Schedule
- On Twitter, your chapter should ideally post at least three tweets per day, but as long as 24 hours haven’t passed without activity, it’s not worth stressing over. It is best to space tweets out, rather than bulking them together. Tweets perform better when given at least an hour to breathe — this increases the likelihood of followers seeing them on their timelines.
- On Facebook, shoot for at least one post per day. As with Twitter, make sure to allow time between posts if you are going to be posting more frequently.
- Peak social media hours are between 11am-3pm on weekdays. Posting at 11am PST (or 2pm EST) allows the post to land in peak hours in all major time zones.
Copy
- Economical copy is best. Sometimes it’s necessary to use all 280 characters, but don’t do this too often. Short, punchy sentences are the most shareable.
- We use “Medicare for All,” not “Medicare-for-all,” “Medicare for all,” or any other variation. M4A (not MFA) is an acceptable acronym to avoid redundancy.
- Similarly, we use “copay,” “single-payer,”“healthcare.”
- If you are going to include a hashtag, use #MedicareForAll rather than #M4A or any other variation. Never use more than one or two hashtags in a tweet.
- All events should include the details of the events at the beginning of the description, including accessibility information.
- Tag @DSAM4A in any photos from chapter actions and we will retweet you!
Voice
- It’s good to strike a balance between serious and less-serious posts. It’s up to you when to adjust your tone. In general, be relaxed about your account’s voice.
- When sharing campaign updates and articles, use a professional voice with standard capitalization and follow grammatical rules.
- Be yourself — feel free to bring your own personality to the account. Avoid profanity (not a total ban, but keep it very rare and only use it if you’re really going to make it count). Lower case letters, shorthand, and ignored punctuation are fine when posting memes and jokes, but don’t get too carried away. Even when joking, remember that you’re representing a serious campaign.
- Various examples: Example 1 (professional); Example 2 (meme); Example 3 (article); Example 4 (call to action); Example 5 (emoji-heavy)
- When using hand-gesture emoji (👇,🤝,✊) they should be in the cartoon-yellow skin tone.
- Facebook should maintain a similar tone. However, since we post less and it’s more of a longform terrain, the tone will lean slightly more professional.
Content restrictions
- Take extra care to avoid crossing any boundaries that may cause offense. Do not make jokes based on identity or appearance. If you have any doubts, simply do not post.
- Do not post anything that contradicts our campaign’s five principles or the endorsements of national DSA and your DSA chapter.
- Do not overshare content from any particular account.
Retweets
- Try not to over-retweet. If you notice that the timeline has four or five consecutive retweets without an original post, it’s probably time to disrupt that pattern.
- It is better to lean toward sharing articles as original tweets rather than as retweets.
- Best practice is to retweet only well-known accounts, allied organizations, and DSA activists. Try not to retweet relatively anonymous accounts who aren’t noticeably DSA-affiliated. It should not be obvious that an account curator is pulling tweets from their personal account’s timeline.
- The exception to the above suggestions is when a high-quality or captivating tweet from a lesser-known account is gaining traction and will likely drive substantial engagement, or when it’s highlighting our campaign’s work in a positive way.
- We should generally hold retweets (and likes) to the same standard as our own tweets. This means not boosting low-quality tweets with poor copy or too many hashtags and tags.
- Finally — DO NOT RETWEET YOUR PERSONAL ACCOUNT. This is important.
Images
- Ideal dimensions for Twitter images are 1200x675. Any 16:9 ratio will be likely fine, so long as it is a minimum of 600x335. Twitter is very tricky with images — it will automatically crop the image without allowing you to choose the preview, so please stick with the recommended ratio. If you are unsure, always check both desktop and mobile after posting and be prepared to delete and re-crop. Twitter occasionally changes its recommended image sizes. Check here to stay up to date.
- The ideal dimensions for Facebook images are 1200 x 630. It’s ok to use a Twitter-sized image for Facebook, since they’re close enough, but if you want to be very precise keep the ideal image sizes in mind.
- Event banners on Facebook should be 1920x1080p with reasonable margins to avoid cropping any words.
Talking Points / Recyclable Social Media Content
Health Care Emergency Guarantee Act Talking Points
Stats
- Medicare for All will save more than $5 trillion (over 10 years)
- 30 million Americans are uninsured. Millions more are underinsured.
- Medical bills are the #1 cause of bankruptcy
- 70% of Americans support Medicare for All, including 52% of Republicans and 84% of Democrats
- Insurance company CEOs receive _____ in compensation
- The federal government pays _____ in subsidies to private insurers
Policy - stick to the five principles:
- Medicare for All will replace private insurance with guaranteed comprehensive, high-quality healthcare for everyone through a single, public program.
- Medicare for All will be completely free at the point of service — no copays, no premiums, no deductibles. Ever.
- Medicare for All will greatly improve on the current Medicare by expanding coverage to include dental, vision, hearing, long-term care (in the house bill), and reproductive care (it will repeal the Hyde Amendment and cover abortion). It will of course also cover all inpatient and outpatient care, emergency and ambulatory care, maternal care, prescription drugs, and all other medically necessary care.
- It will be truly universal — it will guarantee an equal, high standard of care to everyone, regardless of age, condition, income, immigration or employment status, or any other qualifying factor.
- It will include a just transition for those currently employed by the private insurance industry. In both the House and the Senate bills this takes the form of wage replacement, retraining, retirement benefits and education assistance.
Politics
- Medicare for All is class war. It is not Democrat vs. Republican. It’s the ruling class — including healthcare profiteers and the politicians who rely on their support — against us, the workers who are desperate for healthcare security.
- Medicare for All will be a major working class victory. It will democratize nearly ⅕ of the US economy and strike a severe blow against capital by eliminating a massive predatory private industry.
- We cannot let the establishment democrats redefine the meaning of Medicare for All through watered-down, counterfeit proposals like “Medicare for America,” “Choose Medicare,” and “Medicare Extra for All.” We need an uncompromising single-payer program that stays true to our five principles.
- Employer-sponsored insurance chains workers to their jobs and hinders other demands in collective bargaining efforts. Medicare for All will give workers the freedom to leave jobs when they wish and to never worry about switching plans or receiving lower quality coverage.
- Medicare for All will be the first truly universal program in US history — it will open Americans’ imagination to what is possible.
- Bernie Sanders is the only candidate fighting for a true, uncompromising single-payer. He has been fighting this fight for decades and will not back down. He understands the class conflict at play, and he stands with workers against the ruling class.
- We need politicians who are willing to fight for Medicare for All in Washington, but winning this gargantuan demand will not be possible without an active, dedicated mass movement using pressure tactics to counter the moneyed interests fighting to preserve the status quo.
