2024 Influencer Election Guide - Summer Update
2024 Influencer Election Guide - Summer Update
Now that we're 109 days out, we've refreshed the guide to include all the latest information.
📰Don’t miss our co-founder Ryan Davis feature in the New York Times, talking about how creators should be integrated into political strategies this election.
Back in January, we published a guide to working with creators during the 2024 election. Now that we're 109 days out, we've refreshed the guide to include all the latest information.
Over the past five years, we've witnessed the gradual adoption of influencer marketing as a viable strategy for political organizations. When we launched People First, much of our time was spent educating Democratic stakeholders on the importance of integrating influencers into their communications strategies. Now that we’re just over 100 days out, creators are on the campaign center stage.
Below are essential insights about creator marketing for political organizations as we speed toward Election Day.
Creators shouldn’t be treated the same as celebrity endorsements.
One of the key issues we see in political influencer marketing is replacing a classic “analog” celebrity with a TikTok creator. A campaign gets two or three big TikTok creators to make content or attend an event to publicize to their millions of fans. It's easy to rack up big impression numbers and lots of engagement on this content, but this functions exclusively in the short term. It’s not a long tail communications strategy making a real impact in the discourse.
Study after study continues to prove that people trust friends and family over campaigns and social media. Recent YouGuv survey, for example, finds friends and family at the top of the list of trusted election information sources over traditional outlets.
Additionally, based on our analysis of over 15 thousand creator posts, we have found “micro creators” (users with fewer than 20,000 followers) earned a 146% higher engagement rate than “macro creators” (users with more than 20,000 followers). This isn’t just any engagement. We have also found that micro creator’s followers are far more likely to share affinities and live in the same states as these creators.
This isn’t to say there is no place for macro creators. Top down communication is still important, but by collaborating with creators at all levels you can drive conversations from the top down and bottom up. Making a real impact in the discourse.
Update: Based on the research we provided previously, we are beginning to see organizations recognize the value in creators across the follower spectrum.
Congressional campaigns are now forming cohorts of micro creators to post multiple times throughout a campaign. Retargeting audiences with new messaging in order to optimize persuasion on the local level.
While "access" and events are still predominantly given to creators with larger followings, this approach overlooks the potential of creator content beyond organic posting. With GOTV right around the corner we want to ensure we activate real community members who can authentically engage with those around them to get to the polls.
It’s about more than organic reach!
Organic reach is a valuable part of a creator collaboration, but it’s not the only part. Get more impact from creator partnerships through these two tactics:
Paid Whitelisting: Using tools like the Meta Paid Partnership tag, content can be boosted directly from creators profiles. This is the most authentic way to take content from a suburban mom in Wisconsin and guarantee viewership by every other suburban Wisconsin mom online. People First even works with creators to go through the Meta political authorization process, meaning even political campaigns can take advantage of this powerful strategy.
Content Repurposing: There is huge value in repurposing creator content on your campaign’s social channels or through other paid media like OLV. By including videos, images, and quotes from real community members in your marketing strategy you further the authenticity of the message. Make sure you’re securing the rights to use the content outside of the organic publishing for maximum benefit.
Update: There are more than just two options! Campaigns are looking beyond organic reach and embracing user-generated content on social media. This is a quick way to generate snappy, to the point video content at an even greater scale, removing the limitations of organic posting.
In addition to digital avenues, we're continuing to encourage creative approaches to repurposing such as streaming, podcasts, mailers, and door knockers. Why not have your audiences feel seen across the entirety of your marketing channels.
Don’t Over Direct Creators
The best creator content performs well because it doesn’t feel like marketing. Trust that the creators you're working with understand how best to reach their audiences and give them the tools to do that successfully. Through partnering with thousands of creators over the years, we’ve learned that it’s important to guide creators with information on key messages and calls-to-action, but allow them space to exercise their creativity and keep the content authentic.
Update: Creators are largely still being over-directed, given messaging or talking points that sound too scripted. We recently wrote about emerging research showing a "Creativity Suppression Cost," with overly directed content performing poorly across the board. We encourage you to give creators space to make their content personal; you'll be rewarded with stronger results.
Start Planning Your GOTV
You'll want plenty of GOTV content going live throughout October and election week. Start planning now to identify the key voter targets you'll want creators to represent and consider who could fill those roles. Stay tuned as our next newsletter will offer unique strategies to activate creators to get out the vote.
2024 - 100 Days Out 🚀
2024 is the breakout year for creators in politics. There’s still time to integrate creators into your campaign to make an impact. For more great examples of activating creators in politics, check out our case studies.