Team Social Media

Twitter accounts of all MPs:

That list as a group on Twitter:

Here's what some Lib Dems have said about using social media.

Using Twitter to win

Thanks Hillingdon!

*** TWITTER ETIQUETTE ***

Many Remainers, like myself, never really used twitter before the Referendum. I had an account but used it to see what the children were up to on school trips rather than trying to change the world. So suddenly 1000's of us are now using twitter to put an end to this fiasco, however there is no training or guidelines and so we are not maximising our impact. Below I have listed just 5 tips people should follow to ensure they are heard.

Twitter is a great way of getting people to see your views but a tweet has a short shelf life, on average it will only remain on a users screen for a few seconds before it disappears to be replaced by another one. The more followers a user has, the more people they follow or the more famous they are the less likely they are to see your tweet. If you follow these guidelines you will be more effective.

1) Don't just Like, Retweet as well.

If you see a tweet you like, the probability is your followers will also like it. So please feel free to hit the like button, but also retweet it. You don't need to add comment you can just forward. This means more people will see it. You may have exactly the same followers as the originator but as the shelf life is short they may not have seen it first time, but they may see your retweet.

2) Add a . when you are tweeting someone directly.

If you want to send a tweet directly to someone make sure you add "." ie .@BritsfortheEU to the start of the tweet. This means it will go directly to the person but will also appear in all your followers timeline. This means other people can help you get your tweet seen, see the next point.

3)

Reply don't just Retweet.

If you see a tweet from someone directly to a person, ie asking a celebrity to retweet a petition then do not Retweet, make sure you Reply. If you retweet only your followers may see it. However if you Reply the originator and the person they sent it to, plus your followers may see the tweet. So if 1000 people reply to the original tweet it will appear 1,001 times on the targets feed. This increases the chances of the person seeing it, by 1000% Once you have replied you can also Retweet it to ensure it appears on your timeline as well so your followers can look it up easily.

4)#tags

When you can use a #tag, look on line and see what #tag is being used to promote a cause / petition / event and add this # to your tweet. if everyone uses the same #tag then it may start to trend. When a #tag trends it means millions of twitter users may see it in their "Trends for you" column. A well selected #tag tweeted often enough may make people curious as to what it is about and therefore search it on twitter and discover the issue you are trying to promote. Make sure you spell the # correctly, including the use of Caps etc, if you get it slightly wrong you will not be helping to get it trending.

5) Followers.

To build up followers, follow active people, who will hopefully then follow you back. So go to a high follower account eg @Mike Galsworthy, see a popular tweet, bring up the list of people who've retweeted it, follow them. They'll hopefully follow you back and retweet things of interest. Send DMs to people to ask them to retweet if important (you can copy links to tweets)

6) Tasters.

If retweeting an article, maybe copy and paste a quote from the article to wet peoples appetite.

7) Work together.

Consider adding a # into your twitter name to allow people to identify what you stand for quickly, ie @JoeBlogs #RevokeA50 and joinhttps://www.facebook.com/groups/The48twitterstorm a place for remainers to share tweets and ideas.

The 48% - twitterstorm #StopBrexit #FBPE #WATON #RevokeA50


Bryn adds: Some random thoughts based on how I personally use Twitter.

Use hashtags to get your tweets viewed by people who click on them in other peoples' tweets. For example, use #PeoplesVote#PutItToThePeopleMarch.

You can contribute to discussions about issues raised on various television and radio programmes by using the hashtags used by those programmes. This can get certain ideas viewed by people with other perspectives. Use, for example, #BBCQT (although I never do personally: I boycott watching Question Time).

You can create private lists of Twitter users so that you look at the tweets of those users to keep up regularly with what they are tweeting. The advantage is that you need not miss anything from important accounts.

I always try to be accurate about facts and statistics, and to be able to quote the reliable sources. This helps to win arguments. I try to be precise about statements, so that they can be defended to the word if an argument starts.

I try to be polite but firm in arguments online. Defend the core point and do not get distracted by peripheral points. I try to avoid ad hominem statements (for example, being rude about a particular advocate of leaving). Somebody being rude or offensive usually means they have lost an argument, and it is acceptable to point this out to them. If somebody is very abusive, state that it shows they have lost the argument, then tell them that you are going to block them for being abusive, wait a moment for them to read that, then block them.

Using Facebook to win

Do you think we should be using Facebook more aggressively? Let’s eavesdrop on a conversation between some people who do. First some basics:


Let’s start with the rough and ready approach:

Remainer 1

As I said the other day the best approach is to find the local community group on f/b and post something tame, then let the leavers rant, prod them occasionally with facts to keep it going. This means the post stays at the top of the page and more people see it. Then you just harvest the remainers. So for example I posted Thursday about the march, jesus the abuse but... 23 people have liked and there are >18 comments. Most comments -ve but a few remainers sticking their head above the parapet. I will then look at the likes and have a look at their profiles and then send them a DM asking them to join a local group. So for Cars for example, set up a dummy profile, ask to join the "There's no place like Halesowen" group, leave it a week and then post, "I'm really concerned about if JLR will scale down production more or move to Slovakia. You will get a lot of “you silly xyz,” etc but people will like the post and some will agree with you. Then do a second post a few days later and correlate the likes and hates and you will start to map the active users and their views. You can then invite the people who are worried to a special group you have created. "Halesowen what happens if JLR leave". You can then use this group as a market research group. test out messaging get people to discuss their hot buttons and then use those to target posts in the full Halesowen group. And repeat.... It is what CA were effectively doing but a) legal and b) free and c) yes slightly devious but...

Remainer 2

I think this is a really useful suggestion. Obviously it is time and resource heavy so would need a hell of a lot of staffing but if someone is willing to take it on that would be a fabulous prong in the multi pronged attack. But who can coordinate this? The Facebook methodology was also well used by Cambridge Analytica on both elections. I understand that they were running out around 7,500 message variants a day. Big political campaigns test and refine from a bank of messages running well into six digits.

and moving on to Facebook advertising:

Remainer 2

You can run ab style testing where you give Facebook maybe 30 or so variants of an ad. What we typically do is start with a table of lead messages (the copy hook), sub headers, calls to action (you must have calls to action eg click to xyz, click if you xyz) and several images. You set the ad up so that every possible combination of words and images starts out in the test. Facebook will start to automatically show the most successful ads more and hide the less successful ads. This is where you need to be canny though. The less successful ads may still offer you powerful segmentation data and this is very much worth whacking into a spreadsheet for analysis. For example, you may notice that your less successful ad actually seemed to attract clicks exclusively from older men with higher educational attainment. On closer inspection you could find that group in a minority within those responding to the most successful ad. Don't throw that low performing ad away, but target it only at the segment that we've seen from the test phase will respond to that ad. This is how you do the targeting. Then run ten copies of that ad only within your narrow well defined target audience but now with small changes to wording if you want to further refine to get the most powerful ad you can to that audience.

Remainer 1

I wish we could have got everyone there yesterday organised into their local groups. It is only people on the ground who will know the local hot buttons, central "scare" messaging doesn't work, x local jobs lost, their favorite bakery, Local Mway turning into a lorry park etc that gets people interested.

Remainer 2

Yes that is very important indeed. Local advice should add to this process. But not replace it - ie they may say that certain scare tactics wouldn't work but you could run a threatening ad and find it performs well.

But yes they may say xyz is massive in rugby and you would never have known it otherwise.

One other thing on the subject of cars in rugby.

There's some very juicy data points on the car industry in some reports I downloaded. Typically, emotional messaging is key. But I'd still throw in a couple with data on eg "Car production down 18% in the UK this year. What can you do to safeguard your future?" - you may find something more number-led appeals to middle management level employees for example.

It's worth knowing that the text that goes above and below a Facebook ad is actually put into a special form in the FB ad generator so you don't need to include it in your image. That way you can create that matrix test format where different images are matched with different headlines and different calls to action. You're looking for the message and image magic combo. So I would be advising that you test more calls to action than just the one.

Testing and refining online is ongoing and constant. It's not like you test then launch. It's part of the campaign management process. The important thing is to develop some granularity about whom you will target with which piece, which should become apparent during testing. At a crude level, you should begin to spot differences between old and young, male and female. You then save the money by specifically targeting the ad that appealed to older males only at older males so you optimise the performance of that ad. But you then create four slight variations on that ad and continue to refine based on performance. But the important thing is to look closely at the many parameters you have access to in your digital targeting to define your target audience for each ad in increasingly tight delimiters. This is a micro dramatically scaled down version of what Cambridge Analytica were doing.