Petition Your Government at Change.org

Looking for another way to motivate activists to contact public officials to support your cause?  Try out a "petition" site like Change.org to "start a petition for change.

It's easy, quick and effective given the right support system to supplement the effort.  Focus can be on politicians at any level of government.  Users report action from tens-of-thousands of e-mailing activists around a diverse array of issues from liberal to conservative.

Give it a try!

Here's a description from their website:

VICTORIES

Every day, Change.org members win people-powered campaigns for social change

We believe that building momentum for social change globally means empowering citizen activists locally -- and that the influence of a local victory is always much larger than the change it immediately achieves. Using this community-driven model, Change.org members have won hundreds of campaigns and are together building a powerful movement that is rapidly spanning the globe.

Here's how we win together: Someone, somewhere, starts a petition. Change.org members spread the word over Facebook, Twitter, email, and blogs. Momentum builds as the target of the petition is flooded with messages calling for change.

With the support of Change.org's team of organizers, members then increase pressure via phone calls, in-person events, media exposure, and other grassroots tactics to drive the campaign to victory.

Track Your Advocacy Success with Cli.gs

How do you know anyone cares about your social media advocacy?  One way to track your success is to use a url shortener that contains analytics.

The basics:  If you want to link to an article, an action alert or something else on the web but the url is really long (over 25 characters), use a url shortening service to make it manageable.  Just copy the long url and paste it into a shortening service, hit enter and Voila!  You have a url that is nice and short and will fit in your Twitter or Facebook post.

A service I've used with some success can be found at http://www.cli.gs/.  This service will keep track of the number of clicks on your link and let you know where they came from.  You can begin to analyze the usefulness of Twitter vs. Facebook or any other social media or website you're using. 

From Cligs:

• Cligs Helps You Understand Your Traffic
• Does anyone care what you post on Twitter?
• Which marketing messages work best?
• Who is clicking on your links?
• Which email campaign is the best investment?

These are the types of questions anyone working on the web asks. You need to understand what is working and what is not. You need hard data to help you figure out how your marketing message is doing. That is where Cligs helps you!

Cligs tracks the traffic going through your links. Not just that, Cligs has unique tracking and redirection features that give you the best insight:

Cligs is free! You do not pay us anything to use all of its awesome features.

Private analytics No one apart from you can see your stats data. This way your competitors will not be able to see your marketing campaigns and how successful they are. To do that, you will need to register and sign into Cligs.

Real time analytics You want to know what is working now so you can adjust quickly.

Deepest analytics around Lots of interactive charts and data, like a world map, that show you where your traffic is coming from and who are the people clicking on your links.

Social media monitoring Cligs keeps track in real time of who tweets your link, who shares it on Friendfeed, who links to it, who blogs about it, who writes a blog comment about it, and more. Not just that, Cligs does that for the destination URL too! All in one handy interface.


Multiple links to the same destination Share different links on different services like Twitter, Facebook, and email and track the traffic and watch it spread across services.

Search engine optimized Cligs uses the 301 forward which is recommended by Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft to help you get the best rankings benefits.

Easy to tweet With one click you can send your short URLs to Twitter. No fuss.

Custom URLs Get your brand name in your links! You can create links like http://cli.gs/MyBrand.

Real time analytics You want to know what is working now so you can adjust quickly.

Deep Real-time Analytics

So, why not give it a try on your next social media lobbying campaign?

International Social Media Advocacy - Do You Speak the Language?

The U.S. isn't the only place citizens are using social media to move public opinion.

United Kingdom based Advocacy Online provides multiple e-advocacy functions including direct email contact with policy makers in 14 countries around the world.


From their site:

Advocacy Online is a leading provider of Internet software that enables organisations to run effective e-campaigns, raise funds, and grow online communities. In any language. In any country.

e-activist 3.0 - industry leading e-campaigning technology

netdonor - online donation processing

jamii - content management and social networking applications

political exchange - communities for one-to-one dialogue with political decision-makers

All of these products include our integrated email client and access to our data API for simple database integration.

With offices in London, Washington, and Toronto, it's worth considering this vendor if you're needs go beyond U. S. boundaries.

President Elect Obama Set a New Standard

If you're new to grassroots lobbying, then start by studying the best to date. President Elect Obama used social networking to the extreme and appears to be carrying his many innovative tactics forward through the transition to President.

From fundraising to announcing his VP pick via text message, Obama will be copied by most who follow.

www.change.gov (transition to President) - many opportunities to submit comments and "join the dicussion"
www.obama.com (campaign site)
www.barackobama.com (fundraising)