Twitter is a fact of life in politics these days in USA. Fortunately, that gives us an opportunity to contact our representatives on an open platform in a manner that is sorta like an open letter, with a limit of 240 characters. Contacting your representatives at both the state and federal level is fairly easy, and can even be grouped together into one tweet. The information below is meant for both experienced users (who can skip over comments on how to tweet) and new users.
All you need is a Twitter account and the Twitter handles of your representatives.
Once you have a Twitter account, get the names of your representatives.
- For your representative in the US House of Representatives, goto the Find Your Representative website.
- For your representatives in the US Senate, goto the Senate state map and click on your state.
- For your representatives within your state, do a Google search for "find my legislator [your state here]", without the quotes and replacing "[you state here]" with the state in which you live. One of the first two links in the search results should get you to the websites to find both your local state Representative and Senator. Although this step is optional, it is still important to let the political parties know at all levels where the people stand.
Once you have the names of your representatives, do a Google search for each person's Twitter account using the search phrase "official twitter account [representative's first and last name] [your state, if applicable]", again without the quotes and replace "[representative's first and last name]" with your representative's first and last name. If the representative is at the state level, be sure to add your state to the end. You'll have to do this once for each person.
Typically, the first item in the search results will give you the link to the person's Twitter account profile page. Look for the @ tag. This is their Twitter handle. In my case, one of my US Senators Twitter handle is @Hickenlooper.
Don't worry if one or more of your representatives are not members of your political party. That doesn't matter for this activity.
Create your tweet within the Twitter App or website. Keep the statement simple, clear and to-the-point. Brevity is important since your tweet is limited to 240 characters, and a portion of that limit will be consumed by your representatives' Twitter handles.
Here's an example:
The message is simple, short but contains enough information to get the point across. In your tweet, you can add more detail until you reach 240 character limit. Once you post your tweet, you cannot edit it. If you find a typo or wish to change it, you'll need to delete your tweet and create a new tweet.
If you already have a well established Twitter account with a number of followers, then receiving likes and retweets by your followers will help bring attention to your tweet.
Happy grassrooting!
Also read:
