When you sit down to a nice dinner party with friends or with family, there are two topics that most people will usually avoid discussing. These two topics are, of course, religion and politics!
When discussing either religion or politics, there will be strong feelings on either side of the spectrum and it’s common for people who you know and love to have strongly opposing opinions to yours, and this could be a problem if you are the type of person who is likely to want to convert people to your way of thinking; be that a particular faith or a particular political affiliation.
Furthermore, politics and religion are two areas that can also be highly volatile when it comes to social media—and many people wish to avoid having anything to do with either of these subjects on their social media feed. If you are a political commentator or a member of a political party, this could come as quite a shock, but there is no reason why it should.
Just take your mind back a few months to the 2020 presidential election. The hate, the vitriol, and the bullying that was sent out on social media (especially by those espousing the sentiment of “be kind”) was rather heartbreaking to see, and left many people considering whether or not they wanted to take a more active role in politics or just leave it to someone else.
Using Facebook Pages To Communicate Information
It’s perhaps due to the presidential election—and the constant politicizing of the news coverage surrounding the Covid-19 global health pandemic—that social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook have begun to take a more hardline approach to dealing with political commentary.
Many political organizations are finding themselves being slapped with moderation notes, and there is a discussion as to whether or not companies such as Facebook are wielding their powers in a way that is not entirely fair—but that’s a discussion for another article.
The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of the American population of voting age has access to a Facebook account, and this is one of the best ways to keep people updated.
Even non-partisan organizations such as the foundation for the defense of democracies have discovered the the way in which Facebook can be used for good, and to share stories and information that is important to the world.
Utilizing Easy-To-Follow Video Content
While politics was once seen as an area that people engaged with via the more traditional forms of media such as broadsheet newspapers and traditional news outlets, social media is fast evolving as the leading voice in political education for the masses. One way in which this is happening rapidly is the use of engaging and easy-to-follow video content to get opinions and views across in a simple way.
There are all kinds of politically affiliated YouTube channels, TikTok accounts, Instagram accounts, and of course, Facebook accounts that are discovering the use of high-quality and engaging video content, and how good it can be at explaining complex ideas to everyday people.
Organizations such as Prager U are well known for creating easy-to-follow videos that have asked difficult questions and got people to think—whether the conclusion that their followers come to is one of agreement or not.
Engaging Followers Of Every Age
There has been a big push in recent times for political parties and politically affiliated organizations to truly engage the younger generation and the next generation of voters.
This is a sensible policy for most politically affiliated organizations to follow, because it means you can create followers for life who will be the voice of a new generation and able to change the world with their vote.
For any organization that is considering using different channels for their content, you will need to take into consideration the average age of the channel’s users and whether or not they can vote in order to decide what kind of content you’ll be producing for that channel.
For example, TikTok is predominantly for young people and teens under voting age, but Instagram is a good place to find people of voting age.
Create Content That Is Truthful But Also Interesting
There has also been a big push in recent years for mainstream media to create content that is incredibly sensationalized, and anyone who has been following the global health pandemic closely will be able to spot the sensationalist and clickbait headlines of traditional mainstream media, because they are focused on stirring up fear rather than sharing the facts.
If your organization is a politically affiliated one, it will serve you well to stick to the actual facts, but you must also ensure that your content is still engaging.
Numerous studies have shown that audiences don’t like and don’t trust headlines that are designed to be purely clickbait, and creating these kinds of headlines and this kind of content is a fast way to lose the trust and respect of your audience; instead, concentrate on growing your audience with like-minded followers and people.
Ensuring that your content is truthful is even more important when it comes to creating politically affiliated content, especially now that the major social networks are spending so much time fact-checking and moderating content in order to ensure that the sensationalist claims you may be making are actually based on truth.
It’s never good for a politically affiliated organization, person, or party to be accused of spreading misinformation or, even worse, knowingly spreading fake news.
Be Prepared To Answer Questions
Improving politics on social media is not just to do with the kind of content that you and your politically affiliated organization creates; it’s also to do with how you and your organization engage with your audience and with your followers.
While businesses understand this all too well, politicians and political organizations don’t always hit the mark when it comes to engaging with and replying to followers.
You are absolutely right to be concerned about replying to trolls and comments that are only designed for a reaction; but when people ask you questions publicly on social media, even if those questions are difficult to answer, you should attempt a reply to show that you are still engaged with your electorate and with your audience.
Remember: What You Write Is Always Visible
The last point to remember about social media is that whatever you write is going to be public, and it’s going to be public forever.
Social media can be a great force for good in the world, but it can also be a force for bad and a very negative and horrible place to be.
Nowhere is this more known than for people who have had their pasts dug up by dedicated people and then shown to the world.
This happens most regularly on Twitter—where it is easier for people to search for tweets by a particular person across a particular date range—but you should also keep in mind that you need to be prepared to stand behind that anything you put on social media or in an email.
Just because you delete a tweet or a social media post, it doesn’t mean it has gone away, and more often than that not, if you make a comment that is particularly controversial, it’s likely that a dedicated subset of your followers or adversaries are likely to have taken a screenshot of your content way before you had the chance to delete it or rephrase it.