Deep Dive Breakout 3: Turning Thought Leaders into Advocates and Advocates into Thought Leaders

Thought leaders are the original influencers. How can you turn industry experts and organization leaders into powerful ambassadors for advocacy? And how can we help advocacy champions harness their engagement with lawmakers and their peers to emerge as thought leaders themselves? What are ways to use LinkedIn and other social platforms for thought leadership?

Speakers: Charlotte Selton (American Physical Society), Thea Zajac (The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society), Annmarie Pender (National Pork Producers Council), and Aislinn Quinn (Moderator – Association of Clinical Research Organizations)

Notes:

Strategies to refine champions and level up their game as thought leaders. (Each panelist answers the question with their personal story)

• Programs that pinpoint parts of their career.
• Specifcally for agriculture, people are normally born into this, there is never a lack of supply of people who want to help and improve the agriculture industry.
• Working with cancer patients and hearing their stories- how can they tell their story to lawmakers?
  • Messages to law makers, phone calls, legislator meetings, etc.
• Annual leadership meeting, CBD conference- many international students didn’t know this was something they can do/participate in. (this gives them an opportunity to).

Ways to connect industry experts to advocacy

• Align personal stories with policy decisions to create compelling and memorable narratives.
• Identify champions individual strengths and pair them with organizational polcy experts. 
• Find shared goals
  • Bringing folks into the fold and finding shared like minded goals. Come on down to advocate! 

How do you move an advocate up the ladder? How can they rise to that level?

• Sample influencer track
  • College student scholarship program
  • Professional state level education initiative 
  • Competitive year long leadership training
  • Seat on organization board of directors 
    • Baseline- finding people who are interested in areas that relate to your organization
    • Competitve- meaning there is a selection 
    • Being exclusive- makes folks more intrigued
    • Incentive for folks to apply to these programs- finding the right demographic of people who will want to apply
      • Giving folks something they dont already have access to
      • Idea- choosing folks out of the same tier
  • Creating awards-
    • Giving to a handful of folks who actually authored a report back in 2016.
      • Recognize top leader BUT also top grassroots email advocates
      • Giving out awards gives you the opportunity to write about the award/ ways other folks can be recognized
    • Collaborating with certain units
      • Give award to people who have collaborated with you in the past
    • Giving digital ver. of the award- so they can share it
      • Through email
      • Mailing a letter, giving small amounts of merchandise
  • Meet people where they are
    • Invite advocates to build lawmakers relationships
    • Highlight advocates as speaker
    • They can be the speaker mindset

Empowering advocates that they are the specialist and what that success can look like

• Offer trainings and resources
  • Presentation
  • Media
  • LinkedIn
  • Advocacy and Grassroots 101
  • Subject matter experts
  • Message guide
• Grasstips Program
  • Folks were bandwidth strapped- not enough time!
  • Reaching out to folks who were already volunteer leaders for reccomendations on who can join
    • Recommendation from leaders to nomintate them as leaders 
• Elevate advocate stories
  • Finding folks who want to share their story- help them to share it!

How can you ut your advocate out and promote them

• Paid
  • Advertisitng 
    • Sponsorships (pay to play)
    • Promo posts
    • Google search
  • Owned
    • Humanize advocates
      • Webinars
      • Emails
      • Videos
      • Podcasts
      • Testimonials
  • Earned
    • Media relations
      • Press releases
      • Interviews 
      • Op-ed
• Letter to editor campaign
  • Coached grasstop members
    • Write about certain topics and tie to presidential budget
    • Gave members an opportunity to speak about thier research
• Using different perspectives 
  • Bring together different perspectives with access to different audiences
  • Tap social network for cross promo
  • Utalize a variety of mediums (Podcast, blog, social posts, newsletter, short form video, quotes, industry and national media)

How do you personalzie engagements wih advocates when you dont have the bandwidth to?

• Works smarter not harder
  • Develop an SOP
  • Cross-functional support
  • Editorial calendar
  • Resource guide
  • Continous improvement 
• Asynchronous and flexible training
  • Recorded trainings
  • Drop ins QAs 
  • By appointment office hours
• Peer mentorship 
  • If a volunteer can do it- let them do it! 
    • Call on volunteer leaders to coordinate grassroots tactics
    • Rely on seasoned volunteers to support new volunteers
• Mutli-level leadership
  • Support from both staff and peer leaders
  • Interest levels
    • In person meetings, zoom meetings, collabs on sharepoint

Questions: 

• Success stories- advocates who have become champions?
• Advocate of the year program?
  • Think about simple graphics they can use on their own platforms!