VoteLibraries 2016 – Voter Engagement About Libraries and Librarians

EveryLibrary today announces VoteLibraries 2016, a public-facing marketing and awareness campaign during this year's primary election season designed to build voter support for libraries.

Starting with the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, February 9th and running state by state through Election Days in June, EveryLibrary will be placing paid #votelibraries messaging via social media in every state that holds a primary election. Our independent, pro-library, #votelibraries messaging will be targeted to reach key demographics within the entire electorate in order to build new public awareness that libraries are part of the political and policy agenda in these elections. VoteLibraries 2016 will be focused on states with Election Day primaries because they also tend to be elections that have congressional, statewide, and local offices on the ballot, as well as local issues, including library funding measures.

Our mission at EveryLibrary is to build voter support for libraries. We will ask Americans to become library special-interest voters and consider library issues when voting for candidates and policies up and down their ballots. VoteLibraries 2016 does this in two ways: by enrolling voters who personally identify with positive messages about the importance and value of libraries as a new cohort of advocates; and by building a new awareness among voters that libraries are twenty-first century anchors, partners, and facilitators of critical community outcomes.

As a paid-messaging campaign, VoteLibraries 2016 is a unique project in the library advocacy ecosystem. We know from over three dozen library elections and state-level lobbying efforts that paid placements create fast and effective engagement with library activists. Like all our work at EveryLibrary, VoteLibraries 2016 is donor supported. We are grateful and proud that OverDrive and Demco are providing early financial support and tactical assistance for this project. Their donations, along with those of hundreds of personal donors, will allow us to place paid #votelibraries messaging into 42 states this primary season. We will be testing messaging, channels, audiences, and assumptions about how the public perceives libraries and librarians across these states. EveryLibrary is committed to sharing what we learn from our testing with other national and state library advocacy organizations to help them build more successful public-facing campaigns using our data.

You can be a part of the #votelibraries efforts in your state by sharing the #votelibraries messages through your personal social media channels, as well as the social media channels of your library or local advocacy group. We are recruiting writers and creatives to contribute to this effort through our coordinating group. In most states, our paid #votelibraries campaign will be active for 3-5 days before the election, and on Election Day. A state-by-state calendar of Election Days and a full deck of ready-to-share #votelibraries stories and artwork are available on votelibraries.org, VoteLibraries on Facebook, and @votelibraries. Please sign up there for alerts or to be a volunteer for your state.

You can help ensure the success of VoteLibraries 2016 by donating as little as $10 per month or a one-time donation of $50 to EveryLibrary at action.everylibrary.org.  We'll share out how many #votelibraries ad impressions and user-engagements every dollar generated. We anticipate an amazing return on your donor-investment.

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