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Today:
Millions online
Tomorrow:
Billions online
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Information wants to be free.
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Volume 1, Number 6
October 17, 2001
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Online Advocacy Audit is the Key to a Successful Online Strategy
This article is an extension from an earlier piece I wrote
for the ASAE's
August 2001 Government Relations newsletter.
A telling story: A couple summers ago, Constance Campanella, president
of Stateside Associates, visited the Chief Counsel for a state legislative committee
handling a bill crucial to one of her clients. When she and her client walked
into the office they were shown a twelve-inch stack of Internet printouts that
the staffer had downloaded regarding the issue under consideration. Unfortunately,
none of that information reflected our client's perspective on the pending legislation
or the issue.
Don't let this happen to you. Policy-makers and citizens are using
the Internet to research policy issues to help them formulate their positions.
The more they turn to the Internet for this, the more important it is for your
issue messages to figure prominently in their searches. That means you cannot
simply rest your laurels on a well-developed Web site. People have to find it
if is going to influence the debate.
The key to a successful online advocacy strategy is to know your
playing field. How are your organization and the issues you care about represented
online? Are the links people find when searching for information about your
organization and issues both favorable and prominent? Before you leap into the
"build a Web site" fray, you would be wise conduct an online advocacy
audit.
An online advocacy audit provides key intelligence for identifying
what citizens and policy-makers are likely to find when they go online to do
their research. With this information, you can focus your messages to respond
to specific allegations commonly available on the Internet. You can assure that
missing information is available. You can expose the world to your side of the
issue.
John Locke taught that rational discourse is the surest route to sound public
policy. But if the information available online to policy-makers and citizens
only comes from your critics, then the discourse can never be rational. Since
you have finite resources, especially time, for getting your message out, it
is to your advantage to craft messages that add to the debate, rather than repeat
information already available. An audit will identify what information needs
to get out to right the scales.
Benchmarking your online presence with an online advocacy audit
will provide you with the information you need to start developing your online
strategy. Regularly updated audits let you track the effectiveness of your strategy.
Two clear indicators of a successful online strategy are 1) messages you post
on the Internet show up high on search results and 2) your messages are quoted
by other sources that rank high on search results. Other indicators include
getting your online messages quoted in offline news media.
In the final analysis, an online advocacy audit provides you with
the key intelligence you need to get the greatest impact from your online strategy.
It will tell you what messages need to be disseminated. It can even tell you
that nothing needs to be done, at this time, because your message is well represented
online (though this could change in the future, so regular audit updates will
always be valuable).
Online Advocacy Tips:
Elements of
an Online Advocacy Audit
1. What messages rank highest on search engine results about your organization
and issues?
2. Are they favorable, neutral, or unfavorable?
3. Who are the sources for these messages?
4. What advocacy tools have been paired with these messages?
5. How well does your organization's Web site respond to these messages?
6. How prominent is your organization's message on search engines?
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