Harnessing the Power of Social Media: A Grassroots Training for Antipoverty Advocates

On April 14, Half in Ten hosted “Harnessing the Power of Social Media,” an online training on how to leverage social media for grassroots advocacy. Alan Rosenblatt, Associate Director of Online Advocacy for the Center for American Progress Action Fund, shared how the antipoverty/economic opportunity movement can use media such as Twitter and Facebook to grow our audience, strengthen our capacity to respond to policy developments, and engage in new advocacy tactics with members of Congress. With the current political debates focused on the budget and deficit reduction, it has never been more important to find new and innovative ways to build the antipoverty movement and engage with members of Congress in new ways.

To this end, Half in Ten has developed resources and action steps advocates can take to stand up for low-income families and children in these important debates using social media.

Resources:

• If you missed the webinar or if you’d like to share it with your networks, you can download the complete recording and slides here.
• Alan Rosenblatt and his colleagues at the Center for American Progress and the Center for American Progress Action Fund have developed a guide to Twitter that includes strategy, tactics, and tips for making the most of your Twitter advocacy. To access the guide, click here. For more experienced Twitter users, get more tips with this Twitter 201 guide.
• Half in Ten has created a social media directory to facilitate connections among advocacy organizations and policy experts working to reduce poverty and create economic opportunity. By following one another and promoting each other’s work on social media, we can create an echo chamber on poverty and opportunity, reaching more people with timely communications and action opportunities. To add your organization to the directory, email [email protected].
• Learn more about the SAVE for All campaign, a coalition of more than 1,600 organizations committed to protecting vulnerable populations in the budget and deficit reduction debates. To sign onto SAVE’s statement of principles as an organization, click here.

Action steps:

• Engage with Half in Ten on social media by following us on Twitter, @halfinten, and “liking” us on Facebook.
• Tell us your story about how you have seen federal programs make a difference in the lives of real people, jobs, and communities. To submit your story, visit http://halfinten.org/grassroots/stories/submit.
• Half in Ten is putting out a tweet each day with a fact on the budget to raise awareness on the impact of cuts on vulnerable groups like low-income families, children, and seniors. Help us keep this campaign going by sending facts to [email protected] and retweeting us with the SAVE4All hashtag.