Follow Members of Congress on Social Media
Why follow your members of Congress on social media?
Social media can support your “real life” lobbying efforts with your members of Congress (MOCs). When you follow your members of Congress on social media, you see what they post. This gives you opportunities to encourage them when they post about climate change or related issues. It also helps you stay up to date about their priorities and activities, which can inform you and your chapter as you build a relationship with your members.
Follow your MOC on Facebook
To follow your member of Congress on Facebook, type their name into the search bar. You may see several search results. You will probably see one with a blue check mark, which indicates a “verified” account. Choose that one, and click on it to open the page.
Once you’re on your member of Congress’ page, click the “Like” button. Now it should display as “Liked.”
To make sure that you actually see what they post, scoot to the right to the box that says “Following.” Click the dropdown arrow. You can choose to see their posts by “Default,” which means you’ll see your member’s posts mixed in among other posts from your friends or other pages you follow on Facebook. If you are a liaison to the office or really want to stay up to date with what they’re talking about, you might choose the “See First” option. That will put the member’s posts up at the top of your Home feed, so you’ll see them first each time you log in to Facebook.
Activate your constituent badge on Facebook
Facebook has a feature called “Town Hall,” which gives you a “constituent badge.” A constituent badge is a little icon that appears next to your name when you interact on Facebook with your member of Congress. When you turn on this feature, it means your member of Congress or their staff will know you are a constituent when they read your comments on their posts.
To activate this feature, go to facebook.com/townhall. Input your address. (This will not be displayed to any other Facebook users.) Then, in the “constituent badge” section, make sure it’s clicked “on.” That’s it!
Follow your MOC on Twitter
To follow your members of Congress on Twitter, type their name into the search bar. You’ll probably see several accounts. A blue check mark that indicates a “verified” account—it’s really the member’s Twitter account, and not a parody account.
On Twitter, you may see multiple verified accounts—a member may have a separate personal account, campaign account, and a professional account in their capacity as a public servant. In general, we recommend interacting with the professional account. You can tell it’s their professional account because it will usually have “Rep.” or “Congresswoman” or “Sen.” in the name.
Click on the account(s) you want, and click “Follow.” It will now display as “Following,” and their tweets will appear in your Home feed when you log in. If you’d like to receive notifications when your member of Congress posts a tweet, you can click the bell icon to the left of the “Following” button. The bell icon will display with a blue background and a little check mark when you have that feature activated.
Follow your MOC on Instagram
To follow your members of Congress on Instagram may be a little harder, simply because not every MOC is on Instagram. Some are very active, while others are still catching up with this platform.
Either way, the process is the same: search for their name in the search bar. Select the verified account with the blue check mark.
Once you’re on their profile, click the blue “Follow” button. It will now display as “Following.” If you’re just generally trying to stay in the loop, you can stop here.
If you’re a liaison or want to watch an office closely, Instagram also offers an option to go a step further. Click the dropdown arrow next to “Following,” and you’ll see an option in the list called “Notifications.” Click that, and you can use the sliders to turn on notifications about the account’s posts, stories, and live videos. Choose what you’d like based on how much you want to be notified about your MOC’s Instagram activity.
Follow CCL on social media, too
Make sure you’re following CCL on all of these platforms too!
More support
Click the “Watch” tab on this training page for a visual walk-through of everything described here.
For more support, head to CCL’s Social Media Action Team. This is a private Facebook group, which you can request to join. Once you’ve joined, you can post questions and get support for any social media activity relating to CCL.
You can also email Flannery Winchester, CCL’s Communications Director, at flannery@citizensclimate.org.
Following on Facebook
(from beginning)
Setting up Town Hall on Facebook
(2:30)
Following on Twitter
(3:40)
Following on Instagram
(4:58)
Tips & Conclusions
(6:47)
- Flannery Winchester
Download or View the Google Slides presentation.
Download the video.For more support, head to CCL’s Social Media Action Team.