Facebook, with it’s fast growth, has become a platform for political cause campaigns. Lion Buzz™ in a recent mayoral campaign used a Facebook Fan Page together with targeted Facebook paid advertising in order to promote a political campaign. The political campaign was based on a green theme: preserve an undeveloped region from tourist developers, mining companies and conventional development. The campaign took one and a half weeks to set up and three weeks to run. The campaign ran for the month preceding the elections, ending on election day. The messages and advertising on Facebook was viewed by over 28 million people through advertising, network messages and blog articles. The campaign had both a wide reach and deep content elements. This makes Facebook an excellent political and P/R campaign platform.
Campaign results:
| Number of impressions (people who viewed the advertising) over 3 weeks: | 28,481,010 |
| Number of people reached in target group (age 24 to 45) : | 4,943,040 |
| Number of click through (people who showed interest in the advertising) : | 8,347 |
| Number of fans registered on page (from paid advertising) : | 2,565 |
| Facebook members in the target group (total available) : | 11,000,000 |
| Percent reached by advertising campaign (impressions divided by total) : | 45% |
Campaign costs and times:
| Total setup (first two steps): | 1.5 weeks |
| Total campaign running time: | 3 weeks |
| Advertising cost: | $ 1,000.00 |
Effective Low Coast Campaigns: Useful Facebook and Social Media Techniques
Lion Buzz™ Facebook political campaign experience shows the effectiveness of using Facebook. For a relatively low cost, millions of people can be reached with advertising and free promotion. Facebook with additional tools (blogs, social media sites) is an excellent political cause campaign platform. Lion Buzz™ welcomes individuals and groups to use our service and see the same incredible results.
This campaign ran in one local market. In regional or country (state) campaigns, a few small parallel campaigns can be run at the same time. This gives us the ability to control local messages. It shows a better fit with local people. Campaigns can be run in different languages as well. We have experience in English and Hebrew and set up pages for French businesses. Local writers in other languages as well as writers from our group can be used to translate (or write original articles.)
Initial setup: Fan Page building and advertising campaign, writing blog articles, finding reference material
The first step in the Facebook campaign was to setup a Fan Page and an advertising campaign. This step takes a day to set-up. Every day for a week, we monitor operations of the page. Messages are posted at regular times and people registered to the page are encouraged to add their messages in support of a cause.
Blog articles are also written to explain relevant elements in the campaign. In the green election, platform points were used as a base for each article (connection to Al Gore’s views, gulf of Mexico oil spill, President Bill Clinton’s earth day interview, local vision with a global impact, electric vehicle promotion, ecotourism in contrast to traditional building, stop mining expansion, etc.) Blogs are used as the core material for the campaign. They are a quick way to document and explain both deep issues and reference material. Blog articles are also used to comment on reference news stories, in the case of the green issue the risk of mining and drilling vis-a-vie the oil spill in the gulf of Mexico.
Network building and advertising testing: reaching and recruiting as many supporters as possible
The second step in the Facebook campaign was to recruit fans for the page and test the advertising configuration. This step takes a week and is done both automatically and manually. Automatic programs build networks by sending invitations to thousands of potential interested fans. Manual invitations are posted on group pages and on influential networkers (high number of networked individuals.) Invitations are also sent out on Twitter, Linked-In, MySpace and other relevant social media networks (Orkut, Friendster, High5, etc.) If time and resources are available, networks can also be built in Twitter, MySpace or any other relevant site. Building networks in certain domains or for certain causes is not a full proof task. Some causes can catch the attention of people and grow quickly in a network. While others can be slow to spread and therefore not become as wide spread.
Promotion, advertising, linking: making buzz in all the networks
The promotion step is getting the word out to as many people in as many networks as possible. Using the networks built in step two and any other available means, stories are promoted. The stories are publicized on the main blog. Comments on popular blogs and news outlets are also used to spread the message. Blogs on large publications like The New York Times [here] and The London Times [here] can be a great way to promote a cause by commenting on high visibility articles. Political and cause blogs such as The Huffington Post [here] are also highly useful promotion locations.
Advertising campaign monitoring and adjustments are done to assure enough impression and no overspending in the first few days. Monitoring is crucial to adjust to the most effective target audience. Advertising outside Facebook using other means is also possible. Google advertising tools (AdWords) is effective in some markets. Google sales specialists can be consulted and short campaigns can be tested to see advertising effectiveness.