Aspiration is pleased to announce another eAdvocacy Training event, “Best Practices for High-Impact eAdvocacy”, taking place on March 29 and 30, 2010 in Los Angeles. This 2-day training will cover best practices in online campaigning, social media, and mobile activism.
These trainings are generously sponsored by the California Consumer Protection Foundation (CCPF), and provided free of charge to the CCPF network. We invite CCPF grantees and network members to join us for these interactive, outcome-oriented trainings. Lunch and all-day coffee will be provided at the trainings.
Please see the complete training agenda.
The training, entitled “Best Practices for High-Impact eAdvocacy”, will explain skills and sustainable processes in the following topic areas:
- Effective Audience Assessment: Do you really know who you are talking to? Participants will see how to assess web and other online traffic to learn what content is providing the most value and generating the most traffic. The process of identifying and designing content for audiences will be explained, and optimizing search engine ranking will be discussed.
- Establishing a Publishing Matrix: Do you have a model for when to use what tools in different situations? Participants will see examples of a “publishing matrix” which enumerates the online channels to which a campaign or organization is publishing, and defines appropriate actions in each channel for different content types, including newsletters, action alerts, event announcements, and press releases. The sample matrix will include columns for web, email, blog, Facebook, Twitter and mobile devices. A hands-on exercise will allow participants to create their own draft publishing matrix.
- Message Calendaring: Is all of your online campaign and organizational messaging scheduled and tracked on a unified calendar that is visible to all stakeholders? This session will explain the process of creating and maintaining a messaging calendar. In addition, design of “narrative arc” will be described and correlated to calendaring strategies. Participants will be invited to construct their own draft calendars for the campaign or other online communications for which they are currently responsible.
- Social Media “Dashboarding”: Do you know where you are being mentioned online? As the number of valuable eAdvocacy channels grows, tools are needed for tracking how and where a campaign or organization is being mentioned on web sites, blogs, Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere. This session will explain how to create such a dashboard, enumerate what free and low-cost tools are available, and describe best practices for getting the most value out of such tactical resources.
- Blogging Essentials: Blog publishing continues to be a high-impact endeavor for many campaigning and advocacy organizations. This session will cover blog basics, explain how to set up and maintain an effective blog, and explore editorial and publicity strategies for blog content. Important concepts including RSS and comment strategies will be explained.
In addition, the agenda will also include Aspiration's new mobile advocacy curriculum:
- Using Mobile Devices for eAdvocacy will explain the range of eAdvocacy applications that are now possible with today's mobile technologies. A tool overview will be provided, and case studies will be presented that explain the strategic use of Twitter, text loops, and other mobile-oriented advocacy tools. The focus of the materials is on strategy and appropriate tactics in the mobile context, and technology details will only be explored where relevant.
These trainings are designed for the person or persons in each organization who have primary responsibility for their online campaigning strategy and communications. While there will be some technical content, the primary focus will be on strategic use of processes and best practices for online campaigning. The material is modeled to be most relevant to grassroots organizations working in underserved communities.
For questions about the agenda and topics to be covered, please email eadvocacy@aspirationtech.org, or call (415) 839-6456.
If you cannot attend, but are interested in being invited to this type of training in the future, please let us know. And if you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to contact us.
Thanks for your interest and we hope to see you there!