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Ten Ways to Post Political Views On Facebook Without Being Unfriended

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Facebook messages have been shown to be an effective tool in get-out-the-vote political efforts. In the prestigious journal, Nature, political scientist Dr. James Fowler found that a single get-out-the-vote message could produce a 2.2 % bump in voter turnout. More importantly, 80% of the impact came from users sharing the message with their friends.

However, sharing your political views online can come with the risk of being unfriended if not done in the appropriate way. Here are some simple tips for sharing your political views on Facebook:

1) Be humorous. Humor disarms and is a powerful weapon to articulate a point of view to someone who may not agree with you.

2) Comment on timely topics and events. Remember the “Query Deserves Freshness” (QDF) rule of Google search which ranks fresh content on timely topics higher. Be relevant in your discussions, especially with those whom you may disagree.

3) Use an image, preferably one that promotes empathy or sympathy for your cause. Social media is about images. Without them your message is ineffective.

4) Avoid ad hominem attacks on those who do not share your views online.

5) Rely on facts and figures and data to support your position. Utilize infographics. Social issues especially are helped along by sociological data to support your position.

6) Listen and learn and engage your audience. Your audience must first know that you listen to them, before they will entrust you to persuade or lead them.

7) Timing of posts; the best time to post on Facebook is between and 9 and 10 p.m. EST. People are more receptive to messages at this time.

8) Be a consensus builder. Find small issues that you can agree with those of different political viewpoints first.

9) Be conversational. Facebook is a large cocktail party; act as though you were talking with your friends in person. Social media is a conversation and it helps to be pleasant and engaging.

10) Keep you content consistent and interesting. Facebook is not a graffiti wall in which you just post information for the sake of posting. Give thought to your overall posts. Once posted, it is out there. Even if you delete your post, chances are someone may have taken a screenshot photo of it.

The most important rule of all in discussing politics on Facebook is to use your common sense and be civil. Just as in real world conversation, civility and tone can go a long way in your online conversation.

This Week in Digital and Public Affairs: The Facebook Journalism Project and the Trump Inauguration

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FacebookDigital and social media are transforming how government institutions, political campaigns and trade associations are communicating and marketing to their key audiences.

Below is a roundup of key stories in digital and public affairs for this week:

Content, Digital and Social Media

Fast Company reports on recent moves by Facebook to become more of a media company, such as the announcement of the Facebook Journalism project. This move farther into the realm of professional journalism is described by Facebook as an initiative to establish stronger ties with the news industry.  To learn more about the Facebook Journalism Project go here.

Speaking of news and Facebook, Tech Crunch reports that Facebook is taking its trial of measures to combat fake news beyond the United States for the first time – rolling out the updates in Germany. The measures that Facebook has been testing in the U.S. to fight fake news include making it easier for users to report fake news by letting users click in the top right corner to report a suspect post; badging suspect content with ‘truth warnings’ and down-ranking it to make it harder for it to spread; and reducing financial incentives for spammers to create fake news as a route to generating advertising revenue by eliminating the ability for them to spoof well-known news websites. To identify fake news, Facebook is working with external fact checkers who are signatories of Poynter’s International Fact Checking Code of Principles

Gov 2.0 and Public Affairs

The Washington Post reported on how the presidential inauguration committee utilized social media ads to encourage Trump supporters to attend inaugural festivities. The ads on Facebook and Instagram showed a video of then President-elect Trump inviting supporters to come to The Mall on January 20th for his swearing-in.

For those not able to attend the festivities or watch them on TV, Tech Crunch outlined the many ways to stream the presidential inauguration online. Of note was YouTube’s partnership with several media outlets including NBC, CBS, Telemundo, Univision and The Washington Post to broadcast the inaugural ceremony and festivities on its platform.

The Obama Administration outlined the digital transition to the new administration on whitehouse.gov, including listing the digital assets that would remain with the White House, where to access Obama White House archival content; and ways to continue to follow and engage with President Obama, the First Lady, and other Obama White House officials after January 20th.

Soon after the swearing in of President Trump at 12:01 p.m., January 20th, the incoming Trump administration relaunched whitehouse.gov, including a new splash page for collecting email addresses and Trump’s biography. Politico reports that a major overhaul of the site is scheduled for later in the year.

Campaigns and Elections

Wired reports that the Republican National Committee’s Chief Technology Officer, Darren Bolding is moving to Cambridge Analytica as its new CTO, where he will build products for commercial and political clients. Cambridge Analytica is the data firm that helped engineer Donald Trump’s victory in the general election.

These are some of the reads that matter to us for the week in digital and public affairs. What do you think? What are your favorite stories? We’d love to hear from you!

This Week in Digital and Public Affairs – Instagram, Snapchat and The BuzzFeed Dossier

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buzzfeed-logoDigital and social media are transforming how government institutions, political campaigns and trade associations are communicating and marketing to their key audiences.

Below is a roundup of key stories in digital and public affairs for this week:

Content, Digital and Social Media

Facebook announced the hiring of Campbell Brown, a former NBC News correspondent and CNN prime-time host, to lead its news partnerships team. While Facebook indicated that she would not serve in a role as editor-in-chief, she would work as a liaison with news organizations so that Facebook can better meet their journalistic and business imperatives.

Snapchat announced the launch of universal search to simplify navigation on the platform. This move was clearly to ward off competition from Instagram’s Stories which has hit 150 million users.  Instagram has now offered an advertising product on Stories that has the targeting capabilities offered in Facebook.

Medium, a platform for long form content, announced it was laying off a third of its employees, mostly in sales. CEO Ev Williams stated that Medium would be renewing its focus away from an ad-driven model to one that rewards writers  “on their ability to enlighten and inform, not simply their ability to attract a few seconds of attention.”

Gov 2.0 and Public Affairs

On DigitalGov, Julia Jackson with the National Institutes of Health explores how social media platforms are becoming one-stop shops for information needs as the platforms become more feature rich and audience share falls away from search engines. Jackson recommends that federal agencies should refocus their attention on content created for social media in 2017 and use the platforms as one of their primary communication strategies.

In Social Media Today, Alan Rosenblatt talks about how public affairs organizations should consider self-publishing strategies to achieve their objectives. Once dismissed by professionals as less worthy than earned media, Rosneblatt argues that self publishing on your own website, blogs and social media is an effective strategy in achieving goals and can have greater impact than placing stories in the news media.

Speaking of effective, self-publishing strategies in public affairs, Associations Now reports on how the American Medical Association created a new content strategy that provided the framework for its website redesign. The new site is easy for its key stakeholders to navigate to content that is tailored to their needs.

Campaigns and Elections

Buzzfeed draws criticism for its publishing of a unverifiable secret dossier on President-elect Donald Trump and Russia. After its posting, BuzzFeed editor-in-chief, Ben Smith took to Twitter to explain how they made the decision. Smith stated that even though “there is serious reasons to doubt the allegations”, he noted that “publishing the dossier reflects how we see publishing in 2017”.

Writing in The Atlantic , staff writer, David Graham agrues that BuzzFeed sidestepped a basic principle of journalism in publishing the dossier. He argues that a reporter’s job is not simply to dump information into the public domain, but to gather information, sift through it and determine what is true and what is not.

On Federalist.com, lawyer turned writer Leslie Loftis argues that BuzzFeed’s decision to publish the dossier may lead to a defamation lawsuit. Loftis argues that BuzzFeed Editor in Chief Ben Smith’s rationale for publishing was the same rationale Rolling Stone’s Will Dana used to justify publishing a fake story that ended in a major court loss in Eramo v Rolling Stone. 

On a side note, Nieman Labs reports on the success of BuzzFeed’s Tasty customized cookbook product which has sold enough copies to make it one of the best-selling cookbooks of the year. Tasty: The Cookbook, a choose-your-own categories, print-on-demand cookbook,  sold over 100,000 copies in the last two months of 2016, earning BuzzFeed an estimated $2.4 to $4 million in sales.

These are some of the reads that matter to us for the week in digital and public affairs. What do you think? What are your favorite stories? We’d love to hear from you!

This Week in Digital and Public Affairs – Algorithimic Feeds, Twitter and YouTube Connect

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YouTubeDigital and social media are changing how government institutions, political campaigns and trade associations are communicating and marketing to their key audiences.

Below is a roundup of key stories in digital and public affairs for this week:

Content, Digital and Social Media

In TechCrunch, Josh Constine writes  about how Instagram and Twitter’s adoption of algorithmic feeds will force social media marketers to step up their content game on these platforms. Constine argues that the creation of a Facebook News Feed-esque ranking system for Instagram and Twitter will result in brands needing to post high-quality content and receive a consistent stream of Likes from people in order for their content to keep being seen by those that follow them. He argues that the free ride is over and that the quality of each gram and tweet will matter as to how the content is placed in front of consumers on their feeds. Constine points out that Snapchat will be the only major platform to remain authentic, serving content to users as its created and posted.

In VentureBeat, Ken Yeung highlights how Google is building YouTube Connect, a live streaming app product to take on Periscope and Facebook Live. The product which will be available on Android and iOS devices and is likely to be released at Google’s I/O developer conference in May. The app will allow users to login via a Google or YouTube account and immediately begin streaming from their mobile phone. According to Yeung, videos will be viewable live within the app, as well as on the YouTube site in the users’ respective channels. It will also be possible to store previous broadcasts in the app, which will make it possible for users and their friends to watch replays of their videos.

Gov 2.0 and Public Affairs

In DigitalGov, Jessica Milcetich, who manages social media for USAGov, provides a step by step guide to government agencies for making Snapchat stories as accessible as possible. Milcetich points out that in its current form, Snapchat isn’t a highly accessible platform that is up to to government accessibility standards (a situation that is not unique for emerging technologies). Her step by step guide figures out how to address these accessibility issues on Snapchat, so that government agencies can use the app.

In Associations Now, Ernie Smith explores that while email is a big workhorse for associations, sending too much email can lead to members tuning the association’s email communications out. He points to a recent study by the email marketing firm First Insight that shows that sending too much email can not only hurt engagement, but lead to complaints from recipients. The report recommends a strategy of sending fewer, more targeted messages to segmented audiences which leads to more effective results.

Campaigns and Elections

In the Atlantic, Vann Newkirk writes that in its 10 years of existence, Twitter has given rise to forces that are completely reshaping the course of political dialogue. Newkirk argues that Twitter’s impact in politics became very clear early on with President Obama’s adoption of Twitter and the rise of the Tea Party movement on Twitter in response.  Newkirk points out that the Tea Party’s rise to prominence mirrored the virality and exponential message growth that Twitter creates. According to Newkirk, Twitter is now engrained as a must have political tool with candidates, voters and commentators engaging with each other in candor, frankness and geniune back and forth dialogue.  He points out that the amount of discursive access to politicians is unprecedented in the past century of American politics and that this transfers power away from politicians and empowers groups and citizens who are Twitter savvy.  He argues that America’s early politics of the leaflet and town-hall based democratic scrum has been re-purposed and hyper-focused on Twitter, and that this has democratized modern political dialogue.

These are some of the reads that matter to us for the week in digital and public affairs. What do you think? What are your favorite stories? We’d love to hear from you.

This Week in Digital and Public Affairs – BuzzFeed, Mobile Websites and Twitter

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buzzfeed-logoDigital and social media are changing how government institutions, political campaigns and trade associations communicate and achieve their goals. Below is a roundup of the more interesting stories that we read over the last week:

Content, Digital and Social Media

Gawker reports that BuzzFeed deleted posts under pressure from its own business department. An internal review found at least 3 instances in which complaints from the site’s business and advertising departments led Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith to delete posts by staff. The 3 deleted posts criticized or mocked an Axe body spray ad campaign (a brand of Unilever), Pepsi’s Twitter account and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser. Unilever, Pepsi and Microsoft all are major advertisers with BuzzFeed.

TechCrunch reports LinkedIn’s launch of Elevate, a paid mobile and desktop app for social media management. The app suggests articles to its users based on algorithms from its news recommendation services Pulse and Newsle as well as “human curation”. Users are then able to schedule and share those links across LinkedIn and Twitter.  The app will be available to users in the 3rd quarter of this year.

Gov 2.0 and Public Affairs

Ernie Smith, the social media journalist for Associations Now provides an analysis of Google’s implementation this week of an update of its algorithm to favor mobile-friendly websites and its impact on trade associations. Smith provides things for associations to consider as they redesign or retrofit their mobile unfriendly site.  Smith notes the challenges facing associations who have lots of legacy content on their websites.

William Powers and Deb Roy of MIT’s Laboratory for Social Machines provides insights on Medium into their research of the town of Jun in southern Spain. For the last four years, the town has been using Twitter as its principal medium for citizen-government communication. Leading the effort is Jun’s Mayor, José Antonio Rodríguez Salashas  who has been recruiting the town’s 3,500 residents to join the social network and have their Twitter accounts locally verified at town hall.

Speaking of municipalities, the City of Philadelphia unveiled on its website this week a real-time analytics tool showing how people are visiting city websites. This tool may promote better civic engagement between staff and residents.

Campaigns and Elections 

Dave Weigel reports in Bloomberg Politics  on the launch of the app Clear by Ethan Czahor, the former CTO for Jeb Bush’s presidential exploratory committee. The free app which works as an add-on to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram allows users to scan their social media for a series of problematic terms that could harm their public reputation in the future. Czahor resigned his position with Jeb Bush earlier this year after it was discovered he had sent tweets disparaging women. Czahor believes that the app can help millennials avoid repeating his fate.

These were some of Arc 3’s most interesting reads in digital and public affairs over the last week. What were your favorite stories? Let us know if there is a neat story that we missed! We’d love to hear from you.

 

This Week in Digital and Public Affairs – Hillary’s Logo, Online Video Ads and LinkedIn

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hillary-clinton-logo-1Digital and social media are changing how government institutions, political campaigns and trade associations communicate and achieve their goals. Below is a roundup of the more interesting stories that we read over the last week:

Content, Digital and Social Media

ZDNet reports that LinkedIn bought Lynda.com for $1.5 billion. LinkedIn’s purchase of the twenty-year-old subscription-based online learning portal is a clear sign of the professional social network’s intention to provide training opportunities for specific career skill sets to its members.

In Forbes, contributor Robert Hof provides a thoughtful analysis of the rise of online video in digital advertising. Hof points out  that TV-like online video ads are driving much of the growth in the ad industry. Hof forecasts that the video ads will make our smartphones more resemble our televisions.

Gov 2.0 and Public Affairs

Ernie Smith, the social media journalist for Associations Now asks the question of whether associations should care about the live-streaming video app Meerkat. Smith points out that Meerkat’s ease of use for live-streaming video makes it a valuable tool for capturing key moments at association conferences.

On DigitalGov, Sara Smith, the Social Media Strategist for the National Institute on Drug Abuse, provides her agency as a case study for the benefits of having social sharing buttons on your government website. Smith notes that NIDA’s addition of sharing toolbars to their website has resulted in a rapid increase in social shares and social media referrals to the site. The agency website is now averaging 20k social shares a month in 2015.

Campaigns and Elections 

Western Journalism and Mashable  report how Hillary Clinton’s  presidential campaign logo quickly became fodder for critics on social media. Clinton’s political critics, dismayed supporters and graphic designer aficionados panned the logo as amateurish and unprofessional.

These were some of Arc 3’s most interesting reads in digital and public affairs over the last week. What were your favorite stories? Let us know if there is a neat story that we missed! We’d love to hear from you.

 

The Top 7 Politicians on Pinterest

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First Lady Pin on PinterestPinterest is a social bookmarking site that is all about the discovery of visual content. Pinterest users are able to pin or bookmark interesting pictures and videos for their followers. Pinterest also allows users to like or re-pin others posts and organize their favorite pins into boards. Pinterest has over 70 million users, the overwhelming majority of whom are women.

According to the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project, 33% of online women are Pinterest users, compared to just 8% of men. In addition the highest income brackets and the college educated are more likely to use Pinterest. Pinterest users also skew more suburban and rural than urban.

Almost a quarter of Pinterest users post on the site daily, mostly content pertaining to recipes, weddings, babies, decor and fashion. Pinterest is the fourth largest driver of traffic to websites worldwide, behind only Google Organic, Google Direct and Facebook. Pinterest has more referral traffic than Twitter and more than Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube combined. It outpaces other social media bookmarking platforms such as Stumbleupon and Reddit by a substantial margin.

Due to its rising influence online and its power in reaching female audiences,  some politicians have started to incorporate Pinterest into their digital strategies. Below is Arc 3’s list of  the most pinteresting politicians:

1. First Lady Michelle Obama  55,852 followers (6 Boards 81 Pins) 

The First Lady of the United States is the most popular political  figure on Pinterest and her success persuaded her husband to join. The Organizing for Action staff operates her account, but she manages to post pins herself using the signature “-MO”. Her pins range from recipe ideas to background scenes at the White House to family. The First Lady’s most popular board is titled “Recipe Ideas” which has over 53k followers.

2. President Barack Obama  40,167 followers (12 Boards 239 pins) 

In the majority of listicles regarding politicians and social media platforms, President Obama consistently ranks first with the most followers. However, on Pinterest, President Barack Obama comes in 2nd behind his spouse, the First Lady. The President’s pins range from behind the scenes photos of the First Family to campaign photos to more unique boards such as “Obamart” to “Pet Lovers for Obama”. The President’s most popular board is entitled “First Family” which has over 37k followers.

3. Ann Romney 17,088 followers (10 Boards 210 Pins ) 

Mrs. Romney, wife of the 2012 Republican Presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, adorns her Pinterest page with photos of her five children and 22 grandchildren. Her love of cooking is evident by her many recipe pins including one of her cookbook The Romney Family Table. An avid reader, she also shares her books worth reading, including David McCullough’sMornings on Horseback about the young life of Theodore Roosevelt. Ann Romney’s most popular board is “Recipes” which has over 15k followers.

4. Arnold Schwarzenegger 8,882 followers (8 Boards 118 Pins) 

The actor and former body builder and 38th Governor of California has a substantial following on Pinterest. The Terminator’s  pins and boards consist of photos from his acting, bodybuilding and past service as Governor of California. He also highlights the charitable causes he supports as well as his autobiography Total Recall. 

5. Mitt Romney 8,377 followers ( 11 Boards 79 Pins) 

The former 2012 Republican nominee for President still has a significant following on Pinterest despite his last pin being over a year ago. The majority of Governor Romney’s pins were during the 2012 campaign and consisted of  family, campaign infographics and paraphernalia and behind the scenes pictures from his campaign. Like his wife Ann’s page, he highlights his favorite books, including a wide range of titles from John Steinbeck’s East of Eden to Ron Hubbard’s Battleship Earth to David Landes’ The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. Mitt Romney’s most popular board is entitled “Mitt Gear” which has 5,765 followers.

6. Newt Gingrich  1,395 followers (5 Boards 91 Pins)  

The former Republican House Speaker and Presidential candidate had one of the strongest presences on social media out of the Republican candidates for President in 2012. Winner of the first Republican Presidential primary in the South, South Carolina, Gingrich has a strong following on Pinterest, despite having not posted in over a year. Newt’s pins include behind the scenes photos from the 2012 campaign trail and books that he has authored ranging from Valley Forge to Rediscovering God in America to Real Change.

7. Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom 1,127 followers (10 Boards 663 Pins) 

Lt. Governor Newsom was the youngest Mayor of San Francisco in over 100 years and is now the 49th Lieutenant Governor of California. The fourth-generation Californian’s Pinterest boards reflect his love of San Francisco’s sports teams the 49ers and the Giants; technology; and wine.

 These are the top politicians on Pinterest at mid-year 2014. As social media continues to become more and more visual, we expect more politicians to adopt Pinterest, especially those with a gender gap in their level of support from female voters. Pinterest’s ability to reach and persuade female audiences should not be dismissed by politicians. It is also a powerful tool for driving female voters to a politician’s website.

Want to learn how social media platforms like Pinterest can help your organization?  Give us a call. We’d be happy to sit down with you and learn more about your marketing efforts and share with you how we can make social media work for your advocacy, citizen engagement or grassroots efforts.

Arc 3 Communications’ Monthly Top News Reads in Digital, Social and Public Affairs – February 2014

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Digital and social media are transforming how government institutions, political campaigns and trade associations communicate to key audiences. Below is a roundup of the more interesting stories that we have read over the last month:

Digital and Social Media

Mashable reports on 9 ways that social media will change in 2014. New ways include the rise of graphic software and the use of visual content to support social media platforms such as Pinterest and Tumblr.

In the Guardian, Scott Monty, who heads global digital communications for the Ford Motor Company, explores the question of whether or not marketers can learn digital restraint. Monty advocates for a less is more strategy for marketers.

Social Media Today offers six social media mistakes to avoid in 2014, which include many recommendations for digital restraint. These include avoiding tweeting too often, using too many hashtags and joining too many social media websites.

Gov 2.0 and Public Affairs

Huffington Post reports on 15 photos from the U.S. Department of Interior Instagram account that will make you want to travel the country. The Department of Interior account has over 200k  followers and includes scenic photos from the public lands, national parks and wildlife refuges that it manages.

Associations Now  offers advice on how to handle the good, the bad, and the ugly of online comments on a trade association’s website, social media or blog.

The New York Times  reports on the Twitter conversation surrounding the President’s State of the Union address and how the White House’s bully pulpit has lost its strength due to other voices shaping the conversation.

Campaigns and Elections

ABC News interviews Adam Sharp, Head of Government and Non-Profits at Twitter, regarding how Twitter will continue to shape political discourse, campaign advertising and election 2014.

Social Media Today  explores 5 ways in which social media will change political campaigns in 2014. One of these ways includes the greater use of visual and video content on campaign social media networks.

In Huffington Post, Milind Deora, India’s Minister for Communications, explores the impact of social media on electoral politics in light of the upcoming elections. Deora points to social media’s effectiveness in raising issues, but questions how it may be affecting the quality of political discourse and disrupting the social order.

These were some of Arc 3’s most interesting reads in digital and social and public affairs in early 2014. What were your favorite stories? Let us know. We’d love to hear from you.

 

 

Arc 3 Founder Patrick Burns Quoted in Hartford Courant Story Regarding Election 2014

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Arc 3’s Founder Patrick Burns was recently quoted in a recent Hartford Courant story regarding the ramping up of social media, digital and technology efforts by the respective political parties in the upcoming Gubernatorial election in Connecticut. The article discusses how the aggressive use of technology pioneered by the Obama campaign nationally is now moving to the state level. Below is the quote from the article:

“The president and his team did a masterful job using Facebook as a big megaphone to reach voters,” said Patrick Burns, president of Arc 3 Communications, an Atlanta firm that advises right-of-center candidates and political parties, as well as local governments and trade groups, on how to use social media to spread their messages.

But unlike the attack tweets, news conferences and Facebook likes, some aspects of modern politics occur behind the scenes, through sophisticated data-mining strategies and the micro-targeting of voters. “On the consumer side, companies have been doing this for a few years now,” Burns said. “The political parties are catching up.”

For the full story, please click here.

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