MARION ABRAMS
  • Home
  • Grounded Content Podcast
  • Blog
  • Photos
  • Home
  • Grounded Content Podcast
  • Blog
  • Photos
Search

Life & Work

Social Media Lessons from a Statewide Political Campaign

9/13/2016

 
Picture
Over a 10 month period this year, I consulted for a gubernatorial campaign on their digital goals, social media training, social media tactics, and managing their paid social media. Here are some of the lessons I took away.

Sometimes You Don't Have the Data You Want
Data is important, but it's not everything. If you're selling a product it's pretty straightforward, you can measure the success of every move you make against the sales of that product. In the online universe, success can be a matter of testing and interpreting the data to hone in on the audience and message that will generate the most sales at the lowest cost. In an election ultimately there's only one measurement that matters … votes. As we've seen in national elections, polling data is not reliable, the only solid data is election results - that information comes too late.

You Still Need Goals
Even though you have uncertainty you still you need to set goals and measure progress to be effective. We learned to set multiple goals and change them throughout the campaign.
  • Goal 1: Gain credibility. Measure: page likes, web traffic & email sign-ups generated.
  • Goal 2: Get and keep voter interest. Measure: engagement.
  • Goal 3: Get out the vote. Measure: reach.


Numbers Can Be Deceiving - Look Beyond the Numbers
If your goal is engagement and you see a spike, before you celebrate take a closer look to see if it's generated by positive or negative comments. A high relevance score and a low cost per engagement from Facebook might be misleading. Be sure you understand what's behind the numbers. If you set a Facebook campaign optimized for an action, take a closer look at how often that ad is being delivered to voters. How many voters are you turning off on the way to generating that click? This is why a hands on human approach is so important to paid social.

The Only Constant is Change
Be ready to make changes at any time. Humans just aren't as predictable as we like to tell ourselves. Take your research and make your best guess at what will work, test it and adjust. Then do it again... and again. Once you have it all figured out, expect everything to change as news events develop. Even if you've got the perfect system, if it runs more than a few months there's a good chance your social media platforms will change (for example Facebook added new audience targeting options and lead ads during our run.)

People Love to See themselves
Some of our must popular shares were photos from events our candidate attended. They say all politics is local, that means lots of visiting. The best way to win votes – meet voters. On social media, you can amplify the power of these visits by sharing photos of the candidate visiting neighborhood landmarks and leaders.

Be Nimble
We had a fantastic team, and we needed it. Keep a cache of engaging posts at the ready for slow days, there won't be many of them. The rest of the time be ready to react quickly. Responding to voter comments not only allowed us to set the record straight, it gave a good sense of what was important to our audience and made them feel heard.

Sometimes the Audience is Too Small
Common advice about paid advertising on Facebook pretty much boils down to finding the audience that allows for the lowest cost of customer acquisition. Our case was different. There's a finite set of people that are likely to vote. That's the target audience, like it or not. Even a statewide election, in Vermont anything we did to segment that audience by issue, demographics or location usually created an audience so small it became ineffective for Facebook campaigns. If you do define micro audience segments be sure to keep advertising budgets small, it's very easy to over saturate.

So what?
So how does all this apply to your next client? Every client is like a puzzle. You start with your gut instinct (informed by the client's research and experience) and then you start testing. It's the process we went through to understand how to effectively manage social media for this political campaign that is the takeaway.



Comments are closed.

    Back to Blog
    NEWSLETTER
    This blog is a place I share some of the things I think about, the photos I take, and the videos I make. They are about life, family, work, content strategy, content creation and podcasting.
    Instagram
    Linkedin
    GC Podcast

    Categories

    All
    AmeUp
    Clubhouse
    Death Race
    Favorites
    FloodBound
    Grounded Content
    How To
    In COVID Times
    Interviewing
    Life As A Creative
    Pandemic Thoughts
    Photo Journal
    Podcasting
    Projects
    Ski
    Spartan
    Speaking
    Vermont
    Woodstock

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    August 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    December 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    September 2016
    August 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    August 2015
    March 2015
    November 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    May 2013
    February 2013
    October 2012
    September 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    January 2012
    November 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    February 2010
    November 2009
    May 2009
    September 2007

Picture
Picture
Picture
  • Home
  • Grounded Content Podcast
  • Blog
  • Photos