Newsletter #2- 4/6/2018
Table of Contents
Reaching New Voters Slides 3
What Isn’t Working Slides 4-8
What Is Working Slides 9-14
Combating Opponent Messaging with Troll Accounts Slides 15-17
Recap & What’s Next Slides 18-19
Link to Candidate Aggregate Data Spreadsheet
If you didn’t read our first newsletter, find it here. Please read it before this one, as it goes over basic best practices you should already be using!
Using Social Media to Reach New Voters
In the last newsletter, we went over best practices. This newsletter will focus on advanced strategies that will help your candidate reach new voters on Social Media, rather than the same hardcore followers over & over.
We’ve poured through thousands of candidate tweets & posts over the past couple of months, and one thing we’ve learned is that creating content just to create content does not reach new voters. Unimaginative or repetitive content gets seen by the same people that have already liked or followed your candidate.
To reach new people on Social Media, you have to be creative. We’re hoping the SMC can help you do that.
This newsletter is going to start off focusing on tactics we see lots of campaigns using that aren’t working.
Then, we’ll get into strategies that do reach new voters, or that are helping candidates prevent their opponents’ positive Social Media messaging from having an effect.
What Isn’t Working: Event photos or invites
We mentioned this last newsletter, but we can say it with even more certainty now: photos & recaps from standard meet & greets do not reach new voters on Social Media.
Event photos reach about 60% as many voters as an average post. They never go viral. Your followers see them, and that’s about it.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t post photos from events, which can be a nice hat tip to the group your candidate met with, or post invites to an upcoming event, which can get people to show up to it.
However, Event content shouldn’t be part of your strategy to reach new voters through Social Media or acquire new followers. It won’t help with that.
What Isn’t Working: Facebook status updates, long text posts, or Twitter threads
The graph on the right (From our aggregate data sheet) shows that Facebook posts that are just text or status updates are about half as likely to be engaged with then other types of posts. Twitter “Threads” are also less effective than other types of Tweets.
Social Media users don’t like to engage with walls of texts. We harped on ths in the first newsletter: FB+Twitter are built on engagement: They reward it with new eyeballs.
Your candidate may want to share a longer thought on an issue- That’s great! However, if it ends up on on Social Media looking like the post on the right, it isn’t very likely to reach new voters. That’s a shame, because these types of posts often reveal the most about a candidate, & have had a lot of work put into them.
Recommendation for longer thoughts: Make them “Statements’ and upload them as images
When you or your candidate wants to make a longer post, we recommend making it look nice in Word, saving it as a pdf, converting it into a jpeg, & uploading it to Twitter & Facebook in a post as an image. Social Media likes what you see on the right better than the text block from the previous page.
You should also put a short intro to the statement in the post... “For 20 years, Congress has done nothing to respond to the epidemic of gun violence. I want to change that. Please read my full statement.” Something like that.
This tweet is a good example of this practice.
This is a great free online pdf to jpeg converter.
The SMC is happy to help you set this up; don’t hesitate to reach out!
What isn’t working: Posting more often on weekdays than weekends
Last newsletter, the data suggested that Friday & Saturday are the best days to. See the green graph on the right: We are now seeing Saturday & Sunday emerge as the days when content reaches the highest number of people.
We are also noticing that campaigns post less often on weekends than weekdays. The blue graph shows total posts by Coalition members posts by day of week.
Content shared on the weekend is more effective at reaching new voters than content posted on weekdays: Try to post more on Weekends!!!
What Isn’t Working: Posting about the same thing Multiple times
We see campaigns that are excited about a particular news event or endorsement posting it multiple times.
The first post almost always reach the most Social Media users. The subsequent posts’ reach is usually 50% or less of the first post. That’s a strong indication that subsequent posts don’t reach new users.
We recommend spending a little more time on the first go around for a particular piece of content, & only posting it one time.
If you’d like to keep the content at the top of your page, repost someone else mentioning the content (or ask a volunteer to write something about it, then repost that.)
What Is Working: Posting about the News
The rest of the newsletter will focus on what has been working for candidates, and how we can emulate their success.
If there is one takeaway we could give campaigns from this newsletter, it’s this: Trending news topics on Social Media should dictate your content strategy. Both local news & national news is good: You may be planning on spending your advertising budget to talk about local issues, but that shouldn’t prevent you from commenting on National issues on Social Media. It’s free, and it’s one of the best ways to reach new voters. People are searching trending topics on Social Media. Use this to introduce your candidate to them.
Social Media users want to hear from candidates on trending issues. Campaigns who do this best reach the most voters on Social Media:
Andrew Janz Ted Lieu Randy Bryce
Don’t be afraid to have your candidate share their thoughts about trending National topics on Social Media!
How to Post About the News More Often: Empower Someone Else, & Develop An Approval Process
Candidates & Campaign Managers rarely have time to keep up with trending topics, yet they are reluctant to empower others to post for them.
This is often the main barrier to reaching new voters on Social Media. We recommend empowering a staffer or a volunteer to make posts for the campaign, & using an approval process for all content.
The Social Media Coalition has developed a content approval process that can be used by any campaign. Campaign managers can sign off on any Post or Tweet before it goes out, thus preventing something undesirable ending up on the official record, all while they’re out and about on their phone. We are happy to share the process with any campaign that is interested!
Example Approval Process
What Is Working: Piggybacking off of trending tweets, or users with more followers than you
The strongest indicator of a candidate post that reaches new users we’ve seen is this: “Did the campaign start by retweeting a post that is already trending, or an influencer with a much larger audience than them?”
For example, the Brian Forde tweet on the right has an image with Emma Gonzalez in it. Emma Gonzalez has 1.5 million Twitter followers. If, instead of an image of Emma, it was a retweet of an Emma tweet with Brian’s take on its content, it would have had the chance to pick up on “trending” phenomenons & be shown to her followers or people searching for her on Twitter.
To the right is an example of Emma putting this “Retweet influencers” strategy to good use.
2 examples of successful “Trend/Influencer Piggybacking” by candidates
Marge Retweeted Republican Senator John Kennedy’s tweet, which was trending due to people commenting on its tone deafness while gun violence activism was leading the news.
�This tweet received 5x as many impressions as Marge’s average tweet
Sam capitalized on Trump mentioning his turf.
This tweet received 4x as many impressions as Sam’s average tweet
Whenever possible, retweet something that is trending!
Identifying trends on Facebook
Since you can’t “Repost” a trending post on Facebook like you can Retweet a trending Tweet on Twitter, it is more difficult to piggyback on trends on Facebook.
�However, you can use Facebook’s “Search Pages & Posts” function to see what posts are already trending on your topic. This can give you an idea of how to structure your post, or who to mention in it.
Make sure to use Facebook’s “mention” feature on the people or Pages you find trending on Facebook. This page explains how to do that.
On the right is a screenshot of someone using the Facebook search function to find out what’s trending for “Parkland” on Facebook.
What Is Working: Asking people to “Share” your big moments or hot-takes
The sample size isn’t large on this, but it is backed up by well known Social Media best practices: If you ask your followers to share your content, they often will! This will get your content trending.
For content you think might take off, consider asking people to “Share if you agree” with a hot take or your candidate’s position. Be careful not to overuse this!
This post had a jaw dropping 73% engagement rate, by far the best we’ve seen from Coalition Members, and was way more effective than other Members’ “I’m on the ballot” posts.
It was 4x as effective as Tatiana’s average post at earning impressions
“Troll” Accounts & Combating Opponent Messaging
So far, we’ve focused on ways to get your positive message out.
However, you can also use Social Media to decrease the effectiveness of your Republican opponent’s positive messaging on Social Media.
If you don’t counter-message your opponent, their Social Media account becomes an unchallenged propaganda machine for them. What we’re calling a “Troll” account in this context is dedicated to counter-messaging your opponent. We believe there is an ethical use of a troll account, & that they can be used to provide counter-narrative to your opponent’s messaging.
Hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent on counter-messaging this cycle. Why not take advantage of Social Media to do it for free?
Examples of Troll Account Counter-Messaging
←----- Valadao hadn’t said anything on Social Media about a huge issue to his district: the brewing trade war with China. Instead, he posted about a much less important issue to avoid criticizing Trump.
The troll account brings attention to this by being at the top of his twitter responses.
←-- @realfirenunes is the gold standard for troll accounts. It has 10k followers, & is omnipresent on all things Nunes on Twitter.
Check it out to see how a master combats Nunes’ attempts to message on Twitter.
Troll Account Best Practices
Respond to comments, or ask your volunteers to
Your most popular posts will often get served to people with different political views. These folks may question your posts, or respond negatively. This is gold to Social Media Algorithms. They will share their comment with those folks’ friends, or with people who are similar to them. Conflict drives engagement.
Ask your volunteers to nicely have conversations with Conservative folks who comment in the negative on your posts. The algorithms will react to the higher engagement rate by serving it to more folks.
Pinning your best content to the top of your page/profile lets you continue creating new content at a high frequency without stepping on the momentum of your best content.
Quick Recap
What’s working for Campaigns
What isn’t working for Campaigns
What Can You Expect Next For the Social Media Coalition