This post originally appeared on OTYCD in June 2017.

 

When you talk to your members of Congress, make sure to cite specific posts they’ve made to their social media accounts.

 

We live in the world of Facebook and Twitter, but our members of Congress don’t–at least not to the extent that we do. To them, phone calls are real, and letters are real, and email and faxes and postcards are real.

 

Social media posts are not as real to them as those other forms of communication. If you tweet at your MoCs or comment on their Facebook posts, they don’t take those statements as seriously as if you had phoned them or mailed them.

 

There’s a lot of reasons why this is so, and they’re long and boring and not really the point of this post. The point is that when you contact your MoCs by the means that are real to them, you should mention, and quote back to them, specific things you saw on their social media accounts.

 

Facebook, Twitter, and the like will start to become more real to your MoCs, and more like letters and phone calls and faxes in their minds, when you show them that you, their constituents and supporters, pay attention to social media.

 

The best way to do this is when you are contacting them to thank them for doing something: “Hey Senator (Lastname)! I saw you tweet about signing the Congressional letter condemning Trump’s pulling out of the Paris accord. Thank you for doing that!’ Linking social media with positive feedback will help move us closer to the day when social media becomes as accepted as all those other forms of communication.