Building a Strong Progressive Message Through Community Amplification

In that first diary,  I laid out a vision for creating message unity within the Progressive Community.  Progressives in Washington are making an effort work together to craft messaging and build a community to work with to push forward a progressive agenda. Intrinsic to their vision is that this message must reach beyond the hill and beyond the Beltway; this is where you and I come in.  So I often get emails from people I work with telling me I can share some of the messaging with others, which I do.

Today I’d like to focus on the blogosphere: What role do bloggers play in the Echo Chamber?  And specifically, how can bloggers get involved?

Of all of the pieces of the Echo Chamber puzzle, bloggers have the most eyes that can then digest and further amplify the common messaging.  Daily Kos alone gets millions of page views per month.  A typical regional blog may get hundreds of thousands of page views per month and an individual local blog may get thousands.  Those page views translate into people reading the message, hopefully from multiple bloggers, and then, in turn, writing and talking with that same message.   That chain of message amplifcation is invaluable to our Progressive Community.

The second crucial role of bloggers is in message expansion.  Let’s face it, there are some things that an elected official just can’t say.  Bloggers, on the other hand, don’t have those same constraints.  So while a US Representative may take the messaging of say “the no jobs agenda of the GOP” and carefully couch their delivery to be powerful yet tactful, we bloggers can call individual members of the opposition out with more force.  We can take a hashtag like #nojobs on Twitter and dominate it… if we do such things together.

So how do bloggers become involved in this Echo Chamber?  First: join our email list. Do this by sending a request to me at progressiveechochamber at gmail dot com asking to be put added to the Echo Chamber list.  When you receive those emails you can then take the messaging offered and use it in your conversations about the issues at hand.  Most importantly, you can use that messaging as you blog about those issues.

Second: right here on Daily Kos, you can become part of the new Progressive Messaging group.  In that group we will be talking about how to best frame the messaging we are being told about and we will exchange ideas about how we can best expand and amplify Progressive messaging.

Third: when you have ideas about messaging, drop me a note that I can then forward to those involved in message creation.

Last: tell everyone you know what we’re doing and invite them to become involved.  The more people echoing each other, the louder we get.

In the past, we as progressives have not been known for our messaging unity and strength.  Now is the time to show that things have changed…that we as a Progressive Community have changed.

This diary is a part of my new series on Progressive Messaging.  Please note that my company, Progressive PST, works for Rep. Grijalva’s legislative office as an independant consultant, assisting them with netroots outreach and social media strategy.  I’m happy to say they understand the importance of this echo chamber building and are working to help unify our messaging but these diaries and my efforts are independent of anything they are doing.