Every day is a new day with new evidence to the fact that we have an unimaginable unfit President, that will probably doom us all. We need to fight back on all fronts. This diary is a suggestion on how you can help candidates with just a simple Facebook-click.
Having used Facebook professionally as a promotional tool for both political causes and products, it surprises me how little it is used by candidates and state parties. Since almost everyone has a Facebook-profile, this is an excellent way to reach a lot of people with the use of very little (or no) money.
Below I will very briefly describe how you can get as much organic spread from your Facebook page as possible. But more importantly, the fastest and easiest way you can give your candidate, cause or local party a small boost; is to like their Facebook-page and their posts. If you do this, more people will see their posts.
How you get organic spread
Since Facebook joined the stock market, everything is about paid promotion. Over the last 5 years I have spent close to 1 million USD on behalf of myself and different clients on Facebook-promotions, so I have gotten a good overview of what works and what doesn’t. And basically, what works for paid promotions, also works for organic spread.
If you have a Facebook page with little or no activity and post something on it, you will get an organic spread to about 1% of your followers. So if you have 10 000 likes on your page, you will get an organic spread of only a 100 people, unless it becomes an immediate hit and get a lot of likes and shares.
Basically, when it comes to organic spread, there is a rang order among the pages. If you have a “hot” page, the algorithms of Facebook favour you. If you have a cold page, you get very little traction for free. The Facebook algorithms are secret, and when you read somewhere how they work, that is basically just guessing. This is my guesswork, but it is based from experience of operating over a 100 Facebook-pages. Some without promotion, and others with. This is how Facebook gives away free organic spread, from my experience:
1) Publish often
The most important number on your page is “reach this week”. This is basically the number of times someone have interacted with your page the last 7 days. So this number will naturally be higher if you have had 20 posts this week, rather than 4. I think the optimal number is 2-3 posts every day. But if you are a candidate running for office, that number can be much higher.
If you have a page with 500 likes you could potentially have a bigger spread on one post if your “reach this week” number is high, than with a page of 10 000 likes that post for the first time in 7 days.
2) Interaction
The numbers of interactions, especially the first hour, has a huge impact on how big the reach of your post will be. The effect is biggest if someone shares it, the next is comments, and the last is likes/reactions. So if you like a candidate on the other side of the country, you can help them spread their message by quickly liking their posts when they publish.
There is also a psychological side to this. A post that has three different reactions looks much more popular than a post that have just likes. So a post with 1 like, 1 love and 1 wow, seems more popular than a post with 5 likes. So you can also help the candidate with giving the post a reaction they don’t have already.
It is always nice if the post have three positive reactions. Often those who don’t support the candidate uses the haha-reaction. You can counteract this with either love or wow, so that it displays only three positive reactions. But what the ignorant republican that pressed haha don’t realise, is that he also gives the post extra reach.
3) Number of likes
Facebook favour pages with many likes. This is why it is so difficult to grow your page in the beginning. For every time you reach a new 100 it becomes a bit easier, and after you pass 1000 you will see that it gets easier to get organic reach. This is why I recommend using a few dollars to quickly get over at least 500 likes.
So if you can’t afford to donate, at least like the Facebook pages of democratic candidates that needs help. Here I have a few suggestions, and in the end of the diary I have listed all the Facebook-pages of all the state parties. They could use a boost.
It frustrated me that during the Alabama Special, several days could pass between every time the Alabama State Party published something. An example of the opposite is the Arkansas Democratic Party, who has a very good and active Facebook-page.
We have special elections coming up on January 16 that could use your like. I have also included the donor button, in case you would like to use it. State legislature elections is a very effective way of giving a lot of help with just a few dollars. And on March 13 Conor Lamb is running in the special US House election in Pennsylvania. Let’s start the House season with flipping this one.
Here is a full list of state democratic parties. I suggest that you give a hand to those parties that are a bit under water when it comes to support, like those in the reddest states in the Union.
The republican state parties has a total of 405 709 more Facebook likes than the state democratic parties. That is an opportunity to reach millions more than democrats. Especially with payed promotion.
The biggest advantage for us is in Texas where the state democratic party has over double the number of the republican party with over 200 000 likes. If the democrats were to use promotion to reach every voter in Texas, I would estimate that it would cost a third of what the republicans would have to spend.
Our biggest disadvantage is in Wisconsin where we have a little under 50 000 followers while the republicans have almost 225 000 likes. Maybe that was the drop that tipped the 22 748 votes victory for Trump in Wisconsin.
After going over all the Facebook pages, I must say I expected the numbers to be higher. Facebook is an excellent way of finding volunteers, donors and for democrats in red areas to find each other. It’s like a digital lawn sign.
Imagine if you live in a rural area of Arkansas, and you see on Facebook that you have two friends who like the state democratic party. You’ll see that you are not alone and chances are you will hit like and get regular updates on what the party is doing. The chances of you voting in the next election goes up.
If you want to bookmark this page I will update with the growth of the number of Facebook likes for each party, and see if we get some traction. I urge you to like some of those on the list that need some help.
I will also make a similar list of candidates that are worth giving an extra digital hand. I hope you can give me tips in the comments section on candidates to follow. Especially candidates from special elections where turnout is key.
I start with Greg Sagan. He is the lone democrat for the the very conservative 13th US House district in Texas. It is a really long shot race, but I like what he is doing on Facebook. Even though he is in a conservative district, he isn’t holding back. He really exposes the voters in the district with information from our point of view. And that’s important!
Give me some tips and I’ll ad to the list!
Friday, Jan 12, 2018 · 11:39:34 PM +00:00 · Ectoras
Also, if anyone have questions or wants tips on how to use Facebook in as efficient way possible, I’m more than happy to answer questions. Especially on how to do promotion for very few dollars. I wrote very little about that in the diary, but there are tricks on how to come a long way with very little money.
Saturday, Jan 13, 2018 · 5:00:34 PM +00:00 · Ectoras
Wow! Community spotlight for the first time!! Thank you so much!
In less than 24 hours we have added almost 400 likes to the state parties. That’s almost 8 per state party. That is much more than normal, so at least a few of those comes from your actions here.
We have also added over 60 likes to the candidates listed. That is awsome! Keep listing candidates we should follow in the comments!
Sunday, Jan 14, 2018 · 10:00:25 AM +00:00 · Ectoras
How to do paid promotion on Facebook smart:
Paid promotion is really a great tool. Not everyone has money to spend, but it is cheaper than all other advertising you can think of. One ad on TV cost more than you need for a good Facebook campaign a whole year.
If you do Facebook perfectly and publish stuff that people like, you can reach about half your Facebook population on any given post. If you do the same and spend 5 dollars, you can potentially reach many times your current Facebook-population. You can both reach a lot of new people, and get a lot of new likes to your page.
But the best thing is the targeting. You who sees your post. If you have post about pensions, you can target older people. Tuition fees, young and parents. Planned parenthood, women. A story about yourself, you target your district. If you are asking for donations, maybe you target the biggest city in your state.
The biggest trick about paid ads are to never have an ad running for more than a day. If you plan on spending 30 dollars and set up an ad for 3 days, Facebook isn’t in a hurry to spend it all at once. So the ad doesn’t necessarily perform well in the start. That drives the price up. But if you spend it all on one day, Facebook spends a lot in the start, because they don’t want you to have money left in the end.
When the ad spends money right away, you get a lot of likes and comments fast. That makes it a popular ad and then the price goes down. Thus you money have a lot bigger effect. So you could get more effect for 10 dollars in one day than 30 dollars in 3 days. So if you plan to spend 30 dollars, my advise is to either spend 30 in one day (usually what I do) or spend 10 dollars in 1 day and renew the ad twice.
Pictures have the larges spread on Facebook, so they are the easiest to promote if you want people to know about your page. But even if you ad a web url to your post, it does not convert a lot of traffic to your web page. So if you want that, to your ActBlue page for example, you need to promote the web post. It is more expensive per click, but you will get A LOT of clicks. And hopefully some money.
When you promote a post, you should always have your friends like and comment on the post as soon as possible. Faceobook interprets this as a popular post and gives you a better price.
There is also a rumour out there that if you spend money once, your page will permanently have lower organic spread. I have seen absolutely evidence of that. And it would be moronic for Facebook to do that. I think that people just think it’s dull to see the numbers move so slowly after they have tired paid promotion.
Sunday, Jan 14, 2018 · 6:10:15 PM +00:00 · Ectoras
lufthase just reminded me of a neat trick that I have forgotten to mention in this diary: If you click on post reactions, you can invite everyone that has liked your post and doesn’t like your page, to like your page.
This is especially smart if you have promoted the post and gotten likes from a lot of new people that doesn’t follow your page.
Sunday, Jan 14, 2018 · 7:42:08 PM +00:00 · Ectoras
After 48 hours we have added 850 new likes to the pages of the state parties and almost 200 likes to the listed candidates! Thank you very much! If you want to help more, invite your Facebook-friends to like those pages as well. I also remind you of the ActBlue-links that are all there, in case you want to chip in.