Local Tea Party Groups Utilize Social Media
June 10th, 2010
I’ve been telling you about the Tea Party Movement for months now. A lot of things are starting to happen in our government, in no small part due to the Tea Partiers. The push to vote out incumbents and replace them with folks more willing to do the People’s business, as opposed to the whole special interest, I’ll scratch yours if you’ll scratch mine business.
We are fortunate to have people in our community who are willing to go out and protest unfair taxes and the fact that the government ignores what the people want. I have been to these very respectful, very peaceful protests, and am glad that we have one such group here in Stark County.
Stacy Hoffman, TKG’s HR Coordinator has been volunteering with Stark912 Patriots. Stacy took a little time this weekend to help get the group started with a Social Media campaign. This is something most of the Tea Party groups have taken to quite well, and have been able to utilize for a number of different purposes. Since the Stark group was not quite as familiar with social as some of the other groups across the country might be, Stac was able to run through the basics. If you are part of a Tea Party group, you might want to consider having a meeting and training most of the folks in some of these simple techniques to gain exposure for your group.
1. Get a Twitter account for your group. Tweet pictures of events, meeting times, planned events, and so on. If you have the people in your group Tweet these things, and retweet on their personal Twitter accounts, then you have the ability to really spread the message to a wider population.
2. Create a Facebook page. Many, many people are now on Facebook. Chances are your grandma is on Facebook. It’ll give you the ability to recruit new members, blog in the notes section, share photos of members and events, and provide status updates to ‘fans’ and ‘friends”.
3. Join Ning.com and create a Network for the members of the Group. Ning will soon be a paid service, so you may want to utilize as many of the free applications as possible.
4. Start a YouTube Channel and post videos of your group, especially the protests. People can see for themselves what they are really all about.
5. Create a Digg profile and use it to “Digg” any articles or blog posts written about your group to call attention to any recent or upcoming group activity.
6. If you are a little more ambitious, and have some time to spend, you should consider starting a blog. A blog would allow your group the best ability to hare their views in a more unencumbered way. This would require some creativity, passion and a good deal of time, but the blog could be written by several members of the group. If you do this, be sure to read the blogs of other like minded individuals or groups, commenting often and/or leaving a trackback.
These social media outlets can enable you to grow your grass roots movement in a way that was never possible before. Use them for:
A. recruitment
B. educational purposes
C. update the community
D. inform members of gatherings
If you have an interest in the Stark 912 Patriot Group, you can find them on Twitter @stark912patriots
and on their Ning/Facebook page.
