These are a few of our favourite tweets

When the dog bites. When the bee stings. When we’re feeeeeeling sad. We simply remember some of our favourite tweets, then we don’t feel. So. Bad. That’s not all, we also dust ourselves off and fight even harder.

It’s been a week since we were at Rootscamp and to be honest, we’re still digesting. We heard from some of the most inspiring campaigners, artists, activists, academics, and all-round fighters. People who are going to make change together.

In lieu of writing a super long post about the lessons we learned (there were countless!) we thought we’d showcase some of the best tweets that came out of the conference and some resources we found useful around the three main pillars that Rootscamp focused on:

• Campaign building
• Tools to win
• Your people. Know them. Work for them.

Campaign teams

Bernie’s Digital Campaign (h/t to Revolution Messaging) spoke to us about the importance of having a brand and style guide to help your rapid-response campaign. Here’s a good read on that: http://blog.invisionapp.com/limits-of-brand-style-guides/

Recruit an A+ team. And empower them to make sure they stay. Becky Bond and Zach Exley had tonnes of great advice, this is just one of them: (cStreet book club’s next book?)

Tools

Facebook video. Go there. Now. Rootscampers told us that social movements have to capture the momentum that is on Facebook video. How do you do that? Deliver your message in the first three seconds of the video. You heard that right.

Grow your list. Some thoughts from Unbounce.

SMS: Rootscamp celebrities aren’t your regular celebrities. They are canvassers, campaign designers, and Jess from HFA! And Jess and Debra Cleaver from vote.org had plenty to share about texting.

• Your canvassing teams, their contact rate on average is probably ~25%. With text messaging, contact rate is usually around 75%.

• SMS is great for rapid-response. Even if folks don’t respond, chances are they’ve read your message (even if it’s because they want to remove that annoying notification). This is an opportunity to jump on: use SMS to broadcast messages around GOTV.

• Keep your message short and sweet. Messages that were witty often did less well than messages that simply said “Go vote.”

Know your people and be responsive to their wants

Thanks to @WellstoneAction for hosting a great rootscamp. This year they renamed the Wall—where the sessions are usually posted,—to the Board. That sort of responsive-ness and acknowledgement of your audience is key to any good organisation and campaign.

A lot of people are fearful about their lives and their family’s future. Rootscampers came out for those communities (and represented them). Here are some thoughts and tactics that came out of a session on how we can be there for Muslim-Americans.

Similarly, we stand with Standing Rock. This weekend, if you can, chip in a few $$$ to send things to the Indigenous families and water protectors that are in North Dakota fighting for their rights: https://www.amazon.com/registry/wishlist/18FR1AGDPWZLC/