Does this bring in money or votes? Newsletter 29
Hey everyone! I’m Kyle Allen and I help oversee the DNC’s digital rapid response and partnerships programs.
In this newsletter, I’m excited to share our work to activate our allies on the internet and build an online community to counter the MAGA Republicans’ echo chamber.
Let’s get to it.
Why This Matters
The goal of our digital partnerships work is to deliver our message to an online audience beyond the reach of the channels we help operate: @JoeBiden, @KamalaHarris, and @TheDemocrats.
By providing resources to Democrats across the country with both large and small followings, we can empower people to share content that advances our message and cuts through the extreme MAGA Republican noise online.
If you’re reading this newsletter, it is perhaps not news to you that conservatives have a structural advantage on platforms like Facebook, which 31% of Americans rely on as a regular source of news.
Our friends at the Center for American Progress have pulled together data showing just how dramatic this advantage is:
Conservative pages relentlessly amplify Republican messaging across social media platforms. That means as voters spend more of their time scrolling through algorithmic feeds, they are seeing a great deal more conservative messaging.
Simply put: In order to compete, we need to get our message in front of more people online and beyond the reach of the channels we operate. We need a better delivery system.
So, what can the DNC do to empower our allies in this fight? We’re starting by making it as easy as possible for influencers, surrogates, and others to share our content.
Greenfly: Getting Everyone on the Same Page
We use Greenfly to provide our top supporters with essential content that can be easily shared on social media. Greenfly is a content distribution app that allows us to send our supporters push notifications asking them to share graphics, videos, and articles that they can post on their own accounts.
For example, by asking our Greenfly users to share the graphic below with their followers, we more than doubled the number of people who originally engaged with it on DNC channels.
This kind of regular engagement makes it a helpful tool we can use to focus the online conversation among our allies.
Earlier this year, we asked our users to share graphics, videos, and articles about the Biden-Harris administration's work to combat the baby formula shortage.
Overall, our users shared this content hundreds of times across social media platforms and generated thousands of engagements — helping shape the online conversation with DNC-produced content.
Our goal is to leverage the reach of our allies in order to advance DNC messaging priorities, counter misleading narratives, and coordinate our response across the internet in rapid response moments.
Who uses Greenfly?
We are working with folks across the broader DNC organization to build and expand our Greenfly user base and onboard allies with both large and small followings. So far:
Our organizing team has recruited and trained hundreds of grassroots supporters on how to use the platform.
We have connected with dozens of allied influencers and activists.
Our states team has onboarded state party officials from across the country.
Our communications team has onboarded high-profile surrogates and other allies.
As a result, we have built a sizable and active user base that will continue to grow as we get closer to Election Day. Importantly, these users will be part of the DNC community beyond November — part of the ecosystem we’re building to shape the conversation online for years to come.
If you’d like to join the DNC’s Greenfly chapter, please fill out this interest form.
TikTok Creators: Leveraging New Platforms to Advance Our Message
Since the launch of the DNC TikTok account earlier this year, we have been conducting targeted outreach to creators on the app and onboarding them to our Greenfly chapter.
These creators have a combined audience of millions of people. Through Greenfly, we can provide creators with visual assets specifically made for TikTok, empowering them to share our message with hard-to-reach younger audiences.
The DNC Content Library: A Resource for Democrats Everywhere
Through Greenfly, we provide our allies with an extensive library of high-quality, well-researched graphics and videos that they can share online with the click of a button.
With the help of our in-house creative team, we are able to provide issue-specific libraries full of constantly updated content our partners can share — including an entire library of content for TikTok and other vertical video platforms.
Our content library has become a go-to resource for influencers, surrogates, talkers, and other partners across the Democratic ecosystem — including state parties across the country. Smaller parties, with fewer resources to dedicate towards digital programs, can easily share relevant DNC content to their own localized audiences. That’s just one example of how we’ve leveraged the DNC content library to support our allies across the Democratic space.
Building the Megaphone: Where Do We Go From Here?
In the months ahead, we plan to increase the scope and scale of our partnerships network and operationalize it in new ways. This includes:
Growing our network in Greenfly with a particular focus on people with large followings beyond Twitter.
Working with departments across the DNC to engage with and recruit high-profile surrogates to partner with us.
Hosting regular messaging briefings with DNC staff for key influencers and partners.
Hosting Instagram Live and Twitter Spaces events with key online surrogates.
Conclusion
Through the first two quarters of 2022, our partnerships program helped generate 83 million impressions online for content aligned with Democrats’ messaging priorities — and we’re just getting started.
The work we are doing to engage influencers, allies, and other partners is an essential part of our effort to counter MAGA Republicans’ narratives, deliver our message ahead of the midterms, and support an online ecosystem that will help elect Democrats for years to come.
If you have any questions or thoughts, or want to collaborate, please reach out! We’re excited to keep building new online pathways to deliver our message.
Kyle