Social Media as Strong Campaign Strategy For #Election2015

In spite the evidence that social media have become crucial in political campaigns, Nigeria politicians are still yet to embrace these platforms as the right strategy for their political election quests.

In 2008, President Obama victory to become the president of the United States of America was digitally driven with integrated Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus into his campaign strategies and has continued to connect with the constituents on social media well, after winning the elections.

This was also experienced in India 2014 elections where social media were pivotal in the sweeping victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

I believe it is time for political aspirants, in Nigeria, to really understand the importance of social media to their campaign successes.

It’s no secret that the campaign website is the hub of a campaign’s online activity, but social media are important supporting casts that can drive valuable traffic to the site and engage voters on a more personal level.

Social Media have rapidly grown in importance as fora for political activism in their different forms.

Social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube provide new ways to stimulate citizen engagement in political life, where elections and electoral campaigns have a central role.

Personal communication via social media brings politicians and parties closer to their potential voters.

The process allows politicians to communicate faster and reach citizens in a more targeted manner and vice versa, without the intermediate role of mass media.

Reactions, feedback, conversations and debates are generated online as well as support and participation for offline events.

Messages posted to personal networks are multiplied when shared, which allow new audiences to be reached.

Social media has reshaped structures and methods of contemporary political communication by influencing the way politicians interact with citizens and each other.

In addition, you want to use social media for your election because the reach is huge, it appeals to the youths and real-time sharing is a viral tool for engagement.

What Social Media Should a Political Campaign Use? This question is a difficult one to answer.

When deciding how many social networks to join, it ultimately comes down to the candidate’s appeal and the campaign’s resources.

The number one rule is: to not have any social media presence become a “ghost town,” meaning, don’t join networks that you don’t have the available resources to update or be active in.

It reflects horribly on a campaign to have a vacuous social network profile – a rarely update presence makes it appear that the campaign doesn’t value that network and its demographics while also suggesting that the campaign is more of a spammer than general conversation constructer.

While the first rule is to not overextend yourself into too many networks, that doesn’t excuse any candidate from not having a presence on at least a few of the top networks.

We believe it’s absolutely necessary to have presences on at least: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Google Plus.

I like to call these networks the Big Five.

They’re the fastest growing and farthest reaching of social networks; also, they represent Five distinct ways of publishing to and connecting with voters.

1.     Facebook is comprehensive and allows you to post pictures, add videos, send detailed mass messages, publicly interact on Walls, and more.

2.   Twitter excels in short message bursts, event updates, blog post pushes, and breaking news.  It allows a campaign to instantly send a succinct message to 1000’s of followers and also lets the campaign interact with other people in a one-on-one manner.

3.    YouTube is purely a video medium.  However, its reach cannot be underestimated.  The service’s search engine is second in use only to Google!

This staggering number of searches makes it essential to own your candidate’s name for search on this platform.

4.    Instagram should be used to publish campaign photos.

With over 150 million monthly active visitors, it’s an important place to be and exposes your campaign to an important network.

5.    Google Plus allows you to have video conferencing calls using hangout with your circle of voters. It also allows you post pictures and videos. Over 540 million active users.

As you can see, each network is totally unique and allows you to connect with a huge audience.  Voters expect every campaign to be on these media.

In addition to simply having a presence on each of these networks, you should update them frequently and make sure that they are linked to from your main campaign website, allowing voters to easily get access and engage you in the different networks.

Depending on your campaign's message and target, other networks could also prove to be very useful.

For a candidate with a strong business background, LinkedIn is a logical choice.

There are dozens of other networks out there, with niche focuses ranging from veterans to volunteers.

If you have the available resources, the first networks to focus on after the "Big FIve" are those focused on niches to which your candidate has specific ties.

This strategy allows you to use natural synergies and capitalize on the base character of the candidate and campaign. No matter which networks you focus on though, it's important to never break the first rule by allowing any of your presences to become a ghost town.

Tobi Asehinde is the founder and chief executive officer of Vibe Web Solutions Limited, a company poised to providing web and digital marketing solutions to meet the needs of both businesses and government organisation. Vibe Web Solutions Limited has clients based within and outside Nigeria servicing both businesses and governmental organisations. He can be contacted via: [email protected] or 0816 528 9018