Blog
Election Themed Online Activism
October 14, 2010
Can you believe how quickly election day is approaching? It creeps up, and before you know it, the big day is here! However as activists, I know you’re prepared. I’m sure you’ve been phone banking, block walking, and doing everything you can to help get out the vote for conservative candidates in your area. If you haven’t, what are you waiting for?! Get in touch with American Majority Action to help out in your neighborhood!
While there’s nothing like a face-to-face interaction with voters, sometimes not everyone can be reached. Supplementary reinforcements that help spread the word about a candidate or cause, such as online activism, have become increasingly important in today’s fast-paced, digital world.
With election day less than 20 days away, I want to share a few tips detailing how you can maximize your online GOTV efforts for conservative candidates of your choosing; specifically through the unique, indispensably important mediums of Twitter and Facebook.
Finding out if a candidate you support has a twitter account, then tweeting about a them using “@username” is a great way to help spread the word, gain the candidate more followers, and create a buzz about the race. When you put the @ sign before the username of a candidate, not only will they see you tweeting about them, but your tweet links directly to their account so others can follow the candidate as well. When mentioning a candidate in a tweet, it’s great to link to a positive story on them, an issue relating to the campaign, or an article that highlights the negative positions of their opponent. If you do mention the name of the candidate’s opponent, I suggest not linking to the opponent’s twitter account with the @, because you aren’t looking to get more exposure for the candidates you oppose. The last thing we’d want to do is link to a twitter feed where a big government candidate is presenting him or herself in a positive light. It’s your job as an online activist to highlight the positive positions of liberty candidates; and do the opposite when it comes to their opponents. In addition to tweeting with the candidate’s @username, it’s a great idea to add a few “hashtags” to your tweet. Hashtags are essentially twitter conversation tags that people add to the end of tweets. They begin with an #, and can be clicked on. For example, clicking #texas in a in someone’s tweet will bring you to a list of everyone tweeting with that hashtag. It’s a great way to track conversations about specific topics, and to spread information about your candidate. Others track hashtag conversations to find relevant information relating to the topic. It can’t hurt to tag your tweets with a few of the suggested ones below. As you tweet more often, you’ll notice others, as well.
Suggested hashtags for national discussions: #tcot (“Top conservatives on Twitter”) #teaparty #liberty #majority #amaction
It’s also worth looking into hashtags that are used by people locally. For example, in my former place of residence, Massachusetts, #mapoli is widely used. In my current home of Texas, #txlege is common, and #txcot is for Texas conservatives.
In addition, almost universally, a combination of a State’s abbreviation and a district are used to discuss races. For example, #MA04 (Barney Frank’s district). A similar concept applies to Senate races. For example, #DESen to discuss the O’Donell v. Coons race, or #KYSen for Paul v. Conway.
If a candidate has a personal profile, we suggest you friend them. Sometimes a link to their profile will be listed on their website – and if not you can easily do a facebook search. Additionally, if they have a fan page, you should “like” it. Whether you’re friends with someone, or have “liked” a page, you can tag either in a status, creating a link for others to follow. For example, you could update a status saying, “Check out the @’Name of Candidate’s Page’ fan page. She’s a great candidate, because she wants to get spending under control and make sure our taxes aren’t raised”. With the @ sign before the name of her page, you’ll create a direct link for others to follow, and then “like.” Additionally, it’s helpful for you to ‘like’ the status updates of candidates you’re trying to promote, because the more ‘likes’ a status gets, the more prominently featured that update will be in other people’s newsfeeds. The amount of “likes” a status gets, among other factors, have an effect on search engine rankings as well.
Another great tactic on facebook relates to posting, and reposting links. If you see a great link on a candidate’s page or profile, you can repost it to your profile by clicking “share”, which appears just below the link, and just above the comments. Doing so will create a post on your profile which will state you got the link “via” the profile it came from, with a link to that profile. This is another great way to promote your candidate by creating a direct link to their page on your own profile. Additionally, you can post a new link to your wall, and tag a candidate’s profile or page the same way you do in a status update. Lastly, make sure you “suggest to friends” the fan pages of candidates you are supporting. On a fan page, right under the candidate’s picture, you’ll see a link that says “suggest to friends”. Click on friends that you think will support the candidate, and ask them to become a fan in order to help spread the word.
This may seem overwhelming to those who aren’t familiar with facebook and twitter – but if you’re here reading our blog, you’re off to a great start! For those already using both mediums, I hope that this serves as a good reminder, or perhaps jumpstarts you to utilize some online activism tactics that you may not have considered previously.
Happy tweeting and facebooking; but don’t forget to pair it with copious amounts of boots on the ground activism!