Social media is one of the components of digital marketing; today we will be looking into social media political campaign ideas that can help a candidate to win an election. As a politician, it is more beneficial to start social media participation before the announcement of your candidacy; i.e., it is never too early to commence social media political campaigns. This way voters and masses will be familiar with you and relate to you before declaring your candidacy, therefore gathering supporters and fans before the intention to run for an office will be officially announced. Although social media political marketing can start at any time, depending on many factors.

 
The social media campaign ideas are categorized into 3: political contents, social media types and social media tools.
 

1. The Content ideas

 
Without content, there is nothing to share, boost, tweet, sponsor, comment on, or like; so before going to social media, contents to use have to be developed first. Social media political content can be jointly developed by you and two or more of your political campaign team which are campaign manager, public relations officer, volunteers recruitment managers, grassroots coalition leaders and other public figures in your campaign organization. You can equally outsource your contents creation to professionals like Adhang.com for the best-tested political campaigns’ contents ideas.

No matter the option you go for, your social media political campaigns’ contents should achieve two or more objectives below:

• Introducing you to the target voters, letting them know your name, how is spelled, and pronounced; party logo, name, color; the office you are for, etc.
• Personal, political, and professional biography, strategically telling voters why you are most qualified for the office.
• Showing you understand the problems and needs of the constituency, state, or the country by enumerating the problems facing the region and how you tend to solve them.
• Oppositions’ policies and stand on issues, mostly issues electorates care about in the region or state. It must be issue-based and meant to help voters see the dangers of voting for rivals. ( This is optional and depends on the political climate and who the opponents are).
• Compare opponents in different aspects – politically, professionally, policy-wise, etc, to highlight why you stand out and reasons you are the best option for the office, etc.( This is optional and depends on the political climate and who the opponents are).
• Get out the vote, to remind voters to vote you on the election day, etc.

When, where, and how to share each of the contents on social media depends on the political atmosphere(is the opponents attacking you?), campaign budget(do you want to campaign to lure opponents’ supporters, or focus on undecided voters or the combination) and who the opponents are(are the opponents have upper hands? In the area of popularity, campaigns’ finance, voters’ likeness and supports, etc.). It is advisable not to start with a negative social media campaign about opponents, as that can backfire.

Have a political campaign website

 
Do not rely on social media pages and profiles to host your political contents. Because of the nature of politics, anything can happen during an election campaign: your profile/fanpage may be suspended, banned or deleted by social media owners; or hacked, etc. To be safe, it is very important you have a website where you post all the political marketing contents (with regular backup), then share links to social media pages and profiles.  Yes, have a website, and optimize it for search engines top ranking and it should be responsive design so it can be viewed in all manner of devices electorates use in searching information on the internet when an election is around the corner, such as political agendas, party details, election polling units, etc.
 
Also, have a blog set up in your site, or if you use blog oriented site, you should have a post page, this will help for blogging to keep followers up to date through campaigns’ contents ( campaign press release, endorsements, news curation, event alerts, etc.), then share each blog post to your social media’s pages.  AdHang can help you create a winning and effective political campaign website, register domain, host the website online, and integrate relevant campaign features: accept online donations, recruit supporters, event calendar, upload pictures, embed videos, add news articles, etc.

2. Social media types ideas

You need to know who your social media campaigns are targeted; there are three categories of the electorate: your supporters, opposition supporters, and undecided voters. If your campaign has a limited budget (which campaign does not have?), it will be wiser to focus on undecided voters.

There are at least 7 categories of social media out there; different social media accommodates different electorates.

Types of social media are as follows:

1. Video: the popular sites on this category are Dailymotion.com, Youtube.com and Vimeo.com
2. Newsaggregator: the popular sites on this category are Reddit.com, Feedly.com and Fark.com
3. File sharing: the popular sites on this category are Slideshare.net, Issuu.com and Slideboom
4. Social networking: the popular sites on this category are Facebook.com, Twitter.com and Linkedin.com
5. Forum: there is no world’s general popular online forum; different countries have their authority forums, e.g. in Africa/Nigeria popular ones are Cokoye.com, Nairaland.com and Nigerianbestforum.com
6. Wiki: the popular sites on this category are Wikipedia.com, AboutUS.com and Wikia.com
7. Photo: the popular sites on this category are Instagram.com, Pinterest.com and Flickr.com

Note: mentioning popular social media sites here is not to suggest that the popularity of social media means effectiveness, but to give you ideas and examples on types of social media for your full social media marketing.

There may be fake accounts and domain circulating on the internet, this can distract your messages and hamper your political aims as many electorates will be confused. Claim your username on social media sites before others claim them. An effective way to get unique social media page design ideas is to outsource your page design work to AdHang. Our agency can help you create an appealing and professional fanpage and set up winning social media accounts for your political campaigns.

3. Social media Tools Ideas

There are different social media marketing tools, listed below are some of them:

• Infographic
• Video
• Case study
• App: there are many applications out there – from auto posting, replies to deleting, and retweeting, etc. I do see some writers whenever they are asked about social media tools, they go on to list different facebook and twitter tools; this is a half information. Either these people do not know what they are talking about or they are influencers, owners of these tools, brand advocates, or affiliates. There are thousands of App out there for different purposes.
• Image/photo
• Fanpage

These are social media political campaign ideas you can use.

What should you do now you have social media political campaign ideas?
 
Some of the options for you are as follows:
 

1. You can learn how to make good use of these ideas for campaigning in the upcoming election.
2. If you do not have the time, hire social media political campaign agency to handle all these and more. If you are campaigning for any office in Nigeria, or any English speaking Africa’s country; for innovative election campaign ideas, hire our agency AdHang to help you plan, strategize, and create all the contents, select social media types, design fan pages and manage the political campaigns. Click here for our approach.
3. You can recruit social media campaign team. Make sure that your social media marketing team knows what they are doing and works in coordination with your political party and its managers for a cohesive election’s campaign.