Social Media and Politics

Social Media has taken over our lives for more than a decade. We now have a generation that has fully grown up with platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. Since Social Media has become an integral part of our daily lives, how do we leverage it to benefit us? More specifically, how do we use social media to effectively work with our political campaigns? Here are just a few ways you can use social media for your campaign. 

Go LIVE!

Facebook Live is a great way to interact with fans and supporters in real time. Facebook live has become a way for politicians to voice their opinions in a more personal way. The platform is quite simple and it’s an effective way to give your base a behind-the-scenes look at your campaign and what you are doing beyond the debate stage. 

FB Live Do’s

1. Make sure you’re in a well lit area
2. Make sure the audience can hear you
3. Make sure that you’re in an area with strong WIFI or Data connection
4. Engage the audience

FB Live Don’ts

1. Do not appear disingenuous
2. Do not oversell yourself
3. Do not change your personality to try and reach a certain audience
4. Remember, filter what you say

Reply

Make sure that your are reacting and engaging your audience. With the help of social media, candidates can engage with their base in a way that never seemed imaginable in the past. Given that there are so many people on social media, campaigns need to recognize the importance of engagement. Candidates and campaigns need to address questions and concerns from social media. Gone are the days of escaping and dodging questions until you’re on the campaign stage. Candidates that do not interact on social media appear distant.

Give the people what they want

In addition to responding and engaging on social media, your campaign should take the initiative and find out what people are wanting to know about your campaign. This step takes a bit more research but this can prove to be valuable. If your website has SEO an it is being effectively operated, your campaign can find out which questions in Google are being searched about your campaign. This will give your campaign an idea of what people want to know. As such, this can be used to improve your website and social media. However, this can also be used by the campaign to directly answer the questions that people are asking. 

Organize your message

Organization will give your campaign one cohesive voice. There is nothing more detrimental to a campaign than to have conflicting messages. To avoid this, there must be a hierarchy within the communication and PR department. This should be a top down approach so that there are multiple eyes on each piece of content before it’s approved to be sent out. There are many platforms that can facilitate this, my favorite is Loomly. Loomly allows one administrator to assign tasks to be conducted within the site. The site also allows the administrator to approve ALL content before it’s published. Thus creating a system of organization and allowing each post to be traced back to its source.

Social Media is a free tool that has become an integral part of our daily lives, use it effectively and reap the benefits.