Hey Everyone, Look Where I Am! Using FourSquare, Gowalla and Facebook Places in Your Political Campaigns

By Kayle Hatt

<Note: This was first published as an article on ePolitics.com on Feb 15th>

At this point the classic real estate saying “Location, Location, Location” has transitioned into the catagory of cliché, but politicos know that location matters. Political battlegrounds are drawn along the lines of wards, districts and, in parliamentary traditions, ridings. Targeting can be broken down into census tracks or demographic clusters. We colour our geographic zones by their red-to-blue leanings and view them accordingly (or in Canada, blue-to-red-to-orange leanings). And, of course, voters care profoundly about their small corner of the world.

I think it’s fair to say that politics and location are completely interconnected. So wouldn’t it be great if you could integrate this concept of location into your social media campaign?

Well, I have good news for you… You can!

Meet the Location-Based Social Media Networks

Do you have a smart phone?

Of course, you do, right? About two-thirds of new cellphones sold in North America these days are smartphones and just under half of cellphone users have a smartphone. In urban areas, among younger demographics or professionals, that percentage is much higher. (Of course, if you’re running a small rural campaign, keep in mind that the reverse is also true.)

The location-based social media tools are built upon this proliferation of smart phones — most of which have mobile GPS features built-in to them. These location-based tools allow participants to ‘check-in’ at their physical location and share that information with their friends and social media networks online.

On these social media networks, FourSquare, Gowalla and Facebook Places, users and businesses have created these specific locations (Joe’s Pizzeria, the Anywhereville Library, etc) that are recognizable by the GPS on your smartphone and, using the network, users can see people who have ‘checked-in’ at the same spot as you or were their friends have checked-in. (If you want more of a primer on these services and how they work, read this article by Total Politics, a UK-focused elections magazine; however the following will assume some basic knowledge and will build from there.)

So how can you use these tools in you campaign? Well, I have three strategy suggestions for you.

The Campaign Office

In my opinion, volunteers are the most important resource that a campaign can have. I draw that opinion from my ‘field’ background and, while some may disagree (those from a mass communications background often argue that money is more important), the fact remains that most campaigns are constantly looking for more volunteers. Even campaigns that have a lot of volunteers still don’t have enough — you can never have too many!

One of the best ways to get new volunteers is to encourage your existing volunteers to talk to their friends about volunteering and social media is great for this. If you aren’t asking your volunteers to tweet or post Facebook updates about volunteering, then you should be.

Creating a location for your campaign office on FourSquare or Facebook Places is simply taking this to the next level. Volunteers can check-in to your office when they arrive, essentially telling their social media friends “Hey everyone, look where I am! I’m volunteering for candidate XYZ, why don’t you come join me.”

Many good field organizers and ground-focused campaigns have already started to do this … and so should you.

The Local Candidate

As I said above, voters care about neighbourhoods and their small corner of the world. Voters love to know that candidates are visiting their area and are therefore, in some small way, connected to their lives.

How many candidate tweets have you seen tweeting their location or updating their Facebook feed with items from their schedule? This is good (in moderation. Please, god, please don’t let the entire social media feed for your campaign be a carbon copy of your schedule) but the great thing about using these location-based tools is that people can see them after the fact. Someone who uses FourSquare, for example, in their daily life might see that your candidate visited the same coffee shop as them.

This strategy is great for highly localized campaigns or municipal elections.

Bonus points go to campaigns that leave “tips” or comments on the discussion boards at various locations; but don’t spam. For a coffee shop, I’d suggest something along the line of “Thanks for supporting local businesses. I had the fair trade dark-roast coffee blend and it was really good. I highly recommend it. — Joe Smith, Candidate for State Senate in District 4″

Also, an important note: You can use social media to make notes of where you’re personally canvassing but mention neighbourhoods not specific streets. I’ve worked on/with more than one campaign where our opponents would post the street they canvassed on. Each time we made sure to saturate that area with our message afterwards.

The Regional, State(Provincial) or National Campaign

So you have a larger campaign spread over a significant geographical area, your campaign probably has more than one office and a dedicated team working on the tour operations of your candidate … you can do the things mentioned above but why not also play ‘follow-the-leader’.

Using location-based services will allow your campaign to highlight your candidates travels to supporters, reporters and voters. Perhaps a specific feature on your website can allow visitors to follow the movements of your candidate “on the road to The White House/Congress/The State Legislature/The House of Commons/etc.”

For donors, the subtle message would be ‘look at all that travel, you donation is helping our campaign reach voters in all these areas.’ For reporters, it would be ‘see how credible our campaign is’ (especially during primaries). For voters, you could have a feature to ‘find an event near me’ which could highlight previous events near them, show a listing of any future events and give people a chance to sign-up for emails to keep them informed for future events.

Or…

Or play around with these services. Try new and innovative things.

1996 was the first presidential election campaigns where candidates actually had websites and those were mostly just online pamphlets. Ten years ago, email had almost no impact on campaigning. Online engagement, social media campaigning, online ads, text messaging and every other form of ePolitics-style campaigning are all somewhat recent developments and products of on-going innovations.

… and of course, when you try new and innovative things, let the good folks at Epolitics.com <Me> know about it.

For more on location-based services and politics, see Geo-Social Street Wars in Election 2010? and Get in the Game: Political Advocacy and Foursquare.

Six Questions a Candidate Should Ask before Tweeting, Blogging or Posting a Status Update

By Kayle Hatt

<Note: This article was first posted on ePolitics back in the summer of 2010 before Rob Ford became Toronto’s mayor. Despite the date, I think it holds up well.>

Social media is a great campaign tool and you shouldn’t shy away from it (In fact, if you neglect social media it could hurt your chances of getting elected), but you should be careful when using social media for campaign purposes. Here are six questions to ask yourself before posting something:

1. Would I say this to a reporter?

Your social media updates don’t just go to your ‘friends’ or your ‘supporters’. These are public statements and will be seen by the media as surely as if you had put them in a press release — in fact, they may be more likely to be seen because in recent elections most newspapers have started having newsroom staff follow candidates on social media. Mess up and they will know!

Would you want to see this tweet on the front page of tomorrow’s paper? Enough said.

2. Would I say this to an opponent?

Even if your social media updates aren’t being watched by the media you can bet your opponents will be watching. If you post something inappropriate your opponents will be more than happy to pass it on to reporters. Or use your comments in a radio ad attacking you. Or a flyer delivered to every house in the ward/riding. Or have someone ask you about it at a debate.

3. Is this an emotionally-motivated tweet/post?

Campaigns are tough. You will get upset. You will get frustrated. You will get annoyed, sad and at times, disappointed. Those feelings are normal and you are allowed to have them, just don’t tweet or post updates when you feel that way.

Anyone who has ever worked on a campaign will sympathize with your feelings about being attacked at a debate or having a door slammed on your face while canvassing. Unfortunately, most voters haven’t worked on a campaign and won’t sympathize — to them you will just look unparliamentary.

Don’t post on a whim.

4. Does this violate the TMI rule?

T.M.I., as any teenager or their parents can tell you, stands for Too Much Information. Personal posts are fine. Family stuff is good. Attending a local hockey game, great! Doing non-campaign community work, awesome (where do you find the time). Hobbies? Maybe.

BUT stay away from anything too personal, which includes anything about relationships, about drinking with friends or anything even remotely sexual….

Here are some sub-questions in this category to ask yourself:

4.a) Does this personal post portray me in a bad light in anyway?

4.b) Do voters really need to know this about me?

4.c) Is this a G-rated post?

Bottom line is, if you wouldn’t tell your elderly grandmother or your ten-year-old daughter, don’t tell your social media network.

5. Is this post on-message?

You’ve worked hard (hopefully) to develop your campaign themes, spent months researching your main issues, and agonized over word choice in your communications. In short, you’ve carefully crafted and polished your campaign’s message. Why then would you want to tweet about something different?

You are allowed to go off topic from time to time, but always be mindful of when you are doing it (for instance to address something raised by an opponent or some emerging issue of interest to voters), and be conservative about how often you go off topic.

And never go off topic on a whim (see #3).

6. Can this be misinterpreted? Am I communicating what I want to communicate?

Many social networking posts are space limited (Twitter is 140 characters. Facebook is 365) and because of space limitations there is a tendency to cut posts. Beware of misinterpretations. Read and re-read your message looking for possible misunderstandings or double entendres.

Also you many want to consider if you can actually make a nuanced argument or statement on some issues in 140 characters. Perhaps it might be better to make a 300 word blog post on taxes, for example, and then tweet about the blog post including a link rather than making a space limited post that could be misinterpreted.

Final Thought: The internet is forever and your comments are, too.

What you put on the internet can’t be undone. Yes sure, most social media websites give you the option of deleting posts or removing tweets after the fact, but most also give users the ability to get notifications of your new statements to their emails or even their cell phones.

Rest assured that opponents, and any good reporters following you, will have that post long after you’ve deleted it — if you want proof, just read a newspaper from any day during the 2008 Federal election.

Just a quite note to thank ePolitics for featuring my blog.

ePolitics is a blog/website that features articles and information about online campaigning. It’s super awesome and if you’ve never checked it out, you should!

Visit at: www.epolitics.com/

I’ve written a couple articles for ePolitics over the last couple years, mostly about social media in elections, and I’ll be posting those here soon.