WHAT CAN BE TAUGHT IN LOBBYING/PUBLIC POLICY ADVOCACY : 2. COMMUNICATION AND MESSAGING SKILLS

Lobbying/ublic Policy Advocacy is not only about being a trusted provider of information; it is also about formulating and delivering effective messages. Those who win political conflicts are the ones who do the best job at framing issues, presenting them to lawmakers and the public in ways that appear sensible and consistent with broadly held social values. As communities become ever more crowded with advocates, effective framing and messaging is an increasingly crucial skill to have.

Part of what we need to teach, of course is basic writing competence. Good grammar and the ability to write clearly and concisely, sometimes with carefully crafted nuances, are absolutely essential to the success of any advocacy campaign. If a political message is long, awkward, rambling and otherwise painful to decipher, it will never be read. Only the most persuasive and catchy writers using good grammar are going to get their messages through to lawmakers and their overworked staff.

Concise messaging strategy is also a must and can also be taught. Time is a precious resource in politics, and the less time lawmakers and their staff have to spend learning what the lobbyist/public policy advocate is trying to say, the more likely they are to read a message and remember it.

Not only must lobbyists/public policy advocates have good grammar and the ability to write concisely under pressure, they must also be able to write persuasively. Of course the entire point of lobbying/public policy advocacy is to persuade another to take an action you, and the people you represent desire. A good message needs to let the lawmaker know quickly that the action you wish them to take is in their interests, perhaps because it will endear them to a constituency crucial to re-election, or one crucial to election to higher office. It must also be a message the lawmaker, or even the lobbyist/public policy advocate if it is hard to get lawmakers to listen, can take to the public.

Writing must also connect audiences. Much of the public tends to be uninformed and quiescent, so lawmakers pay them little attention. Part of a lobbyist’s/public policy advocate’s job is to make certain their group members or clients do not fall into this category. They need to keep the people they represent informed and engaged. Lobbyists/Public Policy Advocates, after all are really just professional go-betweens, agents acting on behalf of principals in the public, even if they often do so with a significant amount of autonomy and discretion. Thus a good message should not only move lawmakers to want to serve the constituency the lobbyists/public policy advocates represent, but to get members excited about pressuring the lawmaker into doing it. Most of this can be taught. Political scientists might consider re-training to improve our teaching of professional writing. In other fields, such as law and medicine, there is a long tradition of mandatory continuing education to update skills.

Good political communication and messaging is not just content and quality, it is also effective targeting and delivery. Generally speaking, people involved in interest groups are more likely to contact their lawmakers than people who are not, but some methods of communicating are more effective than others under particular circumstances and the means of delivery often shapes the type of message delivered. When is it best to use Facebook or other types of social media? When to use email? When to have members and clients go old-school and write letters and make phone calls, and when to actually bring people to the capital city for personal meetings. Even e-petitions are becoming somewhat more precise in terms of what constituencies are mobilized and which lawmakers their opinions are targeted.

If an issue important to association members is about to be voted on, the lobbyist/public policy advocate may want to quickly tell members, and provide them with a message they, in turn, can send to their deputies through the internet. If possible, the lobbyist/public policy advocate can help members personalize the message before they email it, post it to Facebook, or tweet it because personalized messages are far more effective than duplicate messages. If the lobbyist’s/public policy advocate’s group or clients are known and trusted by the legislator, his or her staff may regularly monitor the group’s website or Facebook site, which makes communicating this way quick and easy. Many parliamentary offices have a staff person who spends at least some of his or her time going through the Facebook sites of interest groups the office considers important to read.

On the other hand, if an organization is trying to gain the attention of lawmakers because they are new to politics or are otherwise marginalized their lobbying/public policy advocacy may be advised to stay old-school and encourage members or clients to telephone or visit their lawmakers as thee make a personal impression on lawmakers.

What faculty can do for students is to teach them which method of message delivery is most appropriate given the political circumstances surrounding an issue. There is a growing body of research on the practical dimensions of digital politics and organizing on which we can base this instruction.

Another aspect of communications and messaging that can be taught is the value of follow up. Grassroots advocacy, real or virtual, is generally used to get the attention of lawmakers so that a foundation is created allowing the lobbyist/public policy advocate or a few especially motivated members to meet with key lawmakers. That means lobbyists/public policy advocates for the interest must personally follow-up while the message communicated from the grassroots is still relatively fresh in the minds of targeted lawmakers. Even more entrenched interests not needing large-scale grassroots advocacy will still often signal to a lawmaker’s office that an issue is important to them by having a prominent member of the organization, who is also a prominent person in the lawmaker’s constituency, call first.

This at least suggests that even when it comes to targeting messages, it is often best to have interest group members and clients target their own elected officials. Showing the constituency connection always helps a lobbyist/public policy advocate make a case because members of Parliament at least say nothing persuades them like communications from constituents, especially when that communication contains a personal story from the constituent connected to an issue at hand. Students can be taught these new kinds of best practices in messaging, just as they can be taught other little bits of wisdom. For instance, they can be taught to stay away from certain kinds of allegedly grass-roots oriented technology, like e-petition companies which do nothing more than send worthless identical messages to Parliament and may be more interested in selling the contact information of the people who sign such petitions.