Inside the social media strategy of a progressive think tank
Earlier this month, the blog Think Progress, a media outlet funded by the Center for American Progress, published a post asking its readers to “Join Our Effort To Expose The Billionaire Brothers’ Far-Right Agenda.”
The billionaires referenced are the Koch brothers, considered by many in the progressive sphere to be the main influencers behind a number of right wing movements currently underway. The post appeared shortly after a senior Koch operative had singled out Think Progress as leading an “orchestrated campaign” against the two brothers, and the blog was responding in kind by asking its followers to donate money to fund its anti-Koch reporting.
How quickly it was able to amass thousands of dollars for this campaign is a testament to the sophistication of The Center for American Progress’ social media operations. Created in 2003, the think tank — referred to often as CAP — is widely considered the progressive response to The Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that has highly influenced Republican policy over the last several decades.
CAP contains several branches, including its various media outlets, its action fund, and its Campus Progress (which is geared toward college students). The organization focuses on a mixture of advocacy and influence, ultimately trying to push forward progressive policies into the ranks of Congress, media outlets, and various institutions of power both inside and outside Washington.
During an interview at its downtown DC offices, Alan Rosenblatt, associate director for online advocacy, told me that the Koch fundraiser was originally supposed to amass $10,000 over a several-day period. Instead, it raised it in just a few hours, causing the team to go back and ask for an additional $50,000.
He outlined all the various platforms he has at his disposal for such a campaign, and it quickly became clear over the course of my meeting with him that CAP’s online media operations are vastly more intricate than your typical DC advocacy organization.
Consider its email lists as an example: The main list has over 600,000 addresses, but they’re broken down into dozens of subcategories, including members of Congress and their staffs, members of the Executive and their officials, a subset of activists, and people who have signed up to take action for CAP’s campaigns. “And then we have issue groups,” Rosenblatt said. “And within those issue groups, we have high level influential people, policy professionals, press, and also high level influencers in the government and in the advocacy and policy world. Those lists are culled together from people who come to our events, the contact lists of our policy experts, and then we have sort of secondary lists in each category of people who have signed up on our website for an email list on that particular issue.”
While using these various lists to push out the Koch campaign, Think Progress was able to employ its own considerable reach to amplify the message. The think tank also has multiple channels on different social media platforms, with thousands of fans and followers on various Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. Rosenblatt even created a custom short URL on a pro bit.ly account: Cap.af/kochfund.
Though the Think Progress blog teamed up with Rosenblatt and others within the organization to raise the money for this campaign, such a collaboration is actually rarer than you might think. That’s because Think Progress is a completely autonomous outlet, meaning that its editors have editorial independence from the rest of the think tank.
