Weaving the Roots

How to Maximize Your Social Media Impact

William T. Hennessy

• Publisher: Broadside e-books
• Year: 2011
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9780062112965
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

New from Broadside Books' Voices of the Tea Party. In Weaving the Roots, you'll learn how even tiny grassroots organizations can make big impacts on the world through smart use of free or inexpensive social media tools.

First you'll learn the major tools, like Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, Google Buzz, blogging, talk radio, and SMS text. How they work, how they work together, and how you can maximize your impact with a small team.

Next, you'll explore five key activities for social networking and which tools work best: recruiting, informing, activating, advocating, coordinating

Finally, you'll find out the science behind social media. You'll get answers to questions that many don't know to ask, like what time of day to tweet or post on Facebook, which day of the week is best for which social channel, and how to announce an event to get lots of attendees without lots of time-consuming questions.

Weaving the Roots

A Setback and a Near Win

Twice I drove past the St. Louis office of U.S. senator Claire McCaskill looking for a parking spot. A small crowd of MoveOn.org supporters with signs had already gathered on the sidewalk in front of McCaskill’s office on Delmar Boulevard, next door to the Nubia Café.

I found a spot one block east and across the street from the protest zone. I grabbed my video camera and my cell phone, sent one last Tweet asking Tea Partiers to join our counterprotest, and stepped into the bitterly cold January air.

“I guess we’re it,” said Patch Adams, who’d been waiting in his car a few yards away.

“Really?”

I was worried about being late, yet I was only the second Tea Partier on the scene. Forty minutes later, well into the protest, a handful of our Tea Party faithful had arrived. Our tiny team gathered in the median in front of McCaskill’s office. Two Tea Party videographers—Doug Edelman and Patch Adams—interviewed the hundred or so MoveOn.org protesters.

For the first time since the February 27, 2009, Nationwide Chicago Tea Party Protest, St. Louis Tea Party Coalition members were dwarfed in number by leftists.

That same week in Illinois, a very different story was unfolding. Our Tea Party group had a role in that story, as well, because a number of our members live and work in the three counties in Illinois that border the Mississippi River and indeed can be seen from the top of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.

In the Illinois primary, a Chicago businessman asked his Tea Party base for a surge of support. With just eight days remaining until the February 2 primary, Adam Andrzejewski (AND-jee-Eff-skee) was last in a field of seven candidates to replace impeached governor Rod Blagojevich. Andrzejewski’s race seemed hopeless.

Yet Andrzejewski’s election night surge was remarkable. Though he came up short in the final tally, Adam shot from seventh to fourth place. As I blogged the following day, “Adam got an 11 point surge in the final 8 days of the campaign. With 16 days, he might well have won. . . . Our eye is on the prize: come November, we’re cleaning house in Washington. Don’t let anything curb your enthusiasm.”*

Later analysis revealed that Andrzejewski won Madison County, Illinois, with 48 percent of the vote, and Republican ballots outnumbered Democrats two to one. It was the first time since World War II that Republicans outpolled Democrats in Madison. According to Examiner.com, “Andrzejewski, who won in all three Metro-East Counties (Madison, Monroe and St. Clair Counties are part of the St. Louis, MO metropolitan area) won Madison County with 5,505 votes.”*

In other words, Andrzejewski dominated where St. Louis area Tea Party groups focused their attention.

Why did Andrzejewski surge while a counterprotest fizzled? Why were St. Louis area conservative grass roots more effective at traditional retail politics than we were at our core activity of street activism? Why did the same tools and methods and people work the week of January 26 but not the day of January 26?

This e-book answers those questions. Following some simple rules and lists for effective social media campaigning will spare you the embarrassment of an empty protest and arm you for victory in grassroots activism. By following these suggestions, even tiny grassroots organizations can make big impacts on the world through smart use of free or inexpensive social media tools.

Most people are familiar with or have even used the major tools of social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, blogging, and SMS text. How they work, how they work together, and how you can maximize your impact with a small team is a bit of a mystery to most. Based on years of use, trial and error, and study, I’ll help unravel a bit of that mystery for you.

While it may appear that there’s a certain amount of alchemy behind social media, you’ll find out that the effective use of these tools is more science than art. You’ll get answers to questions that many don’t know to ask, like what time of day to tweet or post on Facebook, which day of the week is best for which social channel, and how to announce an event to get lots of attendees.

What’s Not Included

The book will not include how-tos about registering and setting up individual tools such as Facebook or HootSuite accounts. The services themselves provide fantastic tutorials crafted by training experts to guide you through the inner workings of their software. Even more important, anything of that specific technical nature could be out of date long before you read it here or tried to apply it.

Instead, I will provide you with information about the key tools and how they work together to execute your organization’s strategy. After all, anyone can figure out how to create a Facebook fan page. The art is putting the right stuff together to make that fan page effective.

Neither is this book a tutorial on the effective use of digital video and photography. While the St. Louis Tea Party Coalition has made history with these tools, a full discourse on this subject, beyond the obvious maxim “It you didn’t capture it digitally, it didn’t happen,” is worthy of an entire book on its own.

A Web

It’s called “the Web” for a reason. It connects. People to people, people to machines, machines to machines. But mostly, the Internet connects people to people. In this e-book, we’ll explore the best blogs for honing your skills and for using science to increase your influence and reach online.

If you’re ready, then let’s start weaving together some ’roots.

Your Weapons

Remember this list:

Blogs (www.wordpress.com)

Facebook (www.Facebook.com)

Twitter (www.Twitter.com)

SMS (phone texting)

Email (www.mailchimp.com)

To that, add these tools:

HootSuite (www.hootsuite.com)

GroupMe (www.groupme.com)

The first list comprises the core social media tools you need to manage, grow, and fund your grassroots organization. The second list includes tools that work with or alongside the core tools to make your job easier and your work more effective.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• About Voices of the Tea Party
• Weaving the Roots
• Bibliography
• About the Author
• Also by Broadside Books
• Copyright
• About the Publisher
• Footnotes