Planning an Advocacy Campaign
Like with any campaign, an advocacy campaign requires proper planning and preparation with careful attention to detail throughout.
Although these steps can be modified per the particular needs of your organization, they are a good guide to help introduce advocacy campaign planning.
If you want to effect change, you need a great plan for your advocacy campaign. Start with these five steps.
Set a Goal
You won’t be able to get very far if you don’t have a goal guiding your efforts.
Advocacy campaigns have the capacity to accomplish numerous feats, but they cannot accomplish such feats if you have no underlying benchmarks driving your work.
Define Your Message
If ten people are saying ten different things, your potential supporters won’t know who they’re supposed to support.
You have to present a unified front when it comes to campaigning. That front begins with a clearly defined message. The message will be largely influenced by the goal you set in step one.
Build a Team
The goal is for the advocacy campaign to spread, but it needs to start with a dedicated team.
Find the right people to spread the word and carry out the work laid out by your goal setting.
Create a Timeline
Just like you need a goal to act as your navigator, you need a timeline to ensure you accomplish your aims in a reasonable scope of time.
Make sure you assign checkpoints throughout the period so you can measure progress.
Develop Communications & Activities
Steps one through four need appropriate communications and activities to take them from theory to action.
Between online and offline methods, you should be able to carry out your plans for a successful advocacy campaign.
Advocacy and Social Media
With the growth of social media, it’s no surprise that it has come to play such a pivotal role in advocacy campaigns.
Honestly, if you’re looking to start an advocacy campaign, you have to include social media. It’s a must.
Social media is not only cost effective, it’s effective-effective. It has to be a part of your next advocacy campaign if you want to reach a large audience that is ready and waiting to help.
Why Advocacy Pairs Well with Social Media
Social media is filled with online communited primed to jump into action
Online petitions make social media advocacy campaigns actionable and are easily sharable
The right use of social media can get your campaign the best kind of publicity
It's proven that social media activism translates into tangible results