Why belonging matters in digital organizing

Beth Becker is the founder of Becker Digital Strategies, a political digital consulting firm specializing in top-level digital strategy, social media strategy and digital training with groups and parties around the world. Here she discusses why making people feel welcome and at home from the start is vital for movements to build strong connections with supporters and – ultimately – successful campaigns. 

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When I think about belonging in the context of organizing work, I think about how multi-faceted this is and how much of our success or failure is dictated by how much we make people feel like they belong. I also find myself thinking about the fact that this is more of an ephemeral aspect of our work, as opposed to something concrete and measurable. Sure, there are metrics we can use that point to whether our community feels like they belong with us, but at the end of the day, belonging isn't something to measure – it's a way to make people feel.

Stop reading for a moment, and think about the organizations or parties you engage with online. Why do you engage with them?

Now think about the organizations you were interested in engaging with at one time but ultimately quickly unengaged. Why did you unengage?

In both of these instances, I'd be willing to bet Eric Church tickets that the way they treated you made you feel like you belonged in their community – or didn't.

Did they send you a welcome series? Did the language they use in their content feel awkward and stilted or warm and inviting? Was it clear what they do and why you should want to be a part of it? That feeling that made you want to continue to engage is belonging.

There are five main concepts that come to my mind when I think about belonging and making people feel like they belong:

1. Belonging = A welcome series

Before we ask people to do things, we need to make them feel like they belong in our work and organization. When someone joins your email list, are they invited in and made to feel comfortable with the work you do or do you just start emailing them, then asking them to donate and complete other high-bar asks right away?

In the AOL chatroom days, we had a saying we used to welcome newbies to our chatrooms: "pull up the comfy couch and we’ll take your bev order". What we were really saying is, we see you are here, we recognize you are new and want you to feel comfortable before we start bombarding you with questions. A welcome series functions the same way.

Often people think of a welcome series as a function of warming up inboxes. While that's true, it’s really the start of the relationship-building process. A great welcome series tells your new supporter more about your organization and the work you do, and asks them to tell you more about themselves and why they are here. Then it asks them to do something easy before blending them into the rest of your list. What is the tone of your welcome series? Does it feel welcoming or does it feel more like the start of a business transaction?

A welcome series, or the lack of one, sets the tone for the entire relationship your supporter will have with your organization

A welcome series, or the lack of one, sets the tone for the entire relationship your supporter will have with your organization and influences what they will and won't do for you in the future. It allows them to decide if they truly belong in your community.

2. Belonging is not just monitoring replies/comments, it's responding to them

Making someone feel like they belong may start with the welcome series, but it's only a long-term sense of belonging that keeps a person engaged. Once someone joins your list, are they still engaged 30 days later? 60 days later? 90 days later? 120 days later?

If this sounds familiar, it’s because when we do large email sends we should be segmenting and "testing down the list" by starting with our most engaged audiences. But how often do we look at our new supporters to identify how long they stick around? If 80% of your people are unsubscribing before the 30-day mark, that's a clear sign that you are not making people feel welcome.

When you send an SMS message, does someone in the organization monitor the reply inbox for replies and actually respond to people's text messages? I was monitoring said inbox for a client recently, and in the process of that I had a great conversation with a new supporter who was eager to share their story publicly of why the issues the organization works on matter to them. So I introduced them to the staff who handle collecting and distributing stories. If I hadn't been actually responding to messages vs just monitoring them, we probably would have missed a great chance to build a deeper relationship with a new supporter!

When people comment on your social media posts, do you like their comments? Do you respond to their questions? Again, doing so makes people feel like they belong in your community and that they are a part of your work, not just a robot to do the things you ask them to do.

3. Belonging = Knowing your language includes everyone

Your copy makes an assumption about who is reading it, whether you realize it or not. Does your content feel like it was written for someone who already belongs, or does it genuinely welcome people who are new to the work, new to the issues, new to the jargon, maybe new to organizing entirely?

Jargon is a belonging killer. So is over-simplifying. Treating your community like they can't handle complexity or nuance is also a form of disrespect. The goal is language that meets people where they are, makes them feel seen, and doesn't make them feel like an outsider for not already knowing the insider terms. Read your content back to yourself and ask: would a new supporter understand this? Would they feel welcomed by it?

The goal is language that meets people where they are, makes them feel seen, and doesn't make them feel like an outsider

It's not just about language. This applies to the images you use as well. People want to see themselves in your work. If you are targeting BIPOC people, but use people who don't appear to be BIPOC in your images, it's going to be hard for someone to feel like they belong.

Remember, no one ever said digital organizing is easy, that's why our jobs are safe from being erased by AI!

4. Belonging = Supporter surveys

Does your organizing flow solely organize from the top down? Meaning, does the leadership of the organization decide everything and the staff executes that – or do you ask your community to give input about what they care about and what kinds of tactics they are willing to engage in? And if you do such a survey, is it a survey in name only or does it actually influence your strategy?

Many years ago I worked with an organization that was solely focused on supporting downticket candidates in a particular region. They were all over the place trying to do all the things for all the candidates. Once we got honest about capacity, they realized they needed to pare it down. They developed a set of criteria for who they would support, then sent a survey to their supporters about which candidates were on their radar. Once they had that data, they cross-referenced it against their criteria and landed on a reasonable, focused list.

The result: a smarter strategy and supporters who felt like they belonged in the work because their opinions weren't just asked for, they actually shaped what the organization did.

5. Belonging ≠ Open rates

The metrics we use to measure success can be signals of whether people feel like they belong but belonging itself can't be measured. It's a lot like authenticity in that it's a sense of us as people that is conveyed by our actions over time. It doesn't correspond to just one thing.

The metrics we use to measure success can be signals of whether people feel like they belong but belonging itself can't be measured.

Don't fall into the analytics trap when it comes to thinking about how people perceive you. The supporter who never clicks but shows up every time you call isn't always captured in engagement metrics. The person who unsubscribes after one email might have stayed if you had a welcome series. Open rates don't tell you whether someone feels like they are part of something.

A note on internal belonging

One last thing. Everything above applies to your external community, but it applies to your staff and volunteers as well. If the people doing the work internally don't feel like they belong in your organization, it will show in everything you put out. You cannot build a culture of belonging for your community if your internal culture doesn't have it. The outside reflects the inside, whether you want it to or not.

At the end of the day, belonging isn't a feature you sometimes add to your strategy, it's either baked in fully or it isn't. Our community can feel like they belong with us based on how we treat them and make them feel at every single touchpoint.

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This blog post is adapted from a text featured in Beth's Digital Strategy Quick Tips newsletter. You can sign up here to receive this or other newsletters from Beth.

Featured image from CANVA

Blog post licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0