I mentioned at our local LPSF meeting yesterday – we meet the 2nd Saturday of each month in the 4th floor community meeting room in the SF main library at Larkin & Grove streets; see LPSF.org for any updates or other events – that one of my ongoing forms of activism is posting reader comments online.
While communicating with other Libertarians on social media is fine and can play an important role in refining our ideas, creating community, etc., it can also be a kind of echo chamber that doesn't spread the freedom message to those who most need to hear it.
For this reason, I like to post comments in online forums frequented by non-libertarians, especially local forums where one person can have more of an impact than in commenting on state, national, or world politics. You may make contact with other libertarian-leaning folks this way, and in some cases get them out of their closets. Engaging statist-leaning folks in dialogue/debate is also a very good way to improve your knowledge, and your debating skills. I've often learned important stuff while researching a question in order to respond to an anti-freedom commenter.
Many of these forums also allow you to up-vote posts you like (and in some cases down-vote those with which you disagree), which is a good way to support and encourage those who post pro-freedom comments, and show readers that more than one person holds the views in question.
One of the main commenting platforms I use is Disqus, which is used by the San Francisco Examiner and various other publications for their online comments. You can view (and up-vote, if you choose!) all my comments on that platform here:
https://disqus.com/by/starchild/
If you don't feel well-enough prepared to engage in debate/dialogue on some of these issues yourself, you may find it helpful to see how someone like myself who's been doing it for a while defends libertarian ideas. Remember that in most cases the individual(s) with whom you're arguing won't be swayed, although in some cases you may plant seeds. Mostly the goal is to influence others who are reading who aren't as dug in on their views, by presenting good arguments and trying to sound reasonable to folks who may be open to persuasion without compromising libertarian principles. Secondarily I think it can be encouraging to other freedom advocates to see people agreeing with them, and at the same time demoralizing ideological opponents by showing that defenders of freedom have a strong case to make and are not going to give up or go away.
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
Outreach Director, Libertarian Party of San Francisco