5 Tips for Getting Your Actions Noticed
Members of Congress and other legislators get hundreds if not thousands of letters a day. Congresspeople even have Legislative Correspondents (LCs), people whose job it is simply to read, report on, and respond to the messages that are received. Senators and Members of the House of Representatives use software to organize the messages sent by their constituents.
What can you do to keep messages about your issue from getting lost in the rubble? Here are five tips for getting your voice heard by the people in charge:
1. Target, target, target! If you’ve ever called your Member of Congress on the phone, you’ll notice that one of the first things you’re asked for is your zip code. This is because the office wants to make sure you’re a constituent. If you’re not, you’ll be asked to call your Congressperson directly. The LC, who receives all the email, will not even look at messages from people who are not constituents. If you want to make sure your messages aren’t trashed, you have to target.
2. Be clear: identify the issue and your position right away. The LC uses software to sort messages, usually by issue, and you want to make sure it gets in the right spot. It’s a good idea to identify the issue and your position in the subject line.
3. Contact legislators with a variety of methods. Encourage your supporters to not only send an email but also to call, send faxes, and use snail mail. Encourage volunteers to set up in-person or teleconference meetings with the legislators. They could hand-deliver letters or petition signatures for an even bigger impact.
4. Use different content for different legislators. If you are supporting a bill, you may not want to necessarily email every legislator asking them to support the bill. For instance, the legislators sponsoring the bill do not need to be asked to vote yes. It might be better to send them a message thanking them for supporting the issue and encouraging future legislation. You also might use different language for those whose voting history suggests they might be less inclined to vote in favor as opposed to those who are more likely to be on the fence.
5. Personalize: Let your supporters personalize the messages they sent. I suggest creating a subject line that clearly states the issue and your position and leaving that locked. Then encourage your supporters to tell stories about why this issue is important to them. Legislators want to know how the issues affect their constituents.
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04:07 PM Jan 06, 2011 -
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2011: Salsa's Big Changes Ahead
As incredible as 2010 was, we're expecting 2011 to really knock your socks off.
First, you'll want to know that the past year was a dynamic year of systems growth and radical change required to build the new foundation for a better, faster, and more scalable 2011. This year we will truly begin realizing the flexibility and capacity of the new Salsa Cloud hosting platform which we have been implementing behind the scenes.
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01:33 PM Jan 06, 2011 -
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2010: The Salsa Year in Review
We are so excited to ring in 2011 and have so many exciting new things planned that our entire community will benefit from. But first, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on an incredible 2010. We are grateful beyond measure to serve such an amazing community of organizers, fundraisers, campaigners and activists, from every corner of the U.S. and all around the world. The Salsa community has accomplished so much in the past year. We just wanted to say thank you.
(Read on for a sample of the year's many, many highlights)
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10:50 AM Jan 01, 2011 -
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Salsa Weekly Highlight: The best weekly highlights of 2010
Greetings, and Happy New Year!
It's the "Salsa Weekly Highlight," your quick hit on what's what in Salsa to help get the most out of your online program. As always, you can find plenty more news, updates, and conversation throughout the week on SalsaCommons.org.
We at Salsa Labs hope you and yours are enjoying a joyful holiday season. (And that you're using this crucial final week of the year to ask for donations.)
We're looking forward to another great year in 2011, and we can't wait to show you some of the new features we're cooking up. But as we bid an Auld Lang Syne to 2010, we thought it would be fun to revisit some of the Salsa releases we've spotlighted in the past twelve months.
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09:40 PM Dec 31, 2010 -
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6 Tips for Spicing Up Your Social Media Organizing
As 2010 ends and organizations prepare their engagement strategies for 2011, you cannot forget about the elephant in the room - social media.
Whether you're new to it, versed in it, or scared of it, social media needs to be a part of your engagement and organizing strategy. Here are a few key tips to help spice up your social media presence in 2011:
1. Make things shareable
As discussed in a
recent Salsa Third Thursday training and blog post, sharing IS the new Tell-A-Friend. This means if you have the opportunity to make content shareable, do it. Salsa has its
own sharing package that we support but there are other services out there that allow you to create easy ways for users to share your content on the social networks they're already spending time on. Most importantly, test out the sharing for yourself as a user when you install your share buttons on your content. The goal isn't just for one of your users to easily share the content to their Facebook wall, but for someone in THEIR network to easily be able to do the same. Think of it as sharing the shared item. This is how you can get your content in front of as many eyes as possible - usually people you don't even know. This is why its important to make sure that the item looks the same when someone shares the shared item as it does when you initially put it out there.
Remember though that slapping the "share" button isn't the only step to making smart, shareable content. You need to optimize your page and your share button in a way that makes people WANT to click that button and share. This might mean getting your hands dirty in the technical aspects of the page and sharing tool to make sure that the shared content item looks and feels like something people would want to share. An example might be making a donation page share button share content that says the user's name on the donation page or is phrased in a way that will entice others to click that shared content again.
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03:24 PM Dec 29, 2010 -
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