5 Social Media Strategies Every Campaign Needs to Avoid Pitfalls

Social media is crucial to the running of a campaign. It spreads your message, generates interest, and activates supporters. So it’s important to know the pitfalls before you get started. That way you’ll avoid making mistakes that will haunt you in the future.

Know your audience.

When people follow your Twitter account and like your Facebook pages, it’s because they’re looking for future content like what they have already seen. Fulfill this promise to your audience by posting relevant, interesting, compelling information. Don’t get too far afield from your primary topics. Sometimes testing those boundaries is good, but remember what your audience came to you for in the first place.

Communicating your message and engaging your followers is the key to success on social media. Know who your target audience is and what they want to hear. What do they care about? Are you talking about that?

Check Spelling and Grammar.

This may seem obvious, but typos and poor grammar distract from the content of your message. It’s hard to claim expertise and reliability when you don’t sweat the details. Spelling mistakes can also derail the more important conversations you’d like to have. Critics and advocates alike will focus on the low hanging fruit rather than the hard-hitting policy conversations.  

Make sure that you have checked posts for spelling and grammar to avoid embarrassing mistakes. Then check everything again.

And one more time, just to be safe.

Pause before Posting.

Take a moment and be critical of your post before blasting it out to the world. Most tweets, memes, and Facebook posts that get folks in trouble are sent out without a second thought. Social media really encourages people to post as quickly as possible, to be the first up with the best retort, but often times, this is much more trouble than it’s worth.

Remember: once you post something, it’s out on the internet forever. Even though you thought you may have deleted something, it can be stored on digital archives, such as The Wayback Machine. Individuals can also screenshot your posts. Once it’s been posted, even though you have deleted it from your feed, it can still live on online. Waiting for just a minute before clicking send won’t kill your engagement rates, but might save you trouble in the long run.

Imagine the worst that can happen

Is that snarky reply worth it? Is a gif the best way to respond to an ernest policy argument? How could this be misunderstood? What’s the least charitable reading of this sentence?

Put yourself into the shoes of your political opponent and imagine how this could be used against you. This might seem excessive, but going through this process will deepen your understanding of your opponent’s positions, making you a better proponent of your ideas.

Don’t die on every hill

Don’t get me wrong, fighting on the internet can be a lot of fun, but sometimes, it’s just not worth the time. What’s the opportunity cost of engaging in a debate online? Could that time be better spent being proactive talking about something else?

You do not need to respond to every single piece of criticism or argument against your ideas. Pick and choose the right points to make a stand on and be judicious with your time. Otherwise, you’ll end up spending far too much time reacting and not enough time acting.

Want more strategies?

For more information on running a digital campaign, or a general campaign for office, consider signing up for one of our online Social Media courses.