Here's one way to re-think your communications strategy: focus on messengers, not just messages. The specifics of a particular messaging strategy are often less important than the predisposition of your audience towards receiving your message. Elevating the voices of highly motivated messengers in your communication strategy helps open up new audiences to hear your message, and adds color and depth to your communication strategy to build the quality relationships needed to encourage bold action.

The Tar Sands Action was a 6 month campaign to stop the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline that focused on two large mobilizations in Washington DC -- one over 2 weeks in August-September, and one on November 6th -- and then offline local actions targeting the President. In that 6 months, we made only 4 online advocacy asks to our main list, and a handful of asks to share content related to the action.

For our first action, we needed to quickly turn casual supporters into committed activists with the confidence to risk arrest in a sit-in at the White House. Early response online was strong, so we focused our online organizing on cementing relationships and deepening commitment to the action.