Killer Campaigning » Campaign Social Media

Triple Your Political Campaign Volunteer Base With Facebook

killercampaigning — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 22:22:47 +0000

Volunteers are the lifeblood of your campaign. Unfortunately, there’s no magic formula for tripling the number of supporters willing to knock on doors or make calls. I wish there were.

But there is an easy way to triple the number of people willing to spread the word about your campaign, using Facebook. And that’s what Clayton Lopez discovered in 2009 while running for reelection for City Commissioner, District 6 in Key West, Florida.

Lopez, as popular as he was (and he still is), with a constituency of only 2,616 registered voters, had to get out the vote with a small volunteer team that you could count with one hand. Lopez faced the same challenge that every candidate faces: people are too busy to volunteer. So he tried something new.

At his kick-off event, between singing a few songs (it seems that everyone’s an artist or performer in Key West!), Lopez captured 18 video endorsements from roughly 30 attendees, and posted these on his Facebook page.

Within two and a half weeks, his fanbase grew by 25%. Week over week, media views on his page skyrocketed by 1,613%. And in the five weeks leading up to the election, these 18 video endorsements were shared and viewed a total of 784 times, for an average of 43.55 views per video. So rather than delivering his campaign message to only 30 attendees that day, the 18 people that volunteered their video endorsements helped Clayton get the word out to over 20 times that many people.

So here’s the bottom line. It’s easy to triple the number of supporters willing to volunteer some time to support your campaign in a powerful way. All you have to do is provide them with this simple volunteering activity, which takes less than ten seconds.

And if “tripling” sounds too conservative for you, and you want to capture video endorsements at every event, and in every way possible, look into the new Endorser Facebook application which was developed to handle an unlimited number of video endorsements, as well as videos submitted via smart phones. Endorser also provides supporters with the opportunity to share your official campaign videos and positive news articles as well… which are two additional ways for your supporters to volunteer a few more seconds of their time.

Oh, I almost forgot. Lopez was handily reelected, with 73% of the vote.

Facebook Privacy Changes Good for Political Campaigns?

killercampaigning — Sun, 16 May 2010 17:46:20 +0000

Could easier access to potential voters’ personal data be of big benefit to candidates running political campaigns for office? That’s what a post on SFWeekly suggests, noting that the administrators of political Facebook fan pages will now have access to lots of juicy voter information that could help a candidate mine for supporters, volunteers and contributions:

“Think of all the useful things a politician can learn from his “Facebook fans,” said San Francisco political consultant Jim Ross. He uses the Facebook group FixMuniNow — of which he is a “fan” — as an example. The keepers of that page can now access far more of their fan’s information than before. “They could run all of us folks against the voter file, right?” says Ross. “They could say, ‘Jim, you’re not registered to vote.’ Or ‘Hey, Jim — you live in precinct so-and-so. Would you be a precinct captain?’ They wouldn’t have known that stuff before.”

We’ve talked before ab out the importance of having a Facebook fan page–even if you’re a candidate running for office in a smaller local election. Facebook pages aren’t just useful for politicians who have hundreds or thousands of fans, but can also help candidates who only have a few dozen followers.

If you’re a candidate running a political campaign for elected office and haven’t started a Facebook page yet, there’s no time like the presence to hop on board.

New Online Political Campaign Fundraising Option: GoFundMe

killercampaigning — Mon, 10 May 2010 18:48:48 +0000

TechCrunch has a post today about a new online group fundraising website, called GoFundMe, that might be a great option for political campaign candidates looking to take donations on their site and track contributions with an interesting social media layout.

We’ve looked at raising political campaign money online with PayPal, but GoFundMe gives candidates a more interactive option for fundraising that lets supporters track contributions and interact with visually stimulating graphs and social features. After you’ve created your donation page, you can embed it on your election website and share it with supporters via Facebook, Twitter and email.

GoFundMe charges nine bucks a month to use their service, but doesn’t take any transaction fees. You will still have to fork over 2.9% of money raised to PayPal, since it’s built off of their API.

Political Campaigns & Local Elections: Become an Expert in Any Field

killercampaigning — Mon, 03 May 2010 14:22:31 +0000

If you get a chance, hop over to the widely-read blog Quick Online Tips and read a guest article that my wife Jessica Van Treuren and I wrote about using blogs to become an expert in any field.

While not directly applicable to running a political campaign or winning a local election, the article does have some great tips for campaign consultants, pollsters and managers who want to make a name for themselves in politics. Here’s the gist of it: thanks to free blogging platforms and social media, you don’t have to rely on other people to make yourself a recognized expert in your field anymore.

Becoming a popular and successful industry expert is no longer about moving your way up the corporate ladder. By providing helpful content, forming professional relationships online, and consistently building links back to your website, you can make yourself a recognized expert in whatever niche you want.

There’s no time like the present to get started . . . don’t let other people decide whether or not you are going to be successful in your field. Make the decision for yourself!

Sharing Political Candidate Surveys on Multiple Social Media Channels

killercampaigning — Sun, 02 May 2010 16:28:20 +0000

I’m an elected city councilman in Amherst, Ohio, and I received a great email from a college student today containing questions about the roll I play in local government. The student’s government class is doing a project on local elected officials, and he sent a very polite message asking me to take a moment to answer some good, general questions about my experiences on city council.

I’m going to share my answers with all of our Killer Campaigning readers below. More important than that, though, is the lesson that these kind of political candidate surveys should never just be filled out and sent back . . . they are also a great opportunity for elected officials and candidates to reach out to voters and broadcast their views.

In addition to responding to the student’s questions, I also published my answers to his class survey on my official political candidate blog, and put a link to the post on my official Facebook fan page. I encouraged all of my fans to click through and check out my answers to the questions.

This is just another example of how having a personal campaign blog and political candidate Facebook fan page can help you reach out to supporters and utilize these kind of opportunities to their fullest extent. Whenever you get a candidate election survey, you should always put your answers on your own blog and provide a link to it on your Facebook Fan Page or Twitter profile.

Below is the original email from the government class student, followed by my answers.

Hello Phil, my name is Gregg and I am doing a project for my government class and I was hoping to ask you a few questions

A) Why are you involved in local government?

B) What is the most exciting part of the job

C) How did you become a public official? Were you appointed or elected? If elected, have you ever faced a contested race to be a public official?

D) Who do you think are the most powerful individuals or organizations in you community?

E) What are the hardest decisions to make in budgeting?

F) Do political parties or personal alliances play any role in conducting public business?

G) In your opinion, what role does the media play in local government?

I appreciate you taking time out of your day to help me with these questions.

Gregg, thanks so much for the great questions! It’s good to see that LCCC is encouraging its students to find out more about local government and elected officials.

My answers are below. Thanks again and good luck on your class interview project!

A) Why are you involved in local government?

I think that Amherst families are very lucky to live in such a safe and beautiful city, and keeping it that way is very important to me. I couldn’t think of any better way to make sure that Amherst neighborhoods stay safe and beautiful for our children and families than running for City Council.

B) What is the most exciting part of the job?

There isn’t a whole lot of “excitement” involved with local public service, but there are plenty of satisfying experiences. I know that many elected officials don’t like getting personal phone calls from constituents, but I really enjoy it. I always make sure that my cell phone number is available to everyone in the city, and I like getting calls from citizens who have ideas about making Amherst a better place to live.

C) How did you become a public official? Were you appointed or elected? If elected, have you ever faced a contested race to be a public official?

I was elected last year in the City Council at-Large race. It was my first time running for office. There were four candidates running for three Council at-Large seats. I was honored to be the top vote-getter.

D) Who do you think are the most powerful individuals or organizations in you community?

Amherst is lucky to have quite a few local service organizations that do some great things in our community. The Amherst Rotary Club, Main Street Amherst, and the Historical Society come to mind, and there are several others.

E) What are the hardest decisions to make in budgeting?

Because of the difficult economic times we’re facing, the city can’t always finance projects to the extent that we would like to. As elected officials, I think it’s our job to balance two important priorities: adequately funding our city services so that residents remain safe, and being good stewards of taxpayer money.

Amherst has been blessed with a great administration–led by Mayor David Taylor–that does a fine job of protecting taxpayer money while providing adequate funding to vital safety and public services.

F) Do political parties or personal alliances play any role in conducting public business?

No, not for me. If something isn’t good for the city, I won’t consider supporting it . . . regardless of what my personal friends or political party leadership thinks.

G) In your opinion, what role does the media play in local government?

The media might play a more significant role in the local government of larger cities, but it isn’t much of a factor in the City of Amherst. Personally, I couldn’t care less what the media thinks. I don’t make my decisions based on how it will play in the newspapers.

New Facebook “Like” Button on Killer Campaigning Posts

killercampaigning — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 15:19:15 +0000

Wow, I’m really writing a lot of posts about Facebook lately . . . but here’s another quick one. If you visit the Killer Campaigning site, you’ll notice that we have added the new Facebook “like” button to the top of each one of our posts. If you ‘re logged into your Facebook account, this button allows you to quickly “like” individual posts and share them immediately with all of your Facebook friends on your page wall.

The “like” button also allows you to see which of your friends have liked the same article. It’s a really neat tool, and I’m looking forward to seeing if it helps Killer Campaigning readers share their favorite political campaign and local election tips with the social media community.

If you get a chance, please try out the new button by going to your favorite Killer Campaigning post and clicking the thumbs-up image beneath the post title. Oh, and don’t forget to become a fan of the Killer Campaigning Facebook Page . . . we’re at nearly 1,600 members and growing fast!

Facebook as a Tool for Political Campaign Candidates

killercampaigning — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 22:35:51 +0000

If you’re a political candidate who is running for office in a local election, then you won’t want to miss a great article published on Inside Facebook today about how mayoral candidates are using Facebook to augment their campaigning efforts.

Facebook is quickly becoming an important part of political campaigns around the world, and the social media giant it isn’t just helping candidates in large statewide and national elections. Facebook can be a very valuable tool for local election candidates as well, as we’ve highlighted here on Killer Campaigning many times.

Check out the contrasts that Inside Facebook draws between mayoral candidates who only use their Facebook pages as “broadcasting” platforms to spread the word about events, as compared to other candidates who are more active in using it for a wider variety of functions.

Regardless of whether you’re an incumbent office holder or a new political candidate whose name is going to appear on the ballot for the first time, you’re missing out on a great campaign tool if you haven’t signed up for Facebook yet. While campaigns can win without using Facebook and other social media sites today, the time is quickly approaching when your candidacy will be at a severe disadvantage if you haven’t hopped on board.

Great Example of Using Twitter in a Political Campaign

killercampaigning — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 18:22:23 +0000

Chattarati has a great example of a congressional candidate who is using Twitter to update supporters about details of his political campaign platform. Check out the example below and use it to help you think of ways you can use Twitter and other social media to keep your campaign supporters updated!

House candidate Tim Gobble (I don’t know anything about him or what party he belongs to) sent his twitter election followers three tweets related to his plans for reducing national debt:

–I will work with others to responsibly reduce the national debt by doing the following:

–1) entitlement reform. 2) cutting bureaucracy & program spending. 3) eliminating wasteful earmark spending. 4) reducing foreign aid.

–5) winding down war in Iraq. 6) reducing costs of health care. 7) consolidating govt functions. 8) ending bailouts 9) stopping fraud & abuse

Facebook Ads Advertising for Political Campaigns & Candidates

killercampaigning — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 18:25:11 +0000

Yesterday we focused on Google AdWords advertising for political campaigns, which is more suited for medium to large local elections. Today, I’d like to talk about another form of online advertising that can be much more effective for candidates in smaller local elections: advertising with Facebook ads.

While Google AdWords allows you to specify what geographical areas you would like your ads to appear in, Facebook ads let you get even more specific regarding exactly who you wish to reach with your political campaign advertising. Because users give the social networking site so much information about themselves, you are actually able to specify in the Facebook ads interface what age group, sex, location and other variables that you want your ad audience to have.

This kind of ultra-targeted advertising is great for political campaigns and candidates, since it allows you to target specific likely voter groups with individual messages. You could, for example, create a Facebook ad that is targeted at younger voters, and then set it up so that it only shows for users who are in the age range of 18 to 34 years old.

Many local political campaign candidates have used Facebook ads to promote their fan pages or groups, and it usually results in some moderately successful results (don’t expect to get hundreds of followers out of it). Like Google AdWords, Facebook ads allow you to set a daily budget for how much you want to spend per click, and your ads will stop showing after you have reached that budget.

If you do have a Facebook fan page or group for your political campaign, I suggest you try Facebook ads out just so you can familiarize yourself with it, because it’s going to become a much more effective form of online advertising as time goes on.

One warning, though: Facebook ads tend to drive a lot less traffic than Google AdWords ads, and their click-through rate is pretty bad (clickthrough is the number of people who see your ads versus the number who actually click on it). If you are running as a candidate in a smaller local election and target only people in your city to see your Facebook ads, don’t be surprised if you only get a few clicks a week.

Still, it’s worth setting up a few Facebook ads, setting a small daily budget of a dollar or so, and checking your stats every now and then. Facebook is evolving quickly and is becoming more important to successful political campaigning every day, so it’s a good idea to get comfortable with the system. In the process, it will probably send you a few extra fans and supporters.

Campaign Ready Town Hall: Microsoft Politician Social Media Platform

killercampaigning — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 16:31:29 +0000

Mashable has a good post about a new social media platform for politicians called TownHall that you should check out if you get a chance. Looks like it could be a good tool to add to the arsenal for helping political campaign candidates engage in interact with their supporters. It’s part of a suite of web tools for political campaigns called Campaign Ready.

Town Hall let you build sites that let your supporters communicate about campaign topics and connect online. The web-based platform–which is hosted on Windows Azure–has plug-and-play options that let you create opinion polls, reward participation, and promote popular topics.

I haven’t used Campaign Ready or Town Hall myself, but it looks interesting. Leave a comment if you have any experience using it on your own local election efforts.