During the last presidential election, the use of social media in political campaigns was revolutionized. The Obama campaign gathered followers through Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Today, all candidates have learned the organizing power of social media. However, a??Like? on Facebook, a YouTube view or a re-blog on Tumblr may not directly affect the ballot box. Each campaign must answer an important question: How do we turn a digital following into real-world volunteers? Social media campaigns for candidates should be focused on getting volunteers in the campaign office door, on the phones and out in the community. There are three crucial steps to accomplishing this task.
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1. Share Ideals, Goals, Accomplishments and Behind-the-Scenes Footage
By sharing a candidate?s beliefs and goals via social media, candidates can connect with existing supporters and reach out to voters who aren?t yet convinced. Accomplishments, such as campaign milestones, will get liked, shared, re-tweeted and reblogged.
People who have never been part of a campaign often don?t know the day-to-day activities at a campaign office, and social media is a way to share that experience. Training staff and volunteers on the basics of social media is a great way to accomplish this. A volunteer live-tweeting an event advertises that event and highlights volunteers? work, giving them a sense of ownership in the campaign.
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Ron Paul?s Facebook page does a good job of sharing ideals, highlighting accomplishments and posting behind-the-scenes footage.
2. Engage Followers
With social media, engagement is key. By responding directly to followers, a candidate adds a human touch to a campaign that may otherwise seem inaccessible. Digital followers who feel connected to the campaign will be more likely to make the leap from online supporter to offline volunteer, which is step number three.
Herman Cain has used the hashtag #CainCast to respond live to questions posted on Twitter.
3. Turn Digital Followers into Real-World Volunteers
Once a digital following is built, it must be mobilized in the offline world action through ?calls to action.? While it is easy to ?like? something on Facebook, it is a different matter to commit time and energy to a political campaign. So how is this crucial final step accomplished?
Zachary Green is CEO of 140Elect, which builds Twitter campaigns for the 2012 election. Green believes location-based organizing is the key to turning online followers into volunteers.?He breaks this step down into two parts.
First, organizing by location.
"To turn Twitter followers into active volunteers?offline, location must remain the unit of action to enable local work," says Green. "Organizing Twitter followers by location is essential to building teams for action offline."
But that's problematic. According to Green, less than 1% of tweets mentioning a candidate running in 2012 have been sent with geo-location enabled. So how can campaigns sort their digital supporters by location? Green's solution is content.
"We now track every mention of a Senator, House Representative, or Governor. That allows us to build a list of every person that mentions a Democratic incumbent in California, for instance. If they do this multiple times, or for multiple Democratic incumbents in California, we can assume that they are from California."
Green then builds state-by-state lists accordingly, and moves to step two:?engaging by location.
"The key to grassroots organizing isn't issues,?but relationships," says Green. "Help followers?bond online with others in their location and they will be eager to then meet in real life."
When supporters do meet offline, "their activity can be the task you [the campaign] want them to perform," such as a voter registration drive, a phonebank, or a neighborhood canvas.
Finally, Green says it's crucial to use social media to highlight the real-world accomplishments of volunteers, but they should be empowered to upload and share it themselves. "[It] makes them feel appreciated, and shows others how much fun this was."
This online reporting then brings in more digital followers, who can be turned into offline volunteers, and so on.
By using social media in a geographically focused manner, encouraging supporters to meet and work with other local neighbors offline, and empowering volunteers, political campaigns can turn Facebook "likes" and retweets into votes come Election Day.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, bns124
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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