We all hear about how social media has impacted our lives. Social media allows a place to find new friends, connect with old ones, and share snippets of our personal and professional lives. But in the past few years, it has become so much more than that.

Now, businesses and freelancers can connect with customers, find employees, and market themselves digitally. As political discourse becomes the norm on these platforms, politicians are using social media to promote their campaigns and the causes they care about. This uptick in social media usage provides an opportunity for developing engaging political advertising on social media to reach voters in new ways.

Political Advertising on Social Media

Political ads aren’t allowed on all social media platforms, so if you decide to do explicitly political advertisements, places like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are your best bets. However, these platforms are becoming increasingly more strict with the type of content they allow, so while your ad may be accepted by YouTube, it might not be accepted by Facebook. 

Regardless, there are other ways to build your political branding on social media that don’t involve traditional advertising. Developing a social media presence and reaching your voter base through Instagram is so much more than just a couple advertisements. This is why we highly recommend making plenty of space for social media marketing in your ad plan and ad budget.

While advertising and building your presence on social media is important, be mindful of the rules and policies on certain social media platforms. Like we mentioned in our article, “Top Tips for Developing Your LinkedIn Profile”, LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft Corporation. They strictly do not allow political ads on their platform. 

Therefore, the same political branding and advertisements you place on YouTube and Facebook will not be allowed should you try to place them on LinkedIn. However, social networks are not just useful for advertising, they are useful primarily for building your online presence, your political branding, and your following.

When developing your social media political campaign strategy, think of all of the feedback, advisors, and reviewers you will need when making your online political marketing collateral. The process of making social media ads for businesses and medical practices already involves restrictions now that social media platforms are regulating their content heavily. 

Therefore, your ad plan won’t just need to account for a graphic designer, a social media manager, and a content writer. You’ll also need advisors or PR specialists who know enough about the laws and regulations surrounding campaigning both online and offline. Our Reach Voters team encompasses all of these steps in the social media ads process. We’re a one-stop shop for developing your campaign!

Just because you can’t push political ads doesn’t mean LinkedIn and other “no political ads” platforms are useless for aspiring politicians and activists. Use your LinkedIn profile to further build your online presence and get your name out there with professionals, organizations, firms, and other politicians who can give you references or political work opportunities. 

There are plenty of politicians who use LinkedIn to build their network, so network with those same politicians! You can find politicians from all sides of the aisle on this platform, and working with them can expand your horizons. You can also use LinkedIn for political campaigns in order to hire interns, advisors, and lobbyists.

Be Mindful

However important reaching voters on Twitter and Instagram is, don’t focus all of your energy and campaigning into one online platform. Social media is still brand new in the grand scheme of politics. Targeting specific audiences is the key to advertising, but be mindful of the vast array of people from different generations who are on platforms (or not on any platforms at all). 

If your target voter base includes seniors rather than young adults, it might not be the best idea to place all of your campaign efforts into social media. At Reach Voters, we’ve brought professionals from various walks of life together to create an integrated in-house team who have decades of experience. 

We know what you need. Reach Voters can provide you with optimal strategy initiatives that can help you reach your voters where it matters most: on their mobile devices, as well as their personal computers.