The route to success in your advocacy isn’t always simple.

To influence one person – say a mayor, a law-maker or a funder – there can be various routes.

As mentioned in previous 10 Minute Library Advocate exercises, it can be powerful to work through someone else – a journalist or a partner.

To plan how best to use your time, you need a way to work out how to focus your effort.

So for the 22^nd 10-Minute Library Advocate exercise, draw an influence map.

Visualise who has an influence on who, and how they do it.

Think about how you can, in turn, influence them most effectively. Are they already friendly to libraries? Do they understand the arguments? Is it easy to get them to influence others?

Think also about where there may be difficulties – people who think libraries are unnecessary, or who oppose any publicly funded service.

This will help you decide where to focus your advocacy, and how. You can find examples of influence mapping in libraries here, or this example from broader development policy here.

Good luck, and don’t forget to share images of your influence maps!