Welcome back, Saturday Campaign D-I-Yers! For those who tune in, welcome to the Nuts & Bolts of a Democratic campaign. Each week, we discuss issues that help drive successful campaigns. If you’ve missed prior diaries, please visit our group or follow Nuts & Bolts Guide.
Everyone who logs in to Daily Kos or who just reads it knows something about keyboard campaigns —campaigns where most of the work happens online rather than in person. This week, I’m in Waikoloa, Hawai’i with the Hawai’i Democratic Party state meeting—because while email to stay in touch and motivate people helps, there has to be some actual action behind it.
This week, we’re going to talk about how to use keyboard campaigns effectively by backing them with action, and why campaigns that are overwhelmingly digital struggle.
Before we begin, I want to make crystal clear this isn’t to say digital work, keyboard work, and email do not have a role in a campaign. They all have very important roles in a campaign, whether it is fundraising, organizing, or building support. Like any item, though, in order for them to be truly effective, digital efforts have to be mixed with on the ground action and direct communication efforts, which means knocking doors, meeting voters, appearing at major functions and making direct interpersonal relationships beyond the digital world.
Unfortunately, many candidates, in both parties, have tended to turn digital marketing and keyboard campaigns into the overwhelming majority of the work they do in a district for votes. Constant Facebook posts, Twitter feeds, blog entries and email, which becomes a monumental time sink and quickly eats away at time and energy which could be devoted to actual activities that secure these things called, well, votes.
Avoiding digital failures and promoting success
There are several major rules for avoiding a failed digital campaign:
- Realize the most effective way to get a vote is through face to face interaction. Digital campaigns that reinforce face to face interaction or build up attendance for face to face interaction helps.
- Digital campaigns that build on or promote prior actions or show highlight things being done are more important than random digital creative.
- Candidates should have a usage ratio that puts direct interaction with voters at a significant ratio to the time they spend “on the net” and posting. If your campaign is large, get someone to do it for you; if it is small, do not let digital monopolize your time.
Why should campaign staff promote digital content that promotes what you’ve done in face to face events or highlights upcoming face to face events? Because it means that, in order to keep pumping out digital creative work, you’re having to mix in a healthy dose of actual voter interaction. An easy way to keep down ballot candidates who are excited about the digital world involved in direct campaigning is to encourage the campaign more “in person” to result in content that can be used for their digital creative.
If you’re fighting, you’re losing.
Someone trolling your Facebook and Twitter? Knocking your campaign or candidate? The more time you spend fighting trolls, the more you expose yourself to saying something really dumb or to just wasting time that could be used elsewhere. And this goes all the way up, not just for those campaigning for local city government, but here at Daily Kos over the years I’ve seen candidates for US Congress get involved in petty, time-consuming back and forths over, well, nothing.
Do not do it. It is so tempting. You want to defend yourself. They will never be convinced of your candidacy, and the more time you spend arguing with a vote you will never get—who might not even vote in your district—the less time you are spending turning out Democratic voters in your district.
Spending all your money on Facebook and other ads? Yeah, about that ...
Many candidates in small races struggle with fundraising. As a result, they tend to look for cheap outlets to spend their money, often turning to Facebook or another digital creative company. Be careful. While digital advertising of any form can have value, again, if there is nothing to back it—because all your money is going toward digital ads—then it is hard to motivate voters. Candidates in small races are much better putting small money into palm cards, door hangers, or some candidate literature as a first expense that they can physically hand to someone in an at the door interaction, designed to start a real conversation.
If your campaign is spending so much money on a digital campaign that keeping up with basic handouts is beyond your financial reach, then you are overvaluing digital and undervaluing direct conversations with voters.
Set up a hierarchy of expenditures and put a higher weight on expenditures that encourage direct interaction by the candidate or volunteers. Satisfy those elements first before you move on to anything else.
Hey, but aren’t some of these things FREE?
A common candidate response in training groups is that Facebook, Twitter and even sites like Daily Kos are great tools because, well, they are FREE! You don’t have to pay to start blogging, tweeting or Facebooking. That is absolutely true, and when used correctly, that is a lot of value that you can get into your campaigns.
However, when you are in a campaign, these tools, even if monetarily free still have a cost. You can always raise more money, recruit more volunteers. The one thing you can never get is more time. Election day is set in stone, and there are only so many hours in a day, days in a week. So, if you use digital effectively it can give you a nice lift and the cost savings is pretty good.
However, if digital becomes a time sink for you, the cost can be very high—because it decreases the time you have to talk to voters, raise money or generate community support.
Final thoughts
All things in moderation. Keyboard campaigns, where digital creative, email or any other item become the overwhelming majority of a campaign will fail because they rarely penetrate the voters you need to turn out at the polls. Digital creative that helps influence voters that are already with you that you are working with and therefore are a good target for fundraising? That’s digital creative that works. Be smart with your keyboard, and view it as only one tool—and likely a smaller one than you think, in building your campaign.
Next week on Nuts & Bolts: Don’t be stingy with praise