Government and civic life
📣 Advocacy Social Media Strategy: An Evidence-Based Playbook for Followers and Email Lists
A graduate-level playbook for running several advocacy pages across many platforms: how feeds rank content, what the research says spreads and persuades, platform-by-platform rules and benchmarks, the multi-page architecture, growing real followers, building an email list you own, measurement and experiments, the law and ethics of persuasion, and a complete worked 12-month plan. Every strategy rests on cited studies, platform documents and benchmark data.
- 1How Attention Is Allocated: Feed Ranking and the Science of What SpreadsHow Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok and YouTube decide what to show, in their own published words and code; what the peer-reviewed research says about which content spreads and why; what the 2020 Facebook and Instagram experiments found when the feed was changed; and how an advocacy page can earn distribution without running on outrage.45 min
- 2Audience and Theory of Change: Who Must Act, What They Must Believe, and Who Reaches ThemThe diffusion and influence research an advocacy page should be built on (two-step flow, weak ties, complex contagion, the 61-million-person voting experiment, influentials versus ordinary spreaders), the 2025 Pew data on where Americans actually are by platform, age and community type, and a how-to for writing a theory of change, mapping audiences, building data-grounded personas and deriving a measurement plan from them.44 min
- 3Platform by Platform: Audiences, Ranking, Rules and Benchmarks for AdvocacyFacebook Pages and Groups, Instagram, Threads, X, Bluesky, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, Nextdoor, Reddit and Substack Notes, each with its 2025 Pew audience, what its ranking favors, how it handles links, its civic and political content rules and ad rules, what it is good and bad for in advocacy, and verified engagement benchmarks with the method stated; ends with a decision table for which platforms an Idaho advocacy effort should run and which to skip.48 min
- 4The Multi-Page Architecture: Running a Network of Advocacy Pages Without Breaking the RulesHow to run a main voice page plus issue, coalition and chapter pages across platforms: hub-and-spoke versus network models with the diffusion evidence, what Meta, X, Bluesky and TikTok allow for networks of accounts, the transparency and disclosure each requires, how a boosted post becomes a reportable expenditure under Idaho law, and the naming, asset, cadence and role systems that keep several pages honest and alive.38 min
- 5Content Science: What to Post, in What Form, How Often, and How to KnowThe evidence on format, hooks, captions, narrative, humor, documents, calls to action and comment-driven reach, with effect sizes and sample sizes; what the benchmark data does and does not support on frequency and timing; headline research including the negativity and curiosity findings; and how to run an honest A/B test on a page whose numbers are small.40 min
- 6Growing Followers: Collaboration, Shares, Paid Reach and Why Fake Growth Costs YouWhat the evidence supports for growing a real following: collaborations and cross-promotion, commenting where larger audiences gather, lives and events, series, shares as the engine; what paid boosting buys per dollar and the authorization, disclaimer and Idaho reporting rules that come with it on each platform; how to spot and refuse fake followers; and a 90-day plan with weekly targets derived from published growth benchmarks.40 min
- 7Email Lists: The Owned AudienceWhy an email list outperforms a social following for action, with the M+R, Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor benchmarks and the Apple Mail Privacy Protection caveat; how to build one with lead magnets, signup placement, QR codes and a social-to-email funnel; double opt-in, hygiene, segmentation, welcome sequences, send frequency and the one subject-line finding that replicates; SPF, DKIM, DMARC and the 2024 Gmail and Yahoo bulk sender rules; CAN-SPAM, the TCPA and Idaho's rules; and six tools compared on verified prices.42 min
- 8Measurement and Experiments: From Impression to Action Without Fooling YourselfHow to measure an advocacy page honestly: the funnel from impression to action, which metrics match which objective, what Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Bluesky actually report, UTM tagging, the hard limits of attribution, a weekly spreadsheet dashboard, pre-registered experiments with real sample size arithmetic, holdouts for paid tests, survey methods, and how to report results to a board.42 min
- 9Persuasion, Ethics and Law: What Moves People, What Does Not, and Where the Lines AreWhat field experiments say campaign communication can and cannot do (Kalla and Broockman, Coppock, Hill and Vavreck, Broockman and Kalla, Gerber, Green and Larimer), what that implies for an advocacy page's goals, the science of prebunking, accuracy nudges and corrections, and the law: defamation after New York Times v. Sullivan, Idaho's synthetic media election statute, the FTC Endorsement Guides, platform rules on manipulated media and private information, fair use, Section 230, and an ethics code a page can adopt.44 min
- 10Operations and the Plan: Running a Page Network for Twelve MonthsThe operating system for a multi-page advocacy network: editorial calendar with cadence from benchmark data, roles and permissions across pages, an approval workflow that builds in the law from lesson 09, a brand and voice guide, a crisis protocol grounded in the crisis communication experiments, account security with the numbers from Google's hijacking research, burnout and sustainable cadence, budgets at three scales, a complete worked 12-month plan for a fictional Idaho network with three pages and an email goal, and a closing section of verified figure tables with an inline funnel diagram.46 min