How Facebook Propels Winning Campaign

We’re proud of Jeanette Hough, a Fairfax County resident, who ran after watching her school board members operate their own agendas. Among many controversial moves, the school board had voted 10-1 with one abstention for a new school transgender bathroom policy. (We highlighted the Fairfax County School Board’s controversial rulings last year.) She entered the 2015 county-wide school board race facing three incumbents to represent Fairfax County’s 1.1 million residents. On election day Jeanette won one of the three open spots, defeating the 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. Jeanette attended two American Majority webinars the summer before election day. As we’ve all seen, political campaigns are rapidly changing to engage people who spend time on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and the rest. A recent study shows that 56 percent of Americans have at least one social media platform such as Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat or Facebook. This means that the way individual campaigns are run should change as well. Jeanette demonstrated this well in her school board campaign. How Facebook Can Help You Win According to Jeannette, using Facebook played a role in her school board win. “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 [American Majority] social media webinar, I started my Facebook page for the campaign and got the ball rolling.” 1. Promote your campaign through Facebook ads Jeanette’s campaign spent close to five percent of their budget on targeted Facebook ads. Jeanette says that some ads went viral as her voters shared her posts and people would tell her, “I keep seeing your name pop up on my Facebook newsfeed!” Facebook posts and ads provide the ability to produce the right message to the right people in real time. “I think my palm card got out of date as the campaign progressed, but Facebook was always up-to-date with what we were focused on,” Jeanette said. 2. Hire a Digital Manager Jeanette’s biggest piece of social media advice for campaigns is to appoint someone other than the candidate to manage the campaign’s Facebook page. This frees up the candidate’s time to meet voters, donors, and supporters face-to-face. “I’d come home at the end of the day before we had the [Facebook] admin and think “I need to do Facebook but I’m exhausted!” One she was no longer solely responsible for Facebook content, Jeanette could engage online in her free time. Ideally, you can find a volunteer to be your digital manager for smaller budget campaigns. 3. Connect with voters online through humor “Our graphic posts did really well, particularly the Back to the Future and Charlie Brown posts.” Jeanette’s campaign created graphics to reinforce where she stood on issues with humor thrown in, and she received overwhelmingly positive feedback from supporters. Candidates have an incredible opportunity to connect with their voters online by posting memes, gifs, pictures, and infographics. A general rule of thumb: only post images online that you would share yourself. American Majority is committed to teaching conservatives the best and most effective ways to use social media! Request a training today to gain the advantage that you need to #win2016. To find out more about Jeanette’s campaign, check out her full story here!