Have you become more engaged in politics due to exposure to social media? When you think about how social media has been impacted by politics, it’s pretty easy to imagine that what first drew your attention was an image whether that image was taken with a camera or digitally designed. Effective communication begins with the visual and is enforced by what is written or talked about regarding that image. Effective imagery encompasses colors that depict the mood of the topic, icons that are universal, and sometimes even phrases or slogans that simply and clearly explain the topic. Today I want to discuss what makes an effective social media campaign and how designers play a pivotal role in helping campaigns succeed, as well as our responsibility as designers to design with integrity and truth.

As we all know at this point, people in politics lie. They blatantly lie or omit truths so that their arguments prevail over facts and reason. So what about political campaign ads? Can they lie in those also? The short, unfortunate answer is yes. The Honest Ads Act was a bill in the United States Senate intended to regulate online campaign advertisements by companies. The bill was proposed on October 19, 2017, as a response to Facebook’s disclosure of Russia purchasing political ads during the 2016 United States presidential election. The Honest Ads Act was eventually incorporated into the For the People Act, which passed the House but stalled in the Senate during the 116th and 117th Congress. As designers, we have a responsibility to turn away a paycheck when it comes to false or misleading information being presented to the public as truth. Any designer who is willing to subscribe to shady practices should be held accountable and while the United States has attempted to wrangle this problem, we have sorely fallen short.

Now that we are designing campaign ads responsibly, let’s talk more about what makes for great social media design for political campaigns. Similar to the thought process behind creating excellent marketing campaigns for social, designers can also consider five main things when planning a political social media campaign: if this is not your first time, audit your previous social media performance, define your campaign goals, create audience personas, identify distribution channels and key times to post and last, check out your competitors.

Audit your previous social media performance:

Carefully review the metrics from each social channel you used so that you can see where and how you have generated leads, driven traffic to your website, gained social follows, and increased conversions – in this case a conversion could be considered as signing up to vote, signing a petition or subscribing to an email list or newsletter. Tracking these metrics helps you and your team understand whether or not you have been successfully meeting your goals.

Define your goals for the year:

Think about the goals you have and try to break them down into categories that align with your wider goals. If you want people to sign a petition, donate to the campaign, and engage on social media, you might categorize your goals in two ways: branding goals and revenue-linked goals. For branding goals, you might include how many people you want to reach within a time frame, how many relationships you create, post engagement for the month, how many shares you acquire, etc. Revenue-linked goals might look something like how many sign-ups you received in a month or how much money you raised in a certain amount of time. Remember to always keep your goals SMART too. That is, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound, so that you can gauge your performance.

Create audience personas:

Sure, why not? If you are trying to raise funding and awareness for your campaign, as a designer you know how to create user personas and they can be very helpful when trying to reach certain demographics at certain times. Do you need millennial buy-in? Well, take a look at when they’re on social, what the typical millennial is up to during a routine day, and when you will most likely be able to reach them. Know your audience through personas by identifying their struggles and pain points. Are they worried about fires? Polluted water? The ads designed with those concerns in mind will help you target those groups. Many millennials are parents now, so maybe they’re worried about their child’s education and gun regulation. Your candidate is pro-gun reform and education funding so now go design the eye-popping ad that will create awareness and hopefully lead to donations for your campaign.

Identify distribution channels and key times to post:

When trying to reach your audience, knowing what social media platforms they use and what times they use them can increase the likelihood that your campaign ads will be seen. According to Statista, in 2020, 59% of marketers said that Facebook was their most effective social channel, with Instagram at 17%, LinkedIn at 14%, Twitter at 3%, and Pinterest at 1%. That gives a good big-picture view, but knowledge of how your own brand and audience interact on social is even more powerful. Know where your audience goes and when they’re most likely to see your ad.

Check out your competitors:

Who are your closest competitors? Which social media channels are they using? How are they successful? How are they missing the mark? What type of content are they producing and how effective is it? Where do they need to improve? A type of “social media listening”, reviewing your competition is an effective way to monitor the sentiment around your competitors’ campaigns. Then take these gained insights and implement better ways to inform your social media campaign design strategy.

Resources:

Statista

HubSpot and Semrush have additional resources and articles related to marketing strategy that can be useful for campaign design strategy as well.