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The Highest Impact Grassroots Campaigns Do This

When you're asking constituents to weigh in with their elected officials, you must find a way to break through the noise. Members of Congress regularly receive thousands of messages per day. State legislators often receive hundreds per day. And even municipal officials can receive dozens. In today's short read, we show you how to get your message to stand out from the pack.

User Generated Video Is King In An Age of Short Attention Spans 

We live in an age of TikTok length attention spans. This means that video is now king for holding your audience's attention. Most grassroots campaigns rely on sending emails to elected officials. There is certainly a role for this. But when a policy-maker receives thousands of messages a day, you can be certain that the young staffers who almost always receive these messages are not reading many of them. Don't be fooled by your own attention span. Remember that this age group was raised online and has an alarmingly low appetite for reading.

So today, the most impactful medium for grassroots messages is user generated video (UGV). UGV allows constituents to record short, selfie videos, which software platforms then help deliver to elected officials. Think of it as a virtual lobbying day, where instead of dragging supporters to capitals, voters record a brief message in their own words with just a few clicks.

User Generated Video Drives Quality Communications 

Because UGV is in the real voice of actual voters, fewer videos go much further than email bombardments of legislative offices. UGV gets you out of playing the quantity arms race, and instead focuses on quality communications that are difficult for elected officials to ignore.

Modern grassroots software tools provide rich data sets to track the delivery of UGV, and even show you how long the recipient watches the video. Best practices for UGV campaigns include:

🔱  Talking points to help voters make their case.

🔱  Approval of messages before they get sent (to make sure everyone behaves in the video).

🔱  Close monitoring of all performance data to refine messages and targeting as the campaign unfolds.

The result is high-impact campaigns that leap out from the pack.

Three Ways To Operationalize This Email

🔱  Review your last grassroots advocacy campaign and check what mediums you used to deliver messages to policy-makers. 

🔱  Check if your current tools enable UGV.

🔱  Consider UGV in an upcoming campaign and think about what the most impactful messages are that advocates could deliver in their own voice.

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🔱  If you'd like to learn more about how to use UGV in your next campaign, contact us today.