Advocacy

Here at The Campaign Workshop, we always stress the value of storytelling with strong visuals in political and advocacy advertising. In other words, using photos or footage of authentic people looking straight into a camera and speaking candidly about things they’ve experienced, makes communications materials more compelling. There’s far more potential to persuade folks through testimonials than there is through wonky policy white papers – the question is, why?

No matter how many advocacy campaigns you have done, people will always have a ton of questions about advocacy metrics to judge how successfully those campaigns were run, and if they were effective.

Video storytelling is an “it” topic in advocacy and advertising circles. The strategy of delivering a story in the digital age that will get people to engage seems to be the latest goal for many nonprofits. But how can you do it in a consistent, scalable way that achieves your goals? Here are our tips to make an impact with advocacy video storytelling:

Digital advocacy in Trump’s America means (for many of us) a near unending need for Trump photos. Unfortunately, buying rights managed photos of our fearless Commander in Cheeto means running up an epic tab pretty darn quickly. But fear not (at least with regard to photos… I can’t make any promises regarding the rest of what’s going on at this point) – compelling photos of Trump are still available to those of us who don’t have deep pockets and an unlimited Getty account.

According to Mirriam Webster, advocacy is defined as the act or process of supporting a cause or proposal. In the time I have worked, the process of supporting causes has changed. From needing lobbyists to meeting with legislators, all the way to how we promote causes, a lot has changed.

In our last blog post, Digital Advocacy: Advertising Campaign Goal Setting Part I,  we talked about how to develop digital advocacy strategy, cost per acquisition (CPA) campaigns, email programs and the best ways to utilize ad testing. In today's post, we take a closer look at using tactics like paid digital advertising, social media and analytics for digital advocacy. You can also read more about this in our latest ebook, Guide to Digital Advocacy.

Kevin Simowitz is the National Field Director at Caring Across Generations and an expert on advocacy storytelling. He has worked on political and grassroots organizing campaign across the country. Kevin was nice enough to answer six question about advocacy storytelling. Here are his thoughts on using advocacy to get your story out.

List building for nonprofits is extremely important. These are people you can turn to for donations, taking action on your behalf, volunteering, and more. When list building, it’s important that you follow a few best practices. This will ensure you’re getting the best possible supporters and doing so in the best possible way.

Legislative Advocacy is important because there comes a time in everyone’s life when they have to take a stand. While this moment is always more dramatic in the movies, it’s possible that you’ve come to this realization regarding a particular policy or issue in your locality. And if you’ve decided that you want to make a change in policy and advocate for your issue in your local legislature, it’s time for a little Legislative Advocacy 101.

The lion’s share of your political or advocacy campaign will be spent on message development and saturation. But as Election Day looms, you’ll have to start focusing your efforts on get out the vote/ GOTV. While you should make sure to include the rest of your online platforms in your GOTV efforts, a good place to start is social media. Not surprisingly, it’s a great digital platform for social pressure. You can use social media in a few ways to encourage your target audience to vote.