OneFeather Input On How To Leverage Social Media To Increase Voter Participation
Katey Shaw-Lewis
There are some proven social media engagement that have worked across voting events here at OneFeather - we'd like to share with you a few of these best practices.
- Posting all notices across all channels
- Posting results across all channels
- Commenting on, and sharing all posts on all channels
We offer comprehensive, end-to-end voting management services that can be tailored to elections, referendums and ratifications. OneFeather provides various services including secure and confidential electronic voting. During a vote, it is important to leverage social media presence for greater member engagement and voter participation. We came up with the following proven ways that some Nations have been using for an effective online engagement and voter success.
- Cross promoting content between OneFeather and the Nation that has an active voting event
- Creating engaging content that target your members such as informational videos, notices, memes, and newsletters.
- Having a realistic call to action which builds trust - be thoughtful and honest. Speak from a personal point of view.
- Engage around the benefits of a successful voting event...speak to the importance of the Nation building and participation in decision making.
- Having thought leaders from your community that can be tasked to share created content online to increase engagement and circulation depth.
- If necessary, use paid advertising to capture your members attention and increase awareness of your voting event.
- Lastly, be available to help your members who may have questions or concerns with the ongoing voting event. This eliminates any doubts and reinforces member willingness to participate.
With the help of social media, community members can become agents of persuasion and leverage their personal network for whatever values, issue positions, or ideological stances that they cherish. Also, digital technology enriches conversation and engagement. Social media has people exposed to more views than in the past, which enriches community dialogues and allows people to get the kind of information that helps them evaluate candidates and policy ideas.
The following are benefits of using social media during a voting event:
- Increases voter participation
- Saves money and resources that could be used to have fresh elections by meeting the threshold during the first round of elections
- Information sharing with the community members
- The snowball effect leading to great voter turnout now and into the future.
- Increases community engage and awareness.
By enabling people to access information and social networks on the go, they can speed up the news cycle and information sharing leading to great voter participation.
Learn more about how OneFeather can help you with your next electronic voting event
Learn more about OneFeather Indigenous Elections and Voting services
https://www.onefeather.ca/nation-services/election-and-voting-services