, allowing
them to easily voice their opinions on policy matters. Here are some of their findings:
•
Except for the most rural districts, Congressional seats covering large geographic areas
use social media as well as urban areas.
• A regular citizen can start a policy conversation with almost half of Congress right now,
simply by going to their Facebook or Twitter page and asking a question.
• Local elected officials have much smaller audiences than Congress, but they’re
significantly more responsive directly to citizens online; 80% will get back to you
personally via social media.
New York’s lawmakers are taking full advantage of social media platforms. In fact, out of the
382 lawmakers from New York, 318 have social media accounts, all of which can be accessed
through our on-line advocacy tools, powered by Phone2Action.
• Every one of New York’s 29 members of Congress (27 House members and 2 US
Senators) use Facebook/Twitter.
• Out of the 213 State Lawmakers, 183 use Facebook/Twitter.
• Governor Cuomo is on Facebook and Twitter.
• 90 local lawmakers (mayors, etc.) in New York utilize Facebook/Twitter
The State Assembly and the State Senate are both on