Doomsday Prepping: Staying agile during Facebook’s blackout

Digital Marketers working on political and advocacy campaigns are looking down the barrel of a complete blackout for Facebook and other online ad platforms surrounding the upcoming election. Facebook has announced no new social issue, electoral or political ads will be allowed to be purchased one full week before the election. An ad in this category will be permitted to run during this week only if it has delivered at least one impression by 12:01AM (PT) on October 27th. After the polls close on November 3rd, Facebook will temporarily stop running all the ads within that category until the official election results are finalized, the date of which is largely unknown. While this attempt by Facebook and others to stop the spread of misinformation may be an overall positive for our democracy, advocacy and political campaigns are being forced to largely re-write their digital strategies at the speed of politics, aka very quickly. This blackout could last anywhere from a week to over a month, depending on how fast the election results are finalized and announced. Still, there’s no need to put relationship building with your online community on hold.

Advocacy campaigns must adapt to these new digital platforms’ limitations with creative ways to engage and activate supporters. This doesn’t mean reinventing the wheel. The core principles of community organizing can help lay the groundwork for a sustainable and effective push for change and ultimately transform a digital advocacy campaign into a people-powered movement.

In preparation for one of digital marketer’s most powerful tools being taken away, it’s helpful to remember the following:
Build relationships, not just ads. Start by listening to your audience. Online users are still human people who engage with material not only because of their interest in a cause or campaign by itself but, more importantly, because they feel a connection to the others who share their beliefs.
Cultivate leaders and know when to take a back-seat. To shift power back to communities through organizing, a campaign must prioritize developing, supporting, and highlighting leadership at all levels. Individuals are more likely to feel like they have something at stake when they are able to see themselves and their peers in the work.
Win over hearts to move minds. Storytelling allows a digital advocacy campaign to develop and deploy messaging that articulates who their community is, what issue they are seeking to solve, and why it’s essential for individuals to take action. If real people are powering your movement, it’s their stories that will build a connection with your community and grow your campaign’s reach more than anything else. 
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket because Mark Zuckerberg will take that basket. Utilizing paid media is one of the best tools to reach new users to join the cause. But cultivating an engaged following is just as important. Daily organic engagement can go a lot further than throwing messages onto a news feed or timeline using paid media. Sharing content that aligns with your community’s values, and engaging with them when they have thoughts, comments, or concerns, will help keep users excited and ready to take action.
Let your list know you’re in it for the long haul. If you’re running a political or advocacy campaign online, the chances are quite high that your online subscribers care deeply about the 2020 General Election.
This is not the time to go silent. Even if your cause is in recess, that doesn’t mean your engagement should be too. If you can position your organization as a thought leader during this time, stakeholders will never forget the wisdom or comfort you brought them during this challenging time. Ensure that your email and text subscriber lists are healthy, segmented, and ready to fire up. 
Become friends with their favorites. Leveraging influencers helps build a campaign that wraps around users and makes the issue feel more significant than any one community. But during a Facebook blackout, leveraging influencers is crucial. By engaging with micro and macro-influencers that align with your community’s values, you’ll reach new users (supplementing the void left by Facebook ads) and lend credibility to your movement through online spokesmanship. Influencers also help marketers find people that may be totally left out of advertising targeting due to a lack of information on interests, contact info, etc. and go directly to them with messages from a trusted source. If you’re not using influencers now, you need to start.