A Digital Strategist, writer, and storyteller.
Florida Democratic Party
Objective
While serving as the Digital Director of The Florida Democratic Party I had two main goals; the first was to tell the story of Florida and Florida's voters through digital storytelling and the second was to digitally organize online for the Election Cycle in 2020. Throughout the cycle we were able to transition all on the ground and in person events/programs online, create digital communities for all 67 counties in Florida, and train hundreds of volunteers and county parties leaders in how to have a presence online.
Analytics
Digital Volunteer Teams
Even before the pandemic hit, we knew that we needed to create buy in from users and volunteers online on all major platforms across the state to spread messaging. This meant training and recruiting volunteers to create content, distribute information online, and digitally organize. We launched this program with a Digital Summit that trained over 400 volunteers in digital organizing.
Community Building
We knew to maintain our online program we needed to build digital spaces on all major platforms that formed a community for the 2020 candidate. In preparation we were able to build out grassroots organizing groups on Facebook for the 67 counties in Florida. These groups were managed and maintained by the local organizers in the area and some of these groups reached thousands of members.
We also created weekly programming called "Florida Dems Live" this event was used as a weekly "game show" type event using the program "Icebreaker"where attendees were matched 1:1 with other volunteers, organizers, and staff in the state and given a set of questions to discuss - mostly about hot topics and getting involved with the campaign. We also invited special guests like elected officials, politicos, and other important people to the movement in Florida.
This event happened every Saturday and brought in hundreds of volunteers into the movement.
Expanding Our Reach
While increasing our reach on existing platforms was important (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram), we also knew we needed to expand our reach to emerging platforms such as TikTok and Snapchat.
That's where we had to increase our team - hiring four platform specific digital organizers and a Deputy of Digital for Hispanic Content specifically. These digital organizers were responsible for monitoring trends, creating content, and organizing online. We were also the first state party to create a TikTok account.
This strategy was recognized and mentioned in TIME Magazine.
Storytelling
As the party we knew that we needed to amplify the voices of Floridians across the state on why they were ready to defeat Trump in 2020. That's why we created the first every storytelling bank for the Florida Democratic Party - #DefeatTrumpFL. We set up storytelling booths at all of our major party events, created an online storytelling submission form, and added all of these stories to our microsite.
We then launched our first every Storytelling Microsite - DefeatTrumpFL.com
Twitter Town Halls
Increasing our reach and engaging our audience was crucial - especially for key voting dates, days when Trump was in the state, and on important topics like Climate Change and Amendment 4.
That's why we started creating Twitter Town Halls - a great way to give our Elected Officials, volunteers, influencers, and activists a voice in the conversation online.
Through this method we were able to get key voting hashtags trending such as #DefeatTrumpFL, #ClimateCrisisFL, #VoteFLDems, #LetUsVoteFL, #MailTheVoteFL and more!
This helped us increase our reach on important issues while also increasing our follower count by hundreds every town hall.
Website Redesign
From 2019-2020 we oversaw an extensive website redesign from concept to launch. This website was more welcoming, engaging, and represented the new digital movement in the party.
