An experience with a Political FB
Hi! I hope you are all doing good, this time I wanted to share with you some experience I had with a political client I have. As you may possible know, Fb strategy is completely different for political pages if you compare them with commercial ones, the audience reacts quite differently to them, here are a few differences I detected with my work:
Political FB are a magnet to crisis
Managing a reputation crisis is quite difficult in commercial fanpages, if an unsatisfied customers start complaining publicly, a good Community Manager must act quickly to neutralize it, solving their problems, or offering some special discount or something that will stop the critics and avoid any damage on the brand reputation. But crisis are not very common in commercial fanpages, only big brands have to deal with crisis all the time. In my experience, small brands only have one or two reputation crisis every year.
However this is extremely different for political pages, the political niche attracts crisis like honey attracts bears, if the fanpage you are managing have a large reach, you will probable have to deal with different kind of crisis every week, it can really be a stressing thing.
And the nature of the crisis are quite different, in a commercial fanpage, the most common source of crisis are unsatisfied clients, but in a political one, the sources can be very diverse, you can have people who doesnt like your client trying to create problems with ideological comments, trolls from the op-positing party spamming the page all the time, and even reputation crisis if some dirty laundry of your client goes public.
And the way to solve these crisis are also quite different, you cant offer people who disagrees with your client a special discount or stuff like that, you need to learn how to manage the lack of consensus, it can get very tricky.
Calls to actions dont work
And this is a very drastic difference, CTAs usually dont work on political fanpages, why? because even if people likes your client, they wont perform a CTA that will make them publicly endorse your client, they just wont do it.
The only exception to this, is if your client is having some sort of momentum, a spike on his popularity that can make CTAs work, because people wouldnt mind publicly endorsing him. I think this can also depend on the tipe of society you are working on, maybe in the United States, were is much more common to see people endorsing their candidates, CTAs might work better.
Content is also different
Here is another big difference, you really need to think carefully the tipe of content you will use on your fanpage, and you need to watch up the frequency of the content as well.
During a campaign, you need to keep a very active fanpage, posting content all the time, and making sure the content will be diverse enough to avoid boring the audience, you need to work and find a good combination of photos and video.
Storytelling is more important than on commercial fanpages
This is another big difference, in commercial fanpages, storytelling is usually just a background on your strategy, in politics, is essential, and you really need to work and follow the story if you want to keep your clients popularity.
For one of my clients, I actually have a small brief that highlights the strongest points on my client storytelling, and I read that brief every time I have to post something, to remember the story and make sure im following every line.
Not having a solid story can became a nightmare in a campaign.
Ads can be quite a challenge
And when I say ads im talking specifically about segmentation, designing a good segmentation for a political audience can be very hard, why? because FB doesnt have much segmentation features for politics (only in the US, where you can segment for either democrats or republicans, among other things), so you need to create a good formula that will let you get to your audience.
Are you trying to reach a left wing audience? then you can segment using some topics, like abortion, LGBT agenda, etc, that will let you get to that audience, but finding that formula will require some work.
Managing the boost
Something good about political fanpages, is that during the campaign, they can get a lot of boost, people will look for your client to see their ideas and proposals, and the fanpage will be constantly growing, however you need to be watching that growth all the time, and make sure that you are growing in the right audience.
Besides that, you also need to make sure the fanpage will not go down after the campaign, and this is quite a common thing, after an election people will just loose interest in your client, and your metrics will collapse, at this point, you need to design a strategy that will allow you to at least keep the fanpage with slightly good metrics until the next campaign, and this is very important, because although people will lost the interest in you, if you just dissapear until the next election, they will notice that, and they will not like it.
Negative campaigns are also on the agenda
And this is another big differences, as a political CM, you also need to think on how to attack your opponents, using innovative strategies to undermine their reputation, but also being intelligent and careful, a negative campaign can went back and bit you in the ass if you are not careful enough, people doesnt like negative ads.
These where some points I discover when managing a political facebook, later, I will also publish some metrics of the fanpage im running to highlight another differences and peculiarities.
There arent a lot of political threads in this forum, and I understand that, after all, this is marketing forum, however I do think there is a lot we can discuss about political marketing and social media, im sure I cant be the only one interested in that topic around here.
Political FB are a magnet to crisis
Managing a reputation crisis is quite difficult in commercial fanpages, if an unsatisfied customers start complaining publicly, a good Community Manager must act quickly to neutralize it, solving their problems, or offering some special discount or something that will stop the critics and avoid any damage on the brand reputation. But crisis are not very common in commercial fanpages, only big brands have to deal with crisis all the time. In my experience, small brands only have one or two reputation crisis every year.
However this is extremely different for political pages, the political niche attracts crisis like honey attracts bears, if the fanpage you are managing have a large reach, you will probable have to deal with different kind of crisis every week, it can really be a stressing thing.
And the nature of the crisis are quite different, in a commercial fanpage, the most common source of crisis are unsatisfied clients, but in a political one, the sources can be very diverse, you can have people who doesnt like your client trying to create problems with ideological comments, trolls from the op-positing party spamming the page all the time, and even reputation crisis if some dirty laundry of your client goes public.
And the way to solve these crisis are also quite different, you cant offer people who disagrees with your client a special discount or stuff like that, you need to learn how to manage the lack of consensus, it can get very tricky.
Calls to actions dont work
And this is a very drastic difference, CTAs usually dont work on political fanpages, why? because even if people likes your client, they wont perform a CTA that will make them publicly endorse your client, they just wont do it.
The only exception to this, is if your client is having some sort of momentum, a spike on his popularity that can make CTAs work, because people wouldnt mind publicly endorsing him. I think this can also depend on the tipe of society you are working on, maybe in the United States, were is much more common to see people endorsing their candidates, CTAs might work better.
Content is also different
Here is another big difference, you really need to think carefully the tipe of content you will use on your fanpage, and you need to watch up the frequency of the content as well.
During a campaign, you need to keep a very active fanpage, posting content all the time, and making sure the content will be diverse enough to avoid boring the audience, you need to work and find a good combination of photos and video.
Storytelling is more important than on commercial fanpages
This is another big difference, in commercial fanpages, storytelling is usually just a background on your strategy, in politics, is essential, and you really need to work and follow the story if you want to keep your clients popularity.
For one of my clients, I actually have a small brief that highlights the strongest points on my client storytelling, and I read that brief every time I have to post something, to remember the story and make sure im following every line.
Not having a solid story can became a nightmare in a campaign.
Ads can be quite a challenge
And when I say ads im talking specifically about segmentation, designing a good segmentation for a political audience can be very hard, why? because FB doesnt have much segmentation features for politics (only in the US, where you can segment for either democrats or republicans, among other things), so you need to create a good formula that will let you get to your audience.
Are you trying to reach a left wing audience? then you can segment using some topics, like abortion, LGBT agenda, etc, that will let you get to that audience, but finding that formula will require some work.
Managing the boost
Something good about political fanpages, is that during the campaign, they can get a lot of boost, people will look for your client to see their ideas and proposals, and the fanpage will be constantly growing, however you need to be watching that growth all the time, and make sure that you are growing in the right audience.
Besides that, you also need to make sure the fanpage will not go down after the campaign, and this is quite a common thing, after an election people will just loose interest in your client, and your metrics will collapse, at this point, you need to design a strategy that will allow you to at least keep the fanpage with slightly good metrics until the next campaign, and this is very important, because although people will lost the interest in you, if you just dissapear until the next election, they will notice that, and they will not like it.
Negative campaigns are also on the agenda
And this is another big differences, as a political CM, you also need to think on how to attack your opponents, using innovative strategies to undermine their reputation, but also being intelligent and careful, a negative campaign can went back and bit you in the ass if you are not careful enough, people doesnt like negative ads.
These where some points I discover when managing a political facebook, later, I will also publish some metrics of the fanpage im running to highlight another differences and peculiarities.
There arent a lot of political threads in this forum, and I understand that, after all, this is marketing forum, however I do think there is a lot we can discuss about political marketing and social media, im sure I cant be the only one interested in that topic around here.