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Interview with Amy Showalter, founder of the Showalter Group Inc.
Editor's Note: Ms. Showalter helps organizations revitalize their grassroots advocacy and PAC programs. Her clients have included ConocoPhillips, the Dow Chemical Company and Southwest Airlines.
 How are social media being used by grassroots campaigns?
We see them used in several ways, the most visible being the recent protests in Iran. That was a grassroots awareness campaign. Social media have also been used long before that by very structured, established grassroots organizations to get the word out to their members about legislative developments, as well as to recruit and organize.
Where I’m seeing them being used most successfully is to provide information to an organization's members in real time and to recruit people for their grassroots network. I don’t think that social media do that much persuading; I think they're used a lot for preaching to the converted.
In addition, a lot of this was being done before the Obama campaign, it’s just that they really maximized them and used them on a very large scale. The Obama campaign is a very successful example, however, if I’ve learned one thing about grassroots organizing and grassroots influence, there’s never one thing that is responsible for grassroots success. I believe the media have focused too much on the social networking tools used by Obama supporters when that was one small piece of his success. David Plouffe of the Obama campaign admitted that, “Without the right candidate and strategy, you can have all the tools and tactics and they won't make a difference.”
What advice would you give to individuals who are trying to use social media for a grassroots network?
How much time do you have? My top pieces of advice are:
1.Know your end goal – social media are not the same thing as social capital. You can have all of the connections in the universe, but if those people aren’t willing to act on your behalf, it doesn’t matter.
I was reminded of this in a conversation with Betsy Vetter, director of government relations for the American Heart Association in North Carolina. She has learned that “the way you recruit someone is the way they will continue to be active. If you recruit online, that’s probably how they’re going to engage in the future.” And frankly, fair or unfair, online engagement is the lowest form of commitment. It simply doesn’t take the effort and time commitment as it does to meet with an elected official, to hold a small group meeting, etc. Even Newsweek, in their extensive post-presidential campaign series, revealed that in Florida, the Obama team was able to turn out 3 perecent of its e-mail list for on the ground volunteer work. That response rate is virtually the same as for a direct mail response rate.
2.You have to know your audience. For example, there are many powerful grassroots organizations such as the American Medical Association and other professional societies such as the American Society of Civil Engineers and the American Chemical Society that use these tools all with varying degrees of success. However, there are groups like the Lance Armstrong Foundation whose audience lends itself more to that type of communication. With the health care reform debate, many of the professional medical societies, who have always had strong grassroots organizations, are gearing up their social media machines. Their staff are realistic, however, about what can and can’t be accomplished. Are surgeons going to follow someone on Twitter? Does a nurse have the time to update her Facebook page regularly or to sign up as a fan on someone’s Facebook page? I’m not sure about that. So, you have to know your audience. Leann Fox of the American Osteopathic Association twitters to her members who have signed up for quick updates, but she does not expect them to provide constant feedback to her.
3.You have to be realistic about the time that is required to maintain your social media presence. Betsy Vetter recommends that you “find a volunteer who likes to be engaged online and get them to maintain the sites for you.”
4.Think hard about transparency -- anything you post can be swiped and commandeered by your opponent. Depending on what you’re putting out there, they can “friend you” and follow you. And the research shows that if you want to keep people engaged, you have to bring exclusive information to them. Do you want your opponents also having access to that exclusive information?
5.Your social media have to be a two-way conversation. Theyt can’t be predominantly “top-down” messages from your volunteer leaders or paid staff, followed by messages you don’t respond to. So, someone has to monitor and respond to all feedback.
How do social media differ from traditional advocacy/grassroots?
It’s the rules of the grassroots road that you have to always be recruiting, retaining and motivating your audience to act – to go from having social networks to having social capital. That will never change.
A lot of grassroots work is pure and not very simple data base management. Social media can change the velocity of your list creation and maintenance. Kari Lantos of the Association of International Educators said her foray into social media has allowed her to spread her message to the beneficiaries of her members’ expertise – the students they teach. And, you can build your list quickly – Kari added over 300 Facebook friends in a day or two, and this is for a very selective membership organization.
The use of Twitter in Iran received widespread coverage, and China has recently banned any social networking sites. What changes are taking place? What might the relationship between the government and the citizens look like in the future?
I think the temptation is to think that every street rally and protest is the next American Revolution. And the use of social media sites is interesting to journalists and promoters of democracy. But the fact is that if you overrely on that technology, it poses problems because it’s pretty easy for governments to jam signals, to block web sites and limit online access, as well as monitor online discussions. So I believe that the efficacy of these tools will depend in large part on who is in power in a particular government.
Now, as it did in Iran, social media can really accelerate the spread of the good and bad news that can draw further media attention. But as we’ve seen in these dictatorships, they’ll kick the journalists out, as well.
You say that everyone needs grassroots. Why is this?
Quite simply, local, state and federal governments make decisions that impact what kind of schools we have, how much we pay in taxes, what kind of health care we’re going to have, what kind of cars we can buy and drive, and what kind of energy we should use. The beauty of this arrangement is that elected officials listen to their constituents because they all want to be re-elected and to do that, they need votes, so they tend to listen to people who vote, and even more to those who are well-organized.
Whether or not you pay dues to the AARP, they are lobbying to preserve Social Security and Medicare; even if you aren’t a member of the National Association of Realtors, they lobby to make sure the interest on your mortgage loan remains tax-deductible.
So, whether you are with the National Association of Realtors, the American Medical Association, or the Students for Sensible Drug Policy (yes, believe it or not, this is a group that promotes more lenient laws for student drug offenders), they all have interests before elected officials and need to get those legislators to make decisions that benefit them. I’ve seen that it’s not the logic of one’s position on a public policy issue, or the “rightness” of their views, that determines how decisions are made. Many decisions, despite all the research and “evidence based” data presented to elected officials, are highly subjective. The race goes to the best organized and most persuasive groups.
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