Social Media Campaigning 2016: Advice to Candidates

Social Media Campaigning 2016: Advice to Candidates

Social media has amazing upsides, but somebody a long time ago observed that what goes up, must come down. One of the frequent mistakes I see is the blind focus on the potential without planning for the inevitable cow pies. Planning makes the difference between a slip-up and a total fall from grace.

Big Data and Big Brother

Candidates’ social media teams have the ability to micro-target people with very specific messages.  We all know candidates have big budgets. They can and do invest in teams of smart people—social media gurus, content managers, storytellers, audience profilers, data gatherers and crunchers.

Candidates can track us online—and target us with ads. It’s all very Big Brother, which I find ironic if not troubling, given that it’s being done by the candidates we’re putting in office. I like to naïvely hope that message manipulation and delivery is not a harbinger of their tenure in office.

But let’s face it. Candidates, just like Google and Amazon and anyone else with a big enough budget, have the technological muscle and know-how to track people’s behavior across platforms, develop profiles about what message or cause will resonate with specific audiences and then measure the results. They can keep track of networks connections (i.e. our friends) and encourage us to spread their message, thus putting our own endorsement on their candidacy and transforming it from ‘campaigning’ to ‘recommending’. Surveys show that people believe about 14% of what comes from the source and 77% of word-of-mouth recommendations, even from people they don’t know as long as they are ‘real people’.

This micro-targeting, however, if not done with a light hand, could backfire. Nothing destroys social capital—trust and goodwill—faster than the hint of duplicity and manipulation.   Trust, as everyone who’s been on either end of any kind of betrayal knows, is much, much easier to destroy than create or rebuild.

Advice to candidates: Be careful and don’t be too tricky. This is not the same world as 2012. People are smarter and more sensitive to this behavior, hackers are better, and more watchers are watching.

Social media is transparent

We say this all the time. But what does it mean? There are different types of breach of privacy. There are things like someone sharing your credit card numbers and there are things like someone Instagramming the time you wore a lampshade on your head. Most candidates would rather have you expose the former than the latter. Bad moments, inconsistencies, contradictions and saying stupid things quickly are quickly discovered and enthusiastically exposed and shared. And to many a public figure’s horror, these events can go all meme-ish and take on a life of their own. Think ‘women in binders’ or ‘missing emails’ as notable examples.

Ironically, in spite of the fact that we love heroes and victors, we also love to see chinks in people’s armor. It’s the fuel for reality TV. Beyond the partisanship in a campaign, we like to know that the high and mighty, whether Brad Pitt or Barrack Obama, is human. We like to see the karmic balance evened-out.

Advice to candidates: Expect to do something stupid. Plan for the eventuality that even your handlers can’t protect you every minute. These slip-ups can be valuable if you use them to be more human, not more uptight, controlling and out-of-touch.

Social media is uncontrollable. Everyone has a voice

People can be tracked, but not quieted. People have things on their mind and they share them. They participate. You can’t have the upside of exposure without the scrutiny. You can’t have the power of networks without relinquishing control. No candidate (or brand or social cause) can control his or her message. You can help guide it if you do it right. As Taylor Swift admonishes, “haters gonna hate” but there are also supporters full of emotion, especially in politics, who are just aching for a story to expand and share.

Advice to candidates: Think cattle-wrangling. Create messages and stories that leave room for people to participate but continue to redirect.

Navigating the social media environment takes a different strategy, sensibility and personality

Politicians are used to being managed every step of the way. Social media has distinct qualities—such as authenticity—that make controlled messages ring false. As I’ve written before, those same qualities match up with certain personalities better than others. Hillary Clinton, for example, faces a challenge since her public persona cannot be separated from the Bill Clinton legacy or the fact that she hasn’t lived like a regular person in a REALLY long time. This is a hard sell when it comes to the game-changer nature of social media. Jeb Bush faces similar problems. Newbies like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have a much easier time making the nature of social media fit their political path because it inherently reinforces their underdog position.  

In fact, Rand Paul used SnapChat very cleverly, identifying an issue that was both well suited to young voters and the SnapChat platform—querying them on government privacy and Edward Snowden. Hillary Clinton used SnapChat on International Women’s day to make a point about women’s equality and rights in the ‘Not There Campaign’. She got a lot of celebrities on board that effort. The trouble is, celebrities don’t reinforce her “everyman” campaign theme, they reaffirm elitism.

New apps, like Periscope and Meerkat, will offer even more opportunities for an audience to ‘be there’ and experience candidates in more personal and unguarded situations. These tools expand the functional ‘stage’ for a candidate, allowing them less time ‘off’ but more time to be real.

Advice to candidates: Expect to be ‘on’ every public moment. New apps mean it’s important to establish (or revisit) a clear social media policy with your team and volunteers, but don’t shut them down. It won’t work. It may slow the some unofficial messaging, but your policy will reflect your management style. Nobody (well, almost nobody) wants to elect a tyrant.

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