In various candidate and party offices across the country, right now some consultant, expert, ninja, communications expert, whatever, is reporting that Obama managed to leverage social media to create a “grass root movement” that led him to the presidency of the United States. Those of you who are candidates or party staffers, do yourself a favor and ignore him. They will offer you absolutely nothing at this point. They are more likely to do you harm than good.
There are many reasons, but let's summarize them into the two most important ones. First, you don't have enough time to set up something serious and important on social media and the internet in general if you haven't already done so. Second, you most likely aren't doing it well.
The first one doesn't need much explanation. As for the second one? A serious campaign at the candidate level requires, at a minimum, that a site, texts, creatives be set up correctly, that people or groups be found who will post content on social networks and, above all, that they will be responsible for carrying out many small tasks that may seem easy but are not. The minimum is photo editing, video editing, content modification depending on the medium that will be uploaded and in general many many small but important tasks that if done haphazardly will ruin the image instead of building it.
If we are now talking about a party, things become even more demanding. Continuous productions are needed at the creative level, many times larger in volume than for a simple candidate. Banners are needed. Message simplification processes. Finding, evaluating and training volunteers. Keyword management strategy for search engines, checking which ones are spelled correctly and which ones need to be purchased in order to fill the gap, constant measurement and optimization are needed. Constant monitoring and measurement of whether the appropriate messages on social networks such as Facebook, which has a complex display selection algorithm, reach the appropriate audience, and all of this is simply necessary.
It is understandable that there are too many variables that are not easy for someone to control if all of this has not been planned and checked in depth early on. It is also extremely difficult to find people who have the required specialized knowledge even at the market level, let alone at the level of party mechanisms. As if that were not enough, there is also the most difficult variable to control. The complete ignorance of party mechanisms about basic principles of communication on social media. Most people think that a good strategy is to talk nonsense on Twitter and fight with opponents. In the past, “blog response groups” were in fashion. There is rarely a provision for the dissemination of messages by medium with specific targets, a look at the Facebook pages of the parties on which press releases from the statements of the leader or spokesperson are usually posted.
How little the party machinery in Greece is prepared for these issues is evident from the incredible blunders they have made. The most recent was when ND made “New Greece” their central slogan and SYRIZA bought the domain neaellada.gr which was available because no one thought of buying it in case they set up a serious campaign based on searches for “New Greece”. Personally, I have a wonderful story about the response to a simple tweet that I waited four days for approval and a final text from the political planning office of a major party.
In conclusion, dear candidate or party communications manager. Do yourself a favor and us who will be forced to block or hide you. Limit yourself to the simple. Run a banner campaign that sends to your site and that's it. Go ahead and do some retargeting. The other thing takes effort, resources and time that you don't have. If you do it for a long time and with the right team, the conversation changes. The ninja we mentioned above who told you that you will become the new Obama or that you will go viral is irrelevant and dangerous and it's best to kick him out.
