Your data is talking to you, NationBuilder can help you listen

I am a 24 year-old registered member of your party, and I’ve voted in 3 of the last 4 elections. When your canvassers came to my door wanting my vote, they had no clue where I stood on the new zoning plan. So I sent them away.

The one thing I care about is how your zoning plan hurts my family-owned business, and I’ve been telling you that for 6 months.

Are you listening to my online engagement at all?

A campaign’s digital strategy often seems to distract from the “real” work of canvassing, GOTV, and fundraising. It doesn’t have to — a well-run digital program works to magnify and inform the rest of the campaign’s efforts.

Want your digital game to be an asset rather than a liability?
You’ve come to the right place.

NationBuilder's Social Targeting model turns your digital media into an integral part of your campaign. We’re excited to make this program available to you for free, below.

Master the art of social listening

People are telling your campaign all kinds of information on social media. If you decide not to listen you will lose donations, votes, and supporters. Here are five ways to listen on social media:

1. Turn social into local

Find everyone who follows you, lives in a particular neighborhood, and has a keyword in their Twitter bio. Bonus: match your social media list to your voter file and give this data to your canvassers.

2. Anticipate what people need to hear

Find everyone on Twitter who follows your opponent AND the advocacy group that just endorsed you in the primary. Buy Twitter advertising that targets this list with information about the endorsement.

3. Make Facebook work for you

Pull up a list of everyone who “liked” your post on Facebook. Bonus: You might have email addresses for some of these folks, so this information could turn into a targeted email blast to this constituency.

4. Identify interest and excitement

Organize your database based on who has liked your Facebook post, commented on your Facebook page, RSVP’d to an event, retweeted you, mentioned you, or followed you on Twitter in the past week. These folks are interested in you right now. Alternate: run the same search, but find anyone who has done any three of these activities in the past week. These folks are excited about you right now. Act accordingly.

5. Build on expressions of support

Find everyone who is subscribed to your email list, has volunteered for the campaign, or who has engaged with your website who doesn’t yet follow you on Twitter. Ask them to fix that problem, and provide them two or three things to tweet right now (extra points if you have their cell phone number and can send them an SMS message with these tweetable nuggets). Watch the trending topics shift in your direction.

Use social data to boost your whole campaign

It doesn’t matter how well your social media team listens if what they hear never makes it to the rest of the campaign. Here are five ways to integrate social data with the rest of your efforts:

6. Combine your voter file and your social data

A whole new world is opened up. Find everyone on Twitter who self-identifies in their bio as a member of your party and then map the results. Pull up a list of everyone in a target precinct, organize them by social influence, and then ask the top 10% to be on a neighborhood social media outreach team. Social media data combined with voter file data can allow you to turn your supporters into friends and advocates.

7. Remember that your followers have followers, too

Give your supporters things to share and they’ll amaze you with their combined social reach. Bonus: hold a “Tweet Bank.” Invite a handful of volunteers to spend a couple of hours a week reaching out to people on Twitter. Give them a list of high value prospects you’ve curated from bio searches, location searches, and Twitter imports. At the end of the day you’ll be able to track your metrics and tweak the Tweet Bank’s design for the next time around. It doesn’t matter how well your social media team listens if what they hear never makes it to the rest of the campaign. 

8. Establish a general path of engagement

These pathways should track a person’s progress from first contact to vote cast, and should include social media as well as in-person volunteering.

For some campaigns, the path will look something like this:

engage on social media → take survey → join email list → donate → attend

event → recruit friends → host house party → help with GOTV.

9. Treat social media like a communication medium

If you can’t get ahold of someone via email or at their home, send them a tweet or a Facebook message. If someone does something nice for the campaign, mention them on Twitter or create a shareable image acknowledging their contribution and post it on Facebook. Saying thank you to people goes a long way. Even longer, sometimes, if it’s done on social media where their friends can see it.

10. Tag responsibly

Every action a supporter or prospect takes should be recorded and analyzed. This data will come in handy later. This can help, for example, identify the percentage of event RSVPs who ended up donating. Or the number of new volunteers were recruited at a particular event. The basic question to answer is “how many people with x tag also have y tag?” The answers will form trends, and these trends can inform wider campaign strategy.

One system that syncs your political and social data means you'll be in a stronger
position to build deeper relationships with supporters both online and off