New Realities in Online Advocacy
Email is not dead, but it is becoming less effective as people shift to other online communications channels. Campaign websites are not a waste of space, but they are no longer the center of the universe for gathering activists. This is the new online world, a dispersed world where instant messaging, social networks, and SMS text messaging are the new hot communication channels and social networks, blogs, and social media websites are where people gather online.
Given this changing landscape, internet advocacy strategy can no longer be fixated predominantly on building email lists and driving traffic to our own website. Granted, these goals remain important, but their importance is diminishing in relative terms. But given the changes in how people are living online, an effective internet advocacy strategy must be broader in scope.
Think of your online audience in a series of concentric circles, with our super activists in the center, our action alert subscribers in the next ring, our website(s) and newsletter reading audiences in the next, progressives among the mass online audience next, and the general online population in the outermost ring. To be effective at creating a progressive movement, all audience rings must be mobilized to some degree. And the vast majority of those we need to build relationships with will never come to our website(s), let alone subscribe to our email lists.
In the end, the goal is to evolve your thinking from just having a list of activists we can order to march to a community of progressives that are as likely to initiate their own progressive activities to a broad-based progressive movement that is grounded in a progressive life-style. Transcending our vision from managing a list to cultivating a community to forging a movement requires that we create an environment where people internalize their personal stakes in progressive issues. Once they feel that progressive activism comes from within themselves and not at the beckon call of some organization, people become a force that we can lean on to provide the political momentum and provide political cover to our leaders when they need to make bold progressive policy changes.
Specific Implications
We know that the early years in a person’s political life are formative. If they vote for the same party in their first three elections, they are likely to vote that way for their entire lives. Similarly, views on issues are formed in these early stages. Thus, an effective long-term strategy for creating a progressive movement depends on effectively penetrating the mind-sets of younger citizens, as well as educating older citizens.
While email is the preferred channel of communication for older citizens, those who are, for the most part, already set in their world view, younger citizens often prefer to communicate via their Facebook account; through their MySpace account; via Instant Messengers like AIM, Yahoo Messenger, Skype, etc.; and via SMS text messaging. If you try to reach people using email exclusively when they don’t like to use email, you cannot hope to make a lasting impression on them. At a minimum, you come across as disrespectful to their communication preferences. Similarly, if you insist on engaging people on your own website when they prefer to spend their online time on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and other social network and media sites, you will not be able to deliver your message and resources to the vast majority of people.
Thus you need a strategy that combines a member activation strategy inherent in email lists and, to a lesser degree, website readers with an engagement strategy that pushes your message, vision, and resources out into existing, growing, robust communities residing on other websites and communications networks than your own. This is the broader strategic approach you need to embrace in order to take full advantage of the evolving potential for online advocacy.