Social Media 101

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Joleen Smith, Digital Communications Associate

jsmith@lwvtexas.org

LWV Social Media Resources

• LWVTX Communications
• LWVTX Social Media Playbook
• LWVUS Brand Standards and Logo Files
• VOTE411 Brand Standards and Logo Files
• LWVUS Flickr Site
• LWVTX Social Media Best Practices

Social Media Platforms

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• TikTok
• YouTube
• Others: LinkedIn, Pinterest, Nextdoor, Snapchat, WhatsApp, etc.

Best Practices - Facebook

• Post content 3-5 times per week.
• Post diversified content: photos, videos, text only, articles, etc. Users like to see a variety of content in the social media accounts they follow.
• When sharing links or posts from another page, be sure to include at least 1-2 sentences for context.
• Don’t share a previous post within 48 hours. And if/when you do share that post, be sure to include at least 1-2 sentences (different from the original caption) for context.

Best Practices - Facebook

• Don’t post anything within 2 hours of another post if possible.
• Don’t include links inside a post if you don’t need to. According to Social Insider, posts without links receive double the engagement of posts with link insertions.
• Copy should be short, concise, and SEO optimized. According to data gathered by CoSchedule, your target word count should be around 111 characters. Using emojis is okay, but keep them to a minimum.

Best Practices - Facebook

• Comments, shares, and likes are all indicators of how valuable your social content is to your followers.

Likes<Reactions<Comments<Tags<Shares

• If a post gets ZERO likes or interaction within 8-12 hours of posting, delete it and repost at a different day/time.

Best Practices - Facebook Videos

• To get the best results, upload videos directly into Facebook. Posting a link to a YouTube video is okay, but posting the video directly to Facebook will get better results.
• Make sure your videos have closed captioning if possible.
• Videos between 2 to 5 minutes get the most engagement.
• Opt for the vertical format in videos if possible, since most people watch the videos on their phones.

Who Uses Facebook?

• 56% of Facebook users are male, and 44% of Facebook users are female.
• The largest demographic group of Facebook users is between the ages of 25 and 35 years. Over one-third (36%) of Facebook’s audience are 45 or older, 26.4% of the platform’s user base is made up of millennials, and 23.8% of Facebook users are 18-24 years of age.
• 69% of U.S. adults use Facebook. 70% of Facebook users claim that they visit the site daily, with 49% checking the platform “several times per day.”
• Two-thirds of adult users consume news through Facebook.

Best Practices - Twitter

• Login at least once per day to monitor messages, tags, comments, and retweets.
• Make sure you’re answering questions and responding to comments quickly.
• Interact with other accounts by retweeting their content and liking and/or commenting on their tweets.

Best Practices - Twitter

• You can post multiple times a day on Twitter.
• Use and analyze your hashtags. How many, where to place them, what are they? Don’t use more than two or three hashtags, and try to work them into the tweet if possible, instead of just bunched together at the end.
• Tell stories using threads.

How to Create a Twitter Thread

• Step 1- Click the Tweet button to draft a new Tweet.
• Step 2- To add another Tweet(s), click the highlighted plus icon (the icon will highlight once you have entered in text). Note: If you go over the character limit, the text that is over the limit will be highlighted for easier editing before you post.
• Step 3- To delete any of your Tweets, click the delete button
• Step 4- When you have finished adding all the Tweets you’d like included in your thread, click the Tweet all button to post.

Best Practices - Instagram

• Post content at least 3-5 times per week.
• Post up to 5 Stories per day to ensure a retention rate of over 70%. Instagram Stories are chronological.
• Use and analyze your hashtags. Instagram lets you use up to 30 hashtags, and if you choose them well, you can boost engagement and reach a wider audience.

Best Practices - Instagram

• Use carousel posts on Instagram for more engagement and likes. Use all 10 slides of a carousel to create a Story, and include a mix of videos and photos.
• If your goal is to drive conversations, video posts receive the most comments.
• Keep your captions short, under 10 words, but include many emojis to complement your point.

Who Uses TikTok?

• TikTok was the most downloaded app of 2021, with 656 million downloads.
• TikTok has now surpassed Instagram for popularity among Gen Z users (born between 1997 and 2012) in the U.S.
• TikTok is making big gains in other age demographics: in the first quarter of 2021, 36% of TikTok users were between 35 and 54 years old, compared to 26% in 2020.
• Worldwide, TikTok’s user base is 57% female. That figure rises to 61% for TikTok users in the U.S. Brands hoping to reach younger female audiences will likely see the best results.

Social Media Best Practices

• Research and understand your audience. Who is your target audience?
• Have specific content strategies for each social network. Don’t post the exact same thing on multiple networks. Customize your content for each social media network.
• Respond quickly to comments and messages. Quick response times aren’t only appreciated, they’re expected. Globally, 83% of customers expect a response to a social media inquiry within 24 hours, and 28% expect an answer within one hour.

Social Media Best Practices

• Don’t oversaturate. Be strategic in when and how often you post.
• Repurpose “evergreen” content when possible. Evergreen content refers to those topics that are not related to specific events or campaigns that can be easily used in a pinch to cover a content gap. The first step when repurposing content should be identifying your most popular posts.

“Your prospects need to come across your message at least seven times before they notice it and take action.” - Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Political Communications

Ellis Prater-Burgess

Voter Outreach

• Social Pressure
• The “threat of social disapprobation” for not voting increases turnout
• Emphasizing voting as a social norm is also effective in raising voter participation rates
• But the power of social pressures to incentivize voting is weaker during primary elections.(Gerber 2016)
• In-Group Admiration
• People are more likely to vote if they know their political participation will be known and admired by in-group members (McClendon 2018).
• Target people who are members of a highly salient in-group, including strong partisans but also members of an organization, fans of a particular sports team, or students at a particular school…with messages that prime those identities and link them to voting” (Oxford Handbook of Electoral Persuasion).

Social Media and Voter Participation

• More young people heard about the 2018 election on social media (28%) than through traditional outreach from candidates and campaigns (13%).
• This is partly because traditional outreach is often based on voter registration lists and therefore may not reach new voters.
• Voting as a visible social norm
• People who saw Facebook’s “I Voted” button along with a message showing which of their friends had already voted were more likely to vote than if they were shown an informational message.

Inequality in GOTV Efforts

• Types of voters—some traditional wisdom
• High-Propensity: Always show up.
• Especially important for local election candidates, since they might be the only ones voting in their races.
• Mid-Propensity: Show up for Generals and Presidentials.
• “Local candidates running in an even numbered year November General Election cannot ignore these voters” (Campaign School)
• Low-Propensity: Show up for Presidentials.
• May or may not make it down the ballot, so local candidates “should communicate with these voters once or twice in the days leading up to the Election” (Campaign School)

Inequality in GOTV Efforts

• Typically target high-propensity voters, exacerbating the participation gap
• One study found that “two-thirds of GOTV experiments mobilized high-propensity voters to a greater degree than low-propensity voters” (Enos et. al, 2014, 286).
• Currently effective in increasing turnout of high-propensity voters, leaving out low-propensity, underrepresented voters—transforming electorate
• Explanations?
• High-propensity citizens:
• Correlated with higher education and political knowledge, so they may better understand the GOTV effort
• Easier to contact via door canvassing and phone call.
• Low-propensity citizens:
• May have higher costs associated with voting—emphasizing the benefits of voting may be more necessary for these voters

Bibliography

Floyd, Brian. “Why Winning Candidates Understand Voter Propensity.” The Campaign School.

https://thecampaignschool.com/ever-candiate-needs-understand-propensity-voters/

García-Orosa, B. (2022). Digital Political Communication: Hybrid Intelligence, Algorithms, Automation and Disinformation in the Fourth Wave. In:

García-Orosa, B. (eds) Digital Political Communication Strategies. The Palgrave Macmillan Series in International Political Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81568-4_1

García-Orosa, Berta (2021). “Disinformation, social media, bots, and astroturfing: the fourth wave of digital democracy”. Profesional de la

información, v. 30, n. 6, e300603. https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2021.nov.03

Harder, Joshua, and Jon A Krosnick (2014). “Why Do People Vote? A Psychological Analysis of the Causes of Voter Turnout.” : 25.

League of Women Voters of Texas

www.LWVTexas.org

(512) 472-1100

lwvtexas@lwvtexas.org