Deep Dive Breakout 3: The People’s Megaphone: Connecting with Lawmakers through Social Media

Social media continues to be among the most important instruments in surround sound advocacy. How do you build social media content to get lawmaker’s attention? What are some successful examples of lawmaker engagement on social media that we can learn from? What are comms directors looking for when interacting on social media?

Erin Fernandez, Children’s Hospital Association
Margaret Hsiao, Western Governors University
Talia Schmidt, Association of American Medical Colleges
Amanda Hooper, Feeding America (moderator)

Notes:

• Audience Poll: Who works with social media daily?
  • Majority of the group!
• Strategies for reaching lawmakers and their staff through social media and navigating different platforms
  • Every comms office is different – understanding their types of content and timelines, sometimes only needing a few weeks notice to participate in campaigns
    • Also chatting about other interest areas besides the main focus of why you are there – in the business of building relationships! 
    • Learn which comms directors are on which social platforms
  • Video (always include captions!), Twitter Chats, and Toolkits – all great ways to reach staff
    • Storytelling is key – videos, in particular, are great for this
    • Unbranded content often outperforms branded content
  • Planning events is great for both interaction and content for social media
• Targeting on changing social media platforms
  • Many companies do not allow the use of TikTok (and Threads) for privacy issues
  • Hashtags are important – make sure they are clean and unique, so no one else is using them, ensuring accurate KPIs for your data
  • Audiences across different platforms vary greatly – cannot make one set of content and copy for all platforms
    • i.e. CHA focuses a lot on Instagram, Hill meetings focus on Twitter/X, and less energy on Facebook
      • But knowing their audiences is important – Facebook sees a lot of the “mom groups” for CHA
  • Testing different types of content
    • Creating 15s, 30s, and full-length versions of the same video content
    • LinkedIn saw greater metrics with video content over still images, despite it being the same story from the same advocate 
  • Platform Algorithms
    • Understanding the algorithms and working with reps from the platforms can be really helpful 
    • Recent IG algorithm changes to prioritize smaller creators (i.e. Speak Now for Kids has ~1500 followers but saw great metrics) and using Reels creates great impact
    • Can find in the dashboard the followers coming in from ads vs coming from organic posts
      • Sharing other accounts’ content can boost engagement (i.e. CHA sharing Sesame Street content)
    • LinkedIn right now prioritizing paid content over personal 
  • Content Strategies
    • People follow people, not corporations; have a personality to humanize your brand
    • 50/50 invest in promotional resources & creating the content itself
      • Do A/B testing of graphics and variations of social copy to see how each performs, and reallocate the money into the well-performing ones
    • Double usage of hashtags?
      • I.e. “hijacking” hashtags and groups blowing up a hashtag with opposite content
      • Have a backup hashtag prepared – it is always good to have someone in charge of crisis work with the vendor to clean up the hashtag.
• Recent case studies in effective social media strategies
  • AAMC Day of Action – virtual Twitter campaign
    • Provide toolkits (with and without logos, as without the logo are generally used most)
    • Asked for personal stories, interaction
    • 7 MoCs participated, one partnership Representative helped spread the toolkit to her coalition and members 
  • Moments where people can connect with data are the most successful content strategies 
  • Nation vs state wide tactics
    • Sometimes, state and smaller community efforts can be more successful
    • Finding community groups on FB and NextDoor
  • Understanding your demographics
    • i.e. FB tends to be in the older age bracket, skews toward more women
  • Encouraging employees to engage with content on social but also make content of their own and share their stories without it being on the organization’s channels
  • Tying in hashtags/content with timely events
    • i.e. TeamCHA with TeamUSA for the Olympics 
    • When you see viral trends, think about how you can tailor them to your organization!
      • With successful engagement, leadership may warm up to future and fun ideas
      • “piloting ideas” phrase to use for pitching these
      • One “YOLO” tweet per month – just shoot the shot with a good idea, sometimes just doing it and [potentially] asking for forgiveness can be a strategy; approval can take longer, and much easier to say no versus something that is already posted and creating engagement 
      • It is OK to let more apprehensive colleagues try other methods and be less successful; sometimes “failing” is the only way for some people 
  • Visuals should  match messaging – with more “boring” or difficult topics, still want punchy content if possible, but the visuals matching the brand and messaging is more important 
• Identifying constituents on social
  • Provide as much as can in a toolkit to make it easiest to share
  • You can even “make up” an event to celebrate and get MoCs and constituents involved
  • Getting in-person and virtual participation to tie in those who can’t come
  • Collecting content from constituents 
    • Dropbox for a large collection
    • Some resharing directly on social