Best practices on social media communication for political figures and parties Gianni Florido e la

How to build a team, choose the tools, adopt good and get ready to daily work Strategia dipractices comunicazione

Provincia di Taranto

Preliminary remarks
Why invest in social media?

Why invest in social media?

More and more politicians use social media for their electoral campaigns and official communication You go online because it is trendy or because politicians sense the potentialities of a tool that can make them (partially) independent from the logic of traditional media or even because you hope to be able to influence the political agenda by means of well-designed communication strategies

More simply, you engage in social media for pleasure, or interest,

regardless of electoral campaigns. Usually, these are the most appreciated profiles

Why invest in social media?

More on social media, electoral campaigns can be won or lost. A wrong act of communication during a TV face-off (or on any traditional communication means) can be turned into a large mobilization through word of mouth (positive or negative) spontaneously originated on the Internet and spread without the help of the staff of the candidate or of the party Those candidates who apply to the social media the same strategies as the ones used by traditional communication media are doomed to fail The Web is paramount when you make mistakes more than when you interact successfully. It is vital to make no mistake and to magnify the others mistakes

Why invest in social media?

Many prominent politicians already have a profile on Facebook and Twitter. We cannot say the same for local candidates or for the federations of local parties We have to ask them to make an effort: it is important to show the

potentialities of team work, also because the level of aggressiveness of

second lines is very likely to increase during elections, and along with that, the complexity of the dynamics relevant to the building up of online public opinion

Why invest in social media?

Those politicians who are web-sceptical must be told very clearly that if you do not use the Internet, you will end up putting up with it: it is not necessary for someone to communicate online to make people talk about them. Moreover, word of mouth can be both positive and negative, the only difference being that if you are not online, not present on the Web, you cannot influence communication there.

For all the above reasons, nowadays it is inevitable to be on the Internet

Whatever the reason why a politician uses Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and all the other social media, he cannot confine himself to just being spontaneous or experimental. This is true according to what it has been said so far: if everybody is online, you must do more and better to stand out

A. Organization
Step one: building up a work team

Building up a work team

Managing the web communication of a political figure requires the same effort as the one necessary to set up a press office or a team which

deals with media planning and event planning

It is therefore impossible and sometimes harmful to entrust the whole bulk of the work to a single person, whereas at the same time a single coordinator can manage all the 2.0 profiles both on the content level and in terms of political strategy

Therefore, we need to single out a person who is a reference point for

this macro-area

Building up a work team

Managing the web communication of a political figure requires the same effort as the one necessary to set up a press office or a team which

deals with media planning and event planning

It is therefore impossible and sometimes harmful to entrust the whole bulk of the work to a single person, whereas at the same time a single coordinator can manage all the 2.0 profiles both on the content level and in terms of political strategy

Therefore, we need to single out a person who is a reference point for

this macro-area

Building up a work team

We think that any electoral campaign staff must include a strategic coordinator for online communication (who can also act, in case of candidates with a limited budget or no budget at all), whose objectives and tasks are as follows: a. understanding the overall strategic indications of the

campaign: strategy, positioning, key words, opponents behavior,

monitoring the content production;

b. having talks with the various area coordinators so that the

strategy becomes homogeneous (the so called control room made up by the politician, his staff, the political secretaries of his coalition and by their communication experts);

c. passing on the strategic information to his work group

Building up a work team

The editorial staff will not be able to know nor will necessarily have to know every detail of the strategy nor will have to be expert in politics. It is more important that the social media staff is made up by people

who have communicative and creative skills rather than by political

tactics experts Therefore, the coordinator has to compensate for the possible lack of political vision and, in a certain way, to protect his staff so that they can work well and usefully, only focusing on the technical/creative components of their role

Building up a work team

In order to support the coordinator / person responsible for new media
it is highly recommended to rotate experts who will deal with the raw creation of contents:

1. Videomaker: He must be able to record and video edit the

public speeches of the politician (public initiatives, interviews) and recordings of TV appearances (debates, news broadcast, talk shows). He

must be able to follow the politician in any of his public activity, even
imprompt (for example, a dialogue with a citizen in a bar) and, at the same time, be in a position to capture the opponents behavior (or their staffs or the behavior of their political area) that can bring consensus to the politician and to his party

Building up a work team

1. Videomaker
He also has to deal with possible format specifically designed for the Web. This task will depend on the strategic evaluation based on the staff structure, on the will to invest time and resources on online communication during elections, on the feedback originated by our

intervention and, in general, by the citizens reaction to the

scientific impact of communication The videomaker does not need to have political competence, particularly if he works in tandem with the editorial staff who will suggest the video editing strategies and the video upload on Youtube. At any rate, a staff who is politically competent is always helpful in

making decisions and is highly recommended

Building up a work team

2. Photographer
He can be the same person as the videomaker or another member of the staff (for example his spokesperson/press agent). He has to give evidence of the politicians public appearances (not necessarily in connection with electoral actions - they can be convivial situations

with friends, colleagues, family), of official meetings, events,

places closely linked to the themes of his electoral campaign. We suggest opening a Flickr channel (www.flickr.com), which is a social network dedicated to photo publishing. With an annual $25 subscription fee you can upload an unlimited number of high quality pictures; this becomes another useful tool for successful 2.0 communication and, at the same time, a practical and cheap

archive

Building up a work team

3. Webmaster
He must be able to design a web site, update it and manage its content. If possible, he must be able to design Facebook applications These tools can greatly foster the content distribution, especially if

they are associated to lighter or playful elements which make

complex topics and themes simpler. These can be videogames, quizzes, prizes, creativity contests or generative interfaces of the electoral campaign. A classical example of generative

communicative politics, based on the creativity of

users/voters, is the creation of automatic generators of posters, both for spreading ones communication campaign and for

denouncing ones opponents contradictions

Building up a work team

3. Webmaster
Generative campaigns, particularly if satirical and oriented to attacking the opponent, are much more effective when they are open, that is promoted by autonomous citizens and not developed according to our directions which, obviously being partisan, could be

perceived as less credible and genuine

The applications can also be used for specific awareness campaigns or petitions; the playful aspect can be more easily emphasized during electoral meetings and situations than during the daily official/political communication activity

A. Organization
Step two: choosing the tools

Choosing the tools

The internet site has to be suited to the communicative needs of the period. The user should be able to easily find the politicians view on topical themes and on his political fights, biography, programme, communication literature, interests, photos and videos uploaded on the social network, the voice of his supporters and of the activists of his electoral committee As a matter of fact, the site can be useful to attract volunteers who support the politicians petitions

Choosing the tools

Volunteers
The internet site has to be suited to the communicative needs of the period. The user should be able to easily find the politicians view on topical themes and on his political fights, biography, programme, communication literature, interests, photos and videos

uploaded on the social network, the voice of his supporters and of

the activists of his electoral committee As a matter of fact, the site can be useful to attract volunteers who support the politicians petitions

Choosing the tools

Volunteers
This recruiting phase is of paramount importance in case of elections The volunteers can be both party activists and ordinary citizens willing to support the electoral campaign. This spontaneous energy should not

be dispersed, on the contrary, it should be turned into action. If a

person only has an hour a week to offer for volunteer work, we should not thwart him but invent activities he can carry on during that time. A group of spontaneous supporters can even submit contents taken from the Internet as topics for discussion and food for thought; they can even make the staffs workload lighter

Choosing the tools

Volunteers
Work to create a valuable network of supports should start as early as possible since we have to consider (with a bit of cynicism) that a human resource working in our favour is one less in support of our opponents, both inner and external, which is crucial dynamics in case of Primary elections Volunteers cannot be bought nor co-opted, they are not at everybodys

disposal: they are the basis for the future of any politician, both
as far as building up consensus is concerned and for cooperating with associations and interacting with locals. For this reason, great care should be taken in the blog section within the site, with original and sometimes informal content

Choosing the tools

The tools to be used on social media should be chosen knowledgeably
and self-evaluating the team management skills. If the staff is limited and therefore a great amount of contents cannot be generated, it is worth taking care of few tools but in a scientific way. A minimal but sufficient kit for making our presence on social network well perceived consists of the following:

1. Facebook page
2. Twitter profile 3. Youtube channel

Choosing the tools

Facebook page
This is the only institutional communication tool suggested for a politicians or a party communication. The advantages of a fanpage for a public figure are undeniable. First of all, if a political figure already has a private profile and has no intention of

interacting with his real friends on Facebook, he can move his

profile to a page, without losing any friend (they would become fans of the page) and without the need to recover previous wellestablished contacts Unlike the personal profile, a fanpage can be administered by more people simultaneously. The names of the administrators remain unknown; there is no 5000-friend-limit, as is the case with a

personal profile

Choosing the tools

Facebook page
A Facebook user can become a fan of the politician without the need for the politicians consent; this greatly simplifies the administrators task in handling the relation. The remaining functions of the fanpage are the same as a personal profile,

including the status update function

Moreover, connections between other pages can be established: through a managing system independent from the administrators identity (switching) the management interface can be modified at any time and can enable the politician, through the fanpage, to directly interact within the walls of other pages

Choosing the tools

Facebook page
Worries regarding the change of strategy or the change from Facebook profile to Facebook fanpage can be reduced and turned into opportunities by means of aimed classified ads on Facebook that can be of interest only to the citizens residing in the city where elections take place The regular use of this tool, through communication campaigns initially

aimed at making fans subscribe to the fanpage and afterwards at

getting them involved in the campaign activities, is by far cheaper than printing press releases and using traditional methods Moreover, any staff can buy classified ads which will only be seen by fans of the opponents fanpage in order to take away consensus

Choosing the tools

Twitter page
Twitter is an extraordinary tool for monitoring the international information system, besides being an agile and ideal interface for creating fast and multimedia information. Tweets are short texts containing 140 letters, where you can add external links. Its peculiarity, as compared to Facebook, consists in the possibility to produce and use contents which are already classified by topic,

organized by hashtag (#), a code that, written before the keyword,

classifies the information Twitter allows the search for contents by means of a keyword through its search engine also to non members

Choosing the tools

Twitter page
Handling a Twitter profile is very handy for two reasons. The first is connected to the opportunity for automatically updating ones profile through a minimum handling of the Facebook fanpage (without any integration effort). In order to do so, it is sufficient to create a Twitter profile and then go to www.facebook.com/twitter to connect the two accounts

The second reason is relevant to a greater presence on the Web

achieved with no effort. A user can find a politician or a party navigating Twitter and afterwards going back to the other tools. As an extra tip we suggest that you check the contacts following the politician or the party on Twitter

Choosing the tools

Twitter page
The minimum approach is also advised against: the number of political figures who personally update contents has increased so much that citizens are used to expect the same behavior by anybody A fair compromise could be some updates written by him in the first person, by means of his personal computer, or smartphone or tablet,

and some published by his staff, who clearly sign the tweets in order
to avoid blunders or misunderstanding with the public. If managing Twitter personally and monitoring information is too much for you there are some free tools, like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite which allow to receive chosen communication flows always controlled and updated

Choosing the tools

Youtube channel
In the web 2.0 world, videos probably are the most effective media. For this reason, a Youtube channel is indispensable. It can be opened not only by leading politicians or parties but also by activists and younger political figures, even though they do not have their own content production or they do not frequently appear on the media. On this space, you can upload unpublished videos concerning

the day by day activities in an electoral committee or around the

city, or excerpts from other sources, in particular clips from TV programmes and news broadcast. The ratio between costs (no cost for using the tool, very limited amount for human resources) and benefits is definitely favourable

Choosing the tools

Youtube channel
Possible formats and thematic daily programmes can be added to the activity at full capacity; they will be chosen and assessed according to the strategy analysis and to the short, medium and long term communication objectives Candidates can already be present on Youtube without their

knowledge, through videos uploaded by other users and,

consequently, uncontrolled by their staff: therefore, this is one more reason for emphasizing ones presence on this popular platform

B. Organization
Step three: adopting good practices

Good practices #1
Publish contents constantly and frequently
On the Internet you should keep attention always alive. A politicians
spaces on the Web correspond to a personal communication means Therefore, if you do not communicate, it means you have nothing to say. If you have no personal contents to publish, share contents produced by others, for example by other candidates and local political representatives

Good practices #2
Do not publish political contents exclusively
People want to get to know and talk to the person, not only to the politician or the administrator. Sharing a passion, a hobby or even a weakness can generate consensus. However, this should not lead to a

radical change in communicating strategy nor to a fake spontaneity:

the person who decides to use social media for communication, should stick to his usual communication style mode. Every politician should try to show his human side without falling off trying to achieve an exaggerated familiarity of relationship, especially if in his political and public life he is a detached person, not incline to an open dialogue with voters

Good practices #3
Use the tag tool
Tagging a person means to associate him to some content. Facebook has highly increased this procedure thus allowing a person or a page administrator to tag personal profiles, groups and different fanpages

when publishing content or a status update. Tagging some content

has a twofold advantage: it allows including the tagged people or groups within the community created around the political figure and including oneself in the tagged community, thus multiplying the number of content readers. For this reason it is paramount for the person responsible for the fanpage administration to subscribe to profiles, groups and pages connected to the electoral campaign

Good practices #4
Handle two feedback flows
One from Facebook to the candidates to their staff, for criticism, questions or issues emerging during the local political debate or having to do with critical aspects of the politicians public profile.

The other from the politician to Facebook, answering the greatest

possible number of people. This constant monitoring has two advantages: the former consists in anticipating political timing and in adjusting the strategy in progress; the latter consists in the creation of a link on the profiles, pages or groups with which interaction has been established. This strategy should be adopted with great care also in the phases of monitoring ones opponent

Good practices #5
Avoid censorship or official criticism
If the community supporting the party or the political figure is sound and reliable, the users will stigmatize lamentable behavior themselves, also through reporting improper behavior to Facebook.

The same can be applied to the candidate councilors and to smaller

communities. For the above reasons, we believe that the attitude to show towards fake profiles, fakes (those who offend the politician) should never be one of total rejection and refusal of dialogue. The politician who is criticized should try and be open to the dialogue and confrontation with those who are hostile to him; he could even exploit the fake to attack his opponent

Good practices #6
Foster the greatest possible number of networking mechanism
With big voters, stakeholders, other political figures, inner and external competitors and with their supporters. There are no other equally effective ways to encourage consensus in real time From this point of view, Facebook is a vital tool and a key resource allowing original content to be spread online

Good practices #7
Make all contents and information on the political activity available
From posters to leaflets, from policy documents to press releases, from thematic campaigns to local ones, each supporter should be put in

the condition to be able to autonomously manage the political

and communicative support to the political figure and to the party, without complicating the process by means of control mechanism and approval from the top

Good practices #8
Use Facebook and social networks as explicit tools of political communication on the traditional media
Referring to the links to Facebook, Twitter and Youtube on posters, by

quoting ones own and the supporters contributions during TV

appearances. The last step is crucial, particularly during a possible live streaming of events of enormous media relevance. These moments of visibility should be taken advantage of for creating a positive circle between mass media exposure and possibility to control the social media incoming communication flow

online communication of offline event -> mentioning offline what

happens online + online live broadcast of what happens

B. Organization
Step four: how to get ready for daily fight Advice on content compilation and editing

Get ready for daily work #1

Build one or more flows of personal story

Contents should follow one other, comply with highly topical issues whenever possible, move upwards and turn to local, regional, national and international issues if there is real competence in these matters or move downwards and deal with peoples feelings

and emotions when the politician has shown genuine empathy with
these contexts

Get ready for daily work #2

Tell everything live
The best way to communicate on social media is by using them like everybody else. As we update our status by telling events in our life, uploading pictures of a party or of a place that has deeply moved us, we have to administer a politicians or a partys Facebook page. More and more frequently, a politician is chosen as a person.

If a person is not on the same wavelength as we, if he does not

express humanity and empathy, his political project will not suffice to convince us. That is why it is important for a candidates official and non official daily steps to be followed and shared. The quality of the contents generated is not as important as the timing chosen to propose them

Get ready for daily work #3

Rotate contents
Routine must be avoided on social media. Contents should rotate according to both type and communicative style. In this case, too, a sensible rule should be put into practice. The page should be updated every 60-120 minutes: you can add a status update concerning an event, then a newspaper article, then a photo of past

days, then a link to a policy proposal, then a Youtube video of ones

own channel, then a sport status update, then a newspaper article on fashion and so on (the above topics are just examples). You should propose a variety of topics following well recognizable logical and narrative threads assuring the tool coherence without sacrificing the variety of proposed topics

Get ready for daily work #4

Edit contents
A successful action on social media may depend on 30 more seconds
of work. We can customize each Facebook content in title and description (box beneath the title). Moreover, a comment can be added to each content, as well as an external link. An extremely precise editing work is perhaps even more crucial with Youtube, where title and descriptions are the first elements observed by users and that can be vital in convincing them to watch the video or

not. We should consider that they will be shared by people who are
very far from us within the networking. A screenshot can be decisive for the widespread of contents

Get ready for daily work #5

Think of scoops
In 2008 President Obama communicated the name of his vice president candidate to his newsletter subscribers via sms. The news was sent to the press only afterwards. He did so in order to make his community feel part of his political and life process. We should embrace the following principle: although the relation with traditional media is crucial, it is the people who have to take action to collect votes and therefore it is them who are our target audience. Our choice of the contents to circulate on social media

should favour all that can be shared first with users and afterwards
with the press. Top politicians should insist more on this aspect, mainly to steer and adjust relations

Get ready for daily work #6

Allow new and older media to communicate
All the politicians speeches on traditional media must become web contents. If there is a TV appearance, this should be turned into a Youtube video; if there is a radio talk, this audio contribution should be uploaded and shared. In social media there is no waste material. Transition from old to new media only requires editorial work. The opposite transition, much more fascinating, is becoming the standard. Very often local media yearn for stories to tell. Furthermore, social media allow to test video contents before

they become official. If the best video produced during a

campaign (in terms of viewing and feedback) was created by a user, why cannot it become official?

Get ready for daily work #7

Address niches
A virtual community supporting a political figure is made up of various experiences and tiny niches of public. We can nearly simultaneously address environmentalists, architects, city centre dwellers, traders, sports people, gays, friends of the politician, friends of his opponents (just to give some examples). For this reason, an effort should be made to take the opportunity to say something to each of these groups, according to a specific request or a topical issue. Feedback management is the key to communication success on

social media. Giving everybody feedback means paying attention to

everybodys interests and be trustworthy as a political figure

Get ready for daily work #8

Communicate when people are there
A brilliant status update is lost if published in the dead of night because nobody is online to share it in real time and create a snowball effect This is the reason why a daily schedule should be made out covering the contents to be shared: it would allow to manage all the material and to publish the best contents when the potential public is most responsive

Get ready for daily work #9

Be flexible about timing in critical moments
If some content causes criticism and controversy, it may be acceptable to propose some different food for thought (without waiting for the scheduled publication timing) which could distract fanpage fans and push them into positive action again. This rule can be applied in reverse when a communicative item has been particularly successful. If an update excites supporters, it is worth highlighting it for as longer time, unless there is the need to upload many more fresh contents. If there is an event to follow live,

timing cannot be adhered to. It is paramount to give fast updates

and say the essential things

To conclude
Five good ideas for those who comunicate on social media

Good idea #1

Tell the truth.

(this is enough, you could do without the other four things)

Good idea #2

Always remember that whatever you do on the web is public.

(This is true also for those profiles with high privacy restrictions. Say only the things you would be willing to repeat in front of an audience of strangers)

Good idea #3

Dont think that communication strategies are more important than contents.
( A stupid thing is a stupid thing: there can be no possible rhetoric, stylistic or communication device)

Good idea #4

Dont talk only about yourself.

(Whoever uses the first person singular, in the end bores the listener)

Good idea #5

Dont waste money on advertisement campaigns if you dont have anything to say.
(Theres no point in attracting users to places where there is nothing interesting. They will flee away, maybe stimulating a negative word-of-mouth. If you have money to spend, use it for writing, not for communication.)

To sum up
Social media will never win a campaign. A campaign cannot win without social media. (Beth Becker)