Digital Strategy

This Guide for Digital Strategy will help you start integrating digital tools into the campaign and advocacy work you are already doing. The emphasis of this Guide is on basic understandings of the strategic use of social media, digital advocacy tools, and evidence-based insights in order to use them to help meet your campaign and organizational goals.

Additional tools and resources to support your work:

Digital strategy tipsheet
Tipsheet: The 11-point Guide to Get Started with Digital Tools
Quick tips to guide you as you go deeper in integrating digital tools into your work
Level up your digital strategy
Webinar: Level up your digital strategy
A review of best practices and approaches for creating and executing digital advocacy campaigns
Facebook for Organizing
Webinar: Facebook for Organizing
A review of best practices and approaches for creating and executing digital advocacy campaigns
Online to offline Campaigning and Organizing
Webinar: Online to Offline Campaigning and Organizing
Overview of the O2O Strategies model of integrating digital tools and in-person organizing
Using Instagram to tell stories that motivate action
Webinar: Using Instagram to tell stories that motivate action
Using evidence-based insights in combination with the Instagram platform to galvanize action-taking
Facebook Ad Basics
Webinar: Facebook Ad Basics
This resource is explicitly designed for someone just getting started with Facebook Ads
Twitter 201: Being intentional, getting strategic, building power
Webinar: Twitter 201: Being intentional, getting strategic, building power
How to move from being on Twitter to using Twitter to building organizational power
Digital for Recruiting and Retaining Supporters - Part 1
Webinar: Digital for Recruiting and Retaining Supporters - Part 1
How to incorporate digital tools and evidence-based insights into your work recruiting supporters
Digital for Recruiting and Retaining Supporters - Part 2
Webinar: Digital for Recruiting and Retaining Supporters - Part 2
How to incorporate digital tools and evidence-based insights into your work retaining your supporters for the long-haul
Twitter and Facebook 102
Webinar: Twitter and Facebook 102
Combines best practices for advocacy on Twitter and Facebook with evidence-based insights that galvanize action (originally presented for Virginia Conservation Network)
Facebook Ads for Growth
Webinar: Facebook Ads for Growth
Reviews a four-step approach to using Facebook Ads to continuously grow your email and fundraising lists
M+R Benchmarks 2021
Webinar: M+R Benchmarks 2021
M+R’s annual review of the state of digital in the non-profit sector
 
 
Check out more content on this topic in our Resource Library!

 

Key Points
  • You can’t do it all! Pick a few platforms and opportunities that best align with your organizational goals, theory of change, and resource assets/restraints.
  • Match platforms to your audience/constituency. Facebook, for example, continues to be used across demographics. TikTok skews very young. Know who your people are and choose the platform where they are.
  • Match platforms to your organizational goals. Story tellers and thought leaders should look to Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube. Organizers and campaigners should look to Facebook.
  • You can’t do it all – Part 2. Producing content can be daunting but content curation is rewarded on many platforms. And the more you build a unique voice with a defined theory of change, the more you’ll build an engaged audience.
  • Don’t get sucked into vanity metrics. Re-orient your metrics and key performance indicators towards campaign goals and wider power-building strategies. Seeking people? Track conversions to your email list. Seeking stories? Track stories shared or conversations generated.
  • Remember that the platforms control the algorithms. Always get off-platform contact info so you can reach people outside the control of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Do it by giving people multiple opportunities to take action on and off the platforms.
  • Powerful digital strategy augments your entire campaign or organizing cycle. There are digital tools that align with each step in your campaign or organizing process: base-building, leadership development, engagement, mobilization, absorption, and follow-up. 
  • Take advantage of the narrative capacity that many platforms offer. Building the identity and efficacy of your activists helps you bring in, mobilize, and absorb more of them. Tell stories using trusted messengers and be intentional about using tactics like legitimation rhetoric to help invoke self-efficacy.
  • Use your digital tools to augment turnout for your in-person events and meetings. For example, “Why I’m acting” videos help enforce the social norm of taking action and which promote turnout, while providing information on event logistics promotes self-efficacy and reduces flake rates among your confirmed attendees.
  • Use your digital tools to build connections and community among your activists and supporters. Provide digital spaces for your supporters to connect and find mutual support. They also foster trust, help enforce social norms, and build identity and efficacy. This is the glue of any online-to-offline work.
  • Use your digital tools to create a “surround sound” experience for your targets. Geofenced web ads, targeted Facebook ads, posting videos or testimonials to the pages of public and elected officials can all make sure your actions and demands are seen by decision-makers who "missed" you in person.