Special Note: This blog entry is not intended to spur political discussion or views. To ensure this, I will not specify the party or riding I worked for.
In March, I was approached by a candidate in the then anticipated federal election to be her campaign’s Director, Social Media & Online. Having built MeetingsCanada.com and being very experienced in social media, I knew I could do the job. However, not having any experience in federal elections was a unique challenge. The overall goal: stay in constant communication and ensure the online world is in step with the face-to-face world. To accomplish this I had a daily early morning conference call with the campaign manager (seven days/week). We integrated a Facebook Page & Profile, Twitter feed, created a YouTube channel, Flickr and of course the candidate’s actual website.
Social Media & Politics…
…are not really friends (yet). Yes there was a lot of buzz online, but 90%+ of it was being written/read by the parties campaigning. In my opinion, the average Canadian was not engaged in election blogs, tweets, groups, forums, etc. The one exception being Rick Mercer’s challenge to youth to get out and vote; the result was Vote Mobs (Google it, it’s pretty amazing).
The Lesson: there seems to be a panic environment among most business events if they have not successfully integrated social media yet. Its good perspective to know that every industry is in the same boat; we are not ahead or behind the curve. But make no mistake you at least need to be using social media to be in the game.
Content & Engagement
Its no secret, in the online world content is king. But the layer under content is engagement. These engagement metrics do not just measure how many people read your article or press release; they measure what they did next. Did they “Retweet” it? “Like” it? Add a comment?
Lesson: Not every piece of content needs an action item, but you should ensure at least 50% does. For example, ask your audience for their opinion, take a position on an issue and challenge your readers to agree to disagree, or simply make a claim such as red Smarties are better than blue ones. If you want your social media and online efforts to “go viral” you will need your audience to engage in your content.
Bonus Tip: we oscillated content between French & English to appeal to all audiences.
Frequency
During the campaign I was posting messages at least once daily (seven days/week), with peaks of four or five and monitoring the competitor’s messages on both a riding and federal level.
Lesson: Your social media & online strategy should ensure you are publishing content or messages at least three times/week. If your plan is to publish weekly or slower, then you will not have enough frequency to generate a following; you need frequency to be top of mind. And don’t just take my word for it…the leading books on social media echo this strategy.
Integration
I found it interesting that all the candidates used voice drops, direct mail and face-to-face as part of their marketing/campaigning…and they always gave a website or social media page as part of their calling card.
Lesson: integrate your marketing efforts; don’t treat them as silos.
The Results
I can’t share all our results due to party confidentiality, but as a small taste, we launched a Facebook Page for our candidate on April 2 and as of May 2 it generated almost 22,000 impressions.
Who knows…maybe in four years my next campaign will be “Vote for Steve”!
Steve
PS: If you would like to learn more about my experience and/or would like to discuss applying my Social Media & Online expertise to your event or organization…drop me line.
posted May 4, 2011
hey Steve, great lessons. being part of meetingscanada.com and having input into messaging that was directed towards more of a B2B audience,who potentilly had profits to be gained through business networking, how was this social media development different being that the message was more for the community involvement aspect of personal life? i am in talks with a group looking to put together a fund raising event, so is it much different in how to tailor your message or find your audience when dealing with soliciting good will instead of dollar bills?
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