One expert at CPAC says social media should be a facet of everything a campaign does. | AP Photos Facebook, Twitter — and CPAC

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — #Help. #CPAC2014.

Republicans believe they got crushed in the tech race in 2012, so they called Facebook and Twitter to advise them on how to reboot their efforts for 2014 and 2016.


At a Conservative Political Action Conference panel on Friday, representatives from the two social media giants joined GOP data and online specialists to help advise conservatives how to use data and social media to connect with voters on their phones and tablets.

( PHOTOS: CPAC 2014)

Social media should be a facet of everything a campaign does – its field program, fundraising and messaging – said Ned Ryun, who runs a company called Voter Gravity that creates and markets a software platform to reach and mobilize supporters.

Technology should be considered “a means to the end,” suggested Ryun, who moderated the panel, called “Social Media 3.0: The Next Revolution Will Start on Your Phone (Let’s Hope Conservatives Don’t Miss It).”

Here are some of the tips the pros offered during the panel:

#Authenticity

It may be unrealistic to expect busy politicians to personally write every Facebook post or tweet sent from their account. But campaigns should try to get their candidates to periodically author their own content and to make clear when it’s them, and not their staff, said Peter Greenberger, director of political advertising for Twitter.

Greenberger, who got his start in Democratic politics working for Bill Clinton, suggested marking personal tweets with the politician’s initials – something President Barack Obama has done with his “-bo” tags for selected tweets from @barackobama. “People can get press releases, they can read quotes in the paper, but they do want to hear from the actual person,” Greenberger said.

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Ryun added, “a personalized message from a campaign or candidate is the most powerful.”

#Exclusivity

Making supporters feel like they’re getting behind-the-scenes access can help foster a real connection. Greenberger said Mitt Romney’s campaign did this very well through the Twitter feed of his bodyman Garrett Jackson, who shared photos of Romney making peanut butter and honey sandwiches, watching football and playing with his grandchildren.

“It was a look behind the scenes that a lot of people wouldn’t get,” Greenberger said. “We all get to see the picture of the candidate on stage, but what were they doing right before that?”

#QuickWits

When a culturally relevant moment occurs, even if it’s not related to politics, it’s a chance to make new connections with humor, Greenberger said. He cited Bobby Jindal’s tweet during the Seattle Seahawks’s blowout Super Bowl win last month – “At least we turned the lights out in New Orleans last year to make it interesting. #kidding” – which was retweeted nearly 4,000 times.

But Hillary Clinton won the political social media Super Bowl when she tweeted “It’s so much more fun to watch FOX when it’s someone else being blitzed & sacked! #SuperBowl.” It was retweeted nearly 60,000 times.

#ContentIsKing

Especially on Facebook – where people may share longer blocks of text in their own timelines for friends who might never click over to the site of origin – it’s important that “the content is really high quality,” said Don Seymour, a former John Boehner aide now serving as Facebook’s U.S. politics and government outreach manager.

( POLITICO’s full coverage of CPAC)

“You can come up with 100 different ways to cut up an audience and messages, but if you don’t have people to write it or produce the graphic or whatever the case may be for the audience, it doesn’t really do a lot for you,” Seymour said.

#Engage

Social media is most effective when the audience feels it’s not just listening, but being heard, Greenberger and Seymour said. “Everyone is pleasantly surprised when Comcast responds” to complaints about its service, Greenberger said. Seymour cited the regular Facebook chats that Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) conducts on Fridays as an example of an effective social media interface.

#Trial&Error

Social media can help candidates or groups hone their messages before spending big money on major ad campaigns, said Brian Lyle, a digital strategist at the Koch-backed youth advocacy group Generation Opportunity. “For a hundred bucks, you can throw up some ads” and get “instant feedback” on whether they elicit the desired responses from target audiences, he said. “Facebook and Twitter are a great place for affordable message testing.”

The analytics that both platforms provide can help craft a more effective message, added Facebook’s Seymour. “You can get a sense of what your audience is responding to – what your audience is actually liking, retweeting, interacting with.”

#Spend

The amount of money spent on online political ads pales in comparison to television advertising, despite the migration of news and video consumers to the web, generally, and the mobile web, specifically. “People are spending more and more time online, but the ad dollars don’t necessarily match up to the amount of time people are spending online,” Greenberger said.

Online advertising can be extremely effective for both messaging and fundraising, said Seymour, explaining that a recent analysis showed that the Democratic Governors Association made back twice what it spent on online advertising.

Seymour and Greenberger suggested campaigns would be well served by investments in staff to maintain social media accounts, so followers’ responses don’t go unaddressed.