Every Advocacy Organization Needs to Create Content to attract these 3 types of people
The single biggest mistake I’ve seen organizations make with their content strategy over my 16-year career is trying to reach everyone with their content. When you try to reach everyone, your content influences no one. I call it the law of influential dilution.
And Specificity, the first component in my SALT content methodology, helps your organization avoid this issue. There are 3 types of people every advocacy organization needs to attract and retain within their digital content ecosystem.
Persuadables
Validators
Amplifiers
The persuadables sustain your organization
Persuadables are the people who can actually take the direct action(s) that prove the value of your organization’s existence.
Say your mission revolves around protecting reproductive rights in a handful of battleground states where legislation is active at the state level.
Your persuadables would be people who live in those states, because they can take actions like contacting their state rep, voting for state reps more favorable to the cause, and getting involved in ground-level organizing within their communities.
The validators give your organization credibility
Validators have some sort of standing within the communities you need to reach. The legacy validators are people like journalists, whose coverage can enhance your authority.
Another type of validator is the community organizer who is on the ground organizing the fight your organization is positioning yourself as a leader of.
A final type of validator is the new media political influencers and independent journalists. But the goal is to get these people to cover your organization organically.
The amplifiers give your content more algorithmic reach
Finally, the amplifiers are anyone who supports your mission and aligns with your organization’s values, but can’t take the direct action(s) that sustain your organization.
One caveat to that is amplifiers can certainly be donors, so making room for them in your digital content ecosystem is crucial.
They’re also the more likely of the 3 to amplify your content since it’s often the best way they can help besides donating.
This helps build credibility amongst validators and gives you better odds on reaching persuadables.
Tactic: building 3 ideal reader personas
The first thing we do with clients is help them build 3 ideal reader personas: one for each type of person they need to attract.
An ideal reader persona is a composite sketch of traits, demographics, values, and behaviors that best represent the type of person your organization wants to attract.
The more specific you get, the more targeted your content, which means the higher the chance you’ll influence the reader to take the action(s) you want them to take.
Here are the 3 questionnaires I use with clients.
Persuadable Persona Questionnaire
1. Whose constituent are they? Name the specific policymaker (or body) whose decision you're trying to influence, and the district, jurisdiction, or membership that gives this person leverage over them.
2. What exact action do you need from them? Be concrete. The call, the comment, the showing-up, the signature, the vote. Not "awareness," an action.
3. Where do they sit on the issue right now: opposed, unaware, sympathetic-but-inactive, or supportive-but-silent? Each starting point needs different content.
4. What do they currently believe that's in the way? The misconception, fear, or competing priority that keeps them from acting.
5. What do they need to believe instead for the action to feel obvious and low-risk?
6. What's the smallest, lowest-friction first step toward the big action? The thing they'd say yes to before they'd say yes to everything.
7. What competing voices are already in their feed on this issue, and what are those voices telling them?
8. What's their relationship to the policymaker? Do they even know this official represents them, and do they believe their voice matters to that official?
9. What would make this person feel personally implicated? Find the specific way this issue touches their life, not the cause in the abstract.
10. What tone moves them rather than alienates them? Constituents of a given official often share a political temperament, so identify what register reads as "for me" vs. "not my tribe."
Validator Persona Questionnaire
1. What kind of standing do they have: academic, professional, institutional, lived-experience, or audience-based authority? Get specific on what makes their co-sign worth something.
2. To whom is their credibility legible? Name whose trust they hold that you want access to.
3. What's their reputational risk calculus? Identify what they'd lose by associating with an org like yours, and what makes that risk worth it.
4. What do they need to see from you before they'd vouch? The proof of seriousness, accuracy, or alignment that clears their bar.
5. What makes them withhold a co-sign even when they agree: sloppiness, overstatement, partisanship, amateurism? Name the disqualifiers.
6. What do they gain by amplifying you? Figure out how boosting your content serves their standing or mission.
7. Where do they already engage publicly, and what kind of content do they choose to share vs. ignore?
8. What's the difference, for them, between content they'll quietly approve of and content they'll actively put their name behind?
Amplifier Persona Questionnaire
1. What's their emotional relationship to the issue? Pin down what makes it theirs even though they're not in the target constituency.
2. What makes them hit share? Name the feeling a post gives them in the second before they repost it. Validation, outrage, pride, recognition, hope?
3. What do they want to signal about themselves by sharing your content? People share what makes them look or feel a certain way to their own audience.
4. What format and length do they actually pass along: punchy one-liners, infographics, righteous threads, personal stories?
5. What's the trigger that turns a sharer into a small-dollar donor? Find the moment, ask, or framing that converts "I support this" into "I gave $10."
6. What would make them stop following or sharing? Identify what reads as too much, too preachy, or donor-grabby.
7. Whose feeds do they influence? Name who's downstream of them, and whether that audience sits closer to or further from your Persuadables.
This is a ton of work. Here’s how we can help.
Going through these 3 questionnaires is much easier and more valuable to your advocacy organization if you have a thought partner who can help coax valuable answers out of you.If you DM us a link to this article @Bluethreadsocial on Threads or Instagram, we’ll guide you through building your 3 IRPs for $99 (normally $150).
