Don’t Just Tweet. Organize. Here’s Your First Step.
Originally published by Gina Bianchini on LinkedIn: Don’t Just Tweet. Organize. Here’s Your First Step.
This is not a post about politics. It’s a post about helplessness.
Specifically, the helplessness that comes from assuming the biggest impact each of us can have is contained in 140 characters or a post we feed into an algorithm that doesn’t show us the impact of our words.
I’m over it.
Now, to be fair, I’ve chosen to make my living by advocating for a different kind of social software, one designed to replace blogs and websites with deep interest networks –– or communities that are simple and easy to create, organized around a specific interest, and that go much, much further than any ordinary group in surfacing new connections between people.
The difference between a deep interest network and, say, posting on Twitter or Facebook is that a deep interest network is designed to connect your members to each other in entirely new and deeper ways. As more people connect with each other to answer a question, message, meet up, or learn from each other, more *new* connections are made by location, by types of members, and by the interests that bring them together.
I believe these new connections made outside the noise and clutter of the status quo is our best path to a brighter future that we define clearly and build concretely...together.
In this context, I want to propose ONE THING YOU CAN DO TODAY that will have a bigger, more lasting impact than anything else you can do with your next hour.
What I want to propose will have a bigger impact than:
Posting your next tweet.
Reading that next opinion piece.
Refreshing your feed to see what crazy thing just happened while you were asleep.
Making a monthly contribution to an organization (although there are great ones out there that need money).
Commenting on that Facebook post with a relative on the other side of the political divide (a strangely compelling, yet consistently futile effort based my own direct research).
No, there’s something much more powerful than adding your voice to what social media has become: The Great Crowd.
I’m talking about hosting a potluck.
Um, a potluck?
Yup, a potluck.
This isn’t just any potluck. It’s got a very specific purpose. See, this party of 8-12 friends, neighbors, family members, and colleagues you’re going to invite to your potluck aren’t just there to eat your Pinterest-worthy enchilada casserole and a delicious chopped salad.
You’re all there to decide what kind of future you want for your community, your state, and your country...and take the first step to taking control of the situation and proactively defining where you want things to go from here.
As engrossing and addicting as political social media is today, it’s the folks who are organizing 100 people at a time in private group chats that are having an outsized impact on our attention. And the solution to confronting and minimizing their impact is not more tweeting, not more outrage (although they are outrageous), or more posts.
No, the right counterpunch begins with a potluck and a spreadsheet.
Your List of 100 People
As a group, over dinner and perhaps a cocktail or two, make a list of 100 people who:
Live within a 100-mile radius of your potluck
Are generally reasonable in person (even if they aren’t always online)
May not make it to the polls in a non-presidential election year
Into a spreadsheet, seek to add the following about each person:
First and Last Name
Email
City
Address (if you have it from holiday cards)
Bonus points for:
Age
Children
Interests
Issues
In the first pass, the goal is not to define a person by their political party (there is MORE than enough of that right now), but rather capture their basic information and their interests outside of politics. You’re looking for a fuller picture of a person than what you see online –– where they’re from, the books they love, the hobbies they choose, a health condition they may be navigating, or an issue that might be particularly important to them, such as their children’s education, the environment, immigration, or healthcare.
This new list is politically powerful. How many candidates or officials wouldn’t love to be hosted by your new 100-person strong local group? They show up for a lot fewer. And what if you could rally these people together over the next 446 days? Imagine the influence you can have not just nationally, but in your local area as well.
But that’s not the only reason you should have this potluck and build this list.
First, this exercise alone will remind you how many good people you know around you. It’s like a gratitude journal on steroids, and therefore totally worth it for this reason alone.
Second, by doing it as a group, you’ll build your list faster and see more connections between your worlds. As you realize these connections and just what a small, supportive world it is, it can keep the events we’re all consuming every day in real-time in a bit more perspective.
Third, as you brainstorm together over dinner the different ways you can bring these people together and capture a different, brighter future for people than what’s staring back at us online, you’ll have a renewed sense of creativity and excitement. Fancy people may call this “agency.” I call it a great way to spend a Thursday night.
BUT WHAT ARE WE DOING WITH THIS LIST?
Only one thing NOT to do.
Ok, ok, I get it. You want a way to think about this list and what the point is of creating it.
The long term goal of your list is to put in place an ability to confidently activate a set of reasonable people to take action. Specifically, show up to the polls in a typically low turnout election. And in this case, that’s 2018.
Ultimately, how your group decides to engage your list of 100 to accomplish this is up to you. Yet, your list represents the opportunity to find ways to engage and build relationships with people outside the limitations of existing tropes and 140 characters.
In this context, there is only one super important thing NOT to do:
Don’t treat it like Facebook or Twitter. This list is NOT your soapbox.
No matter how popular your posts may be on Facebook, if you guest lecture at your list, you’re risking becoming yet another email for them to opt-out of. Continue to use Facebook or Twitter to express your immediate reactions to current events, but don’t use your list to make your opinions known. You’ll hurt your ability to truly make a difference when it matters most: in the 2018 midterm election.
Let’s put an even finer point on this. In an editorial that went viral after this year’s election, Andrés Miguel Rondón, an economist born and raised in Venezuela under the dictator Hugo Chavez, gave many of us a preview of what will happen if we continue to limit civic discourse to 140 characters:
“...In our country, whole generations were split in two. A sense of shared culture was wiped out. Rhetoric took over our history books, our future, our own sense of self. We lost the freedom to be anything larger than cartoons.”
What finally made the difference in his country has stuck with me since reading this piece:
“...we went to the slums and the countryside. Not for a speech or a rally, but for a game of dominoes or to dance salsa — to show we are all Venezuelans. That the other side wasn’t just dour scolds, but could hit a baseball or tell a joke that landed. That we could break the tribal divide, come down off the billboards and show that we were real. It’s the only way we could establish our standing. We decided to get out of the an echo chamber, and press pause on the siren song of polarization.”
Your list may ultimately be your best contribution to changing the direction of our country in 2018. And to get there, your best choice of action today may be to host a game of dominoes or dance salsa. This may seem counterintuitive at this moment, but by focusing on what we have in common –– the interests that bring us together, our common goals, and the future we want to realize –– we have the best chance of defending our systems from extremism, and defining a future we know will be awesome.
Your list of 100 people is your opportunity to replace digital rhetoric with real human contact and bring more people together to do the one thing everyone agrees works: vote when it matters.
I care, but I can’t possibly add one more thing to my already exhausting life.
I totally get it. This seems like one more thing. But imagine simply putting down your phone, cutting back on Twitter, choosing one less Facebook comment debate, and reinvesting that time you save into a focused project that will absolutely have a positive and lasting impact.
Trading anxiety for action is a no brainer. Plus, by choosing to take even an hour a week to maintain and grow your list of 100, you’ll find all sorts of benefits to you personally:
1. You’ll become a better communicator. By organizing, you’ll find a new balance between what you want to share with the world and why people might be motivated to join up and contribute themselves, building on your ideas with their own. By putting your desire to express yourself and be a part of the solution in the context of a network of 100 people, you’ll be able to tie your stories, opinions, and experiences into a much richer tapestry of ongoing conversations, messaging, events, questions, and even your own polls with other members. In my experience, this opportunity to listen to and absorb other people’s contributions has made me better at communicating my own ideas and perspectives.
2. You’ll become a more organized thinker. By choosing to create a new network with your list of 100 people and spend just a bit less time posting your opinions into the great chaos of social media, you’ll be organizing your list of 100 people to meet people like them, to support, encourage, and learn from each other, and to make better decisions about the most important things in their life. One of the most fun puzzles of organizing your list of 100 is finding a name and mission that tie these motivations to what you want to bring into the world. When it works, it’s beautiful. And flexing that muscle will help you think about our current environment differently that we’ve all be consuming online.
3. It’s ultimately less work than continually tweeting...with much greater upside. The allure of Facebook and Twitter is the promise of having your words reach and influence people out there paying attention. Yet, the reality is that when we’re using those services, attention is fragmented and moving extremely fast. The sad truth is that you can’t really have the impact that’s promised, no matter how much you tweet or post. By organizing your list of 100, you now have the power to take advantage of network effects — the simple interactions between people that make what you do stickier, more engaging, and, ultimately, more valuable — to organically have a new and even bigger impact.
4. You’ll meet amazing people. Meeting people who believe in your idea or want to be a member of your tribe is possibly the biggest rush out there. It’s the surest sign you’re making a small mark on the world around you. I promise you that by building your list of 100, you’ll not only have an impact, but meet some truly amazing people along the way.
5. You’ll introduce amazing people to each other. When you start to think of ways you can begin to connect your list of 100 to each other, they may start planning their own actions — actions your potluck posse would love to do, too. Beyond just better ideas and more motivation to show up for that volunteer opportunity or meet a candidate, your list of 100 is also your growth engine. Depending on how you decide to engage people, perhaps in a deep interest network or perhaps just in personal notes, they're invested in sharing their own perspective, which may drive them to share more on their social channels or with people in their everyday life. With each new action taken by your list of 100, you have an opportunity to reach more people in a way that actually works.
6. You’ll inspire others. Just building your list of 100 may inspire others to do the same thing. And it’s not a lot of people who need to be inspired to do the same thing if you want to have a massive impact. For example, if 10 potlucks happen because of this post, that’s 100 people getting in on the ground floor. 100 people each coming up with 100 names is a new list of 100,000 people reached in a new way outside the noise, distractions, and dividing lines of Facebook and Twitter. 100,000 reasonable people who show up in an off-cycle election is REAL.
7. You’ll become an even better networker. Introducing people to each other is probably one of the most important professional skills of the 21st century. While not all of us are blessed with the ability to work a room, we *can* all make a list of 100 people and focus an hour a week on new ways to introduce the right people to each other outside our phones. By matching up those who are like each other and who care about the same things, I’ve personally met and learned from so many fascinating and diverse people that I would have never otherwise thought possible. It’s opened up a world of possibilities for me professionally, but even more so personally. Again, this isn’t just about politics — it’s about a set of skills you’re practicing that make you better across the board.
8. You’ll build influence. Creating your list of 100 is the fastest way to introduce yourself, your potluck posse, and the love and support you each stand for to the world. While it may seem like you should be focusing on building thousands of followers, your network of 100 may actually have more influence. See, if you have the ability to bring 100 people to an event, meet a candidate, or go to the polls on election day, you matter. A lot. You can ask for more from those in power with network of 100 people with email addresses and a personal connection than you can with 18,000 Twitter followers. Trust me on that.
9. You’ll build confidence. As you become a better networker, recruiter, and influencer, it will be easy to see all the ways you can have a bigger impact on the world around you. Each new name, member, interaction, and connection in your list of 100 builds on each other until you can confidently take on more and more that you want to accomplish in the world. When you chose to take your list of 100 and, say, turn them into a deep interest network over just building a following, what can’t you accomplish? It’s the biggest confidence boost I’ve found for myself.
10. You’ll create something bigger than yourself. As humans, we’re wired to want to belong to something greater than ourselves. Just look at cities or religions. Fast forward to 2017 and there’s something special that happens when you are a member of a community that is active and building something wonderful together not just on the web, but in the real world. It’s why we’re here. A potluck may seem like a small step, but it’s still an important one. As you move from a core group of 10 people to a list of 100, your hour a week is building something real, sustainable, and awesome. It’s the first step every single person who has had an impact on the world around them has taken to get there.
People want to be part of something bigger than themselves, and that’s exactly what you are creating.
