Facebook & Community Volunteers Play Big Role in Fairfax County School Board Win

After seeing the school board members were running their own agenda, Jeanette Hough decided it was time to make a difference and entered the 2015 county-wide school board race facing three incumbents. On election day Jeanette won one of the three open spots, defeating one incumbent by 5,500 votes. Jeanette credits taking the campaign one step at a time, attending meet and greets, and utilizing social media for her campaign success.

“I did at least three [meet and greets] a week. I filed on June 1 and ran a strong campaign for six months, even though I got in late comparable to other candidates,” said Jeanette.

Many of the people who came to the campaign’s meet and greets ended up helping with the campaign. Word of mouth played an important role in getting volunteers who were energized and who resonated with the campaign’s message. “The meet and greets were a great place to practice my stump speech and improve my communication. I got tough questions early on and it helped me to improve my answers and understanding the issues,” stated Jeanette. Out of this, volunteers and donations to the campaign grew rapidly. Friends got behind Jeanette, one even built a campaign website for her.

Jeanette attended two American Majority webinars, one on social media and the other on building a campaign roadmap. The webinars helped to get her rolling in her campaign:

“Many people I would talk with about the race would talk in the theoretical, but I needed the practical things I needed to do. After the social media webinar, I started my Facebook page for the campaign and got the ball rolling.”

The campaign spent five percent of its budget on Facebook ads. They promoted the ads, voters started sharing them, and they went viral. Jeanette says that people would tell her, “I keep seeing your name pop up on my Facebook newsfeed.” The campaign created graphics to spread the messages that received plenty of positive feedback. Jeanette’s biggest piece of advice for campaigns on social media is to have someone else manage your Facebook campaign page. “I could e-mail the pictures and such and tell them what I was doing on the trail during the day so when I got home later I didn’t have to worry about it personally.”

Jeanette’s advice to the campaign newbie: “For first-time candidates, practical next steps are key so they know how to get moving. The roadmap webinar was helpful for those.”

Jeanette’s campaign was also boosted by working with a slate of candidates who were challenging three incumbents. While Jeanette was the only challenger to defeat an incumbent, the slate increased attention on the race, showing that taxpayers wanted new leadership. As she stated, “The slate can work, but it can’t be all slate all of the time. You have to own your own campaign.”

Jeanette has never felt as physically, mentally, and emotionally challenged as she did throughout the campaign, but she credits her volunteers and the energy of her supporters for being able to lead her campaign to victory on Election Day!