Even successful petitions often fall flat when it comes to post-action engagement. Learn how two organizations found even more audience traction when investing in the strategy for after they get the signature.
Progressive organizations invest significant time and resources into driving traffic to their petition pages. Despite these efforts, engagement often falters after individuals sign the petition, resulting in missed opportunities to obtain further audience reach, participation, and signatures.
This challenge stems from a lack of effective post-action sharing methods, with most organizers relying solely on static share buttons—fixed icons or buttons on a website—that are generally ignored and fail to build the necessary momentum to grow petition signing campaigns.
SoSha provides a solution through user-friendly social share toolkits that not only overcome this hurdle but also foster enhanced organic conversions and sustainable community growth. Unlike static share buttons, SoSha tracks clicks (i.e., website visits generated from social shares) and conversions (i.e., new petitions signed because of a social share) from a post.
Successful toolkits have seen impressive sharing rates, ranging on average from 10 to 30 shares per 100 visits. In contrast, statistics show that for the most effective digital organizing software, only about four out of every 100 form submissions result in users clicking on a share button, and even fewer actually wind up sharing on social media platforms.*
How does it work?
Integrating with digital organizing CRMs like Action Network, SoSha toolkits can be seamlessly embedded within online petitions and other forms, amplifying their impact. Action Network is a progressive online organizing platform where users can publish various actions to the public, such as petitions, event RSVP forms, surveys, fundraising forms, ticketed event pages, and letter campaigns.
Progressive organizations in the United States, Canada and Europe, including the labor union Trader Joe’s United, and the Canadian Labour Congress have used the SoSha <> ActionNetwork integration to create toolkits that encourage and easily facilitate community members to share immediately after completing an action such as signing a petition or donating to a cause.
Within Action Network, organizations are able to utilize SoSha toolkits in two key ways. First, upon signing a petition, an organization’s community members are redirected to a SoSha toolkit. This toolkit provides pre-made posts for sharing across various social media platforms, facilitating instant engagement. Additionally, SoSha posts can be strategically embedded in follow-up emails, ensuring sustained visibility and participation. You can see examples of how Trader Joe’s United uses these two methods below.
Trader Joes United's toolkit landing page can be shared directly on a petition page and allows petition signers to select their preferred social platform where they can select from multiple different posts to share to their networks online.
The same toolkit can be shared via email marketing and embedded at the end of post-action emails to petition signers as a way of promoting them to share your petition to more audiences.
While SoSha performs well in any type of petition, its impact increases exponentially when an organization launches a campaign that resonates broadly in their community and beyond. One such example was a petition launched by noÁr, a Hungarian social movement dedicated to positive change through art, music, and dialogue.
In November 2023, noÁr used Action Network to launch an open letter against a Hungarian power company, which threatened to cut off a vital organization providing gas and electricity to people in need. With SoSha, 9,000 petition signers shared posts with their community, resulting in 3,500 new signatures.
The team observed that post-action sharing was more successful in encouraging people to share immediately after completing an action, as opposed to later follow-up emails. Remarkably, one out of every two petition signers shared a post through SoSha, which is 1150% higher than the average share ratio of static buttons on most petition softwares.
“Sharing something you signed 10 seconds ago is not a big step to make, but it is an impactful step to get your cause out there,” explained Dominik Kubik, a talented digital organizer who was the Operations Officer at noÁr. “That’s why SoSha is great - it can immediately move people one step higher in terms of engagement. Through A/B testing, the noÁr team found out that including a person in the image and using certain word choices like ‘I just signed this petition’ improved engagement significantly,” Kubik added.
The most surprising discovery for noÁr was not just the increased engagement and signatures, but the effectiveness of pre-drafted social media text in lowering the barriers for their supporters to speak on the topic. Supporters began using the copy from the SoSha toolkits in their discussions on social media, enriching the dialogue and broadening the campaign's reach. “We didn’t just give the chance for them to do a bit more but also we equipped them with the language to speak to others on the topic” added Dominik.
Even presenting the same multimedia with different variations of copy for people to react and engage with made all the difference for the Hungarian arts organization noÁr's petition.
Tips for Successful Post-Action Sharing
Provide a Variety of Posts: A high performing toolkit has at least three posts per social network. Compared to toolkits with only one post, creating toolkits with three posts or more increases engagement by 600%!
Tailor the tone and length of a text for each social network: Understanding your audience on each social network and curating your messaging accordingly can result in a 300% increase in engagement compared to using a general draft for all social networks.
Final Thoughts
All in all, SoSha doesn't just offer a solution—it provides a game-changing advantage. By seamlessly enhancing organic engagement and delivering invaluable insights into campaign performance, SoSha empowers advocacy and nonprofit organizations like noÁr to make the greatest impact possible.
*According to an internal review of industry analytics and documentation from 2020-24.
Want to learn more about SoSha or understand how SoSha’s features would work in your current digital strategy? Curious if SoSha is right for your organization?
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