Promotional Video for a Politician
Running for council and need a better way to make an impact with the people who decide?
Getting your message and your policies across to a wider audience can feel like a massive task and being part of the community is a massive piece to that challenge, but more than ever, a successful campaign online, targeting your community, can get your message in front of influencers, voters and constituents.
Video can be a great way to make an impact with a limited budget and limited time. Let’s explore two options, two things you can start doing today that should complement what you’re doing already through your website and social media.
To help me out with this, I got in touch with a local running for council; Jim Dodrill of Collingwood Park, running for Ipswich Division 3. He is totally self-funded and was interested in how video could help him compete with better-funded opponents.
Promo Video
Firstly, we filmed a classic interview-style promo, outlining what he wanted to achieve. About a minute long, but enough to give anyone interested enough a clear idea of what he’s offering.
Jim Dodrill already had a Facebook Page dedicated to the campaign as well as a website, both with a growing following a month out of the election date.
Looking at Facebook alone, his page has 568 likes. The interview video we worked on became his ‘Featured Video’ on the page and released 10 days before the election date. At the time of the election, it had 541 views, 31 likes, 6 comments and 12 shares.
The view rate is great, especially if Jim Dodrill was able to specify which locations the video gets displayed in (suburbs located in Ipswich; division 3). I was much more excited by the number of likes and shares, which show a very clear amount of engagement.
Jim didn’t have a particular video strategy, I contacted him very late into the campaign, but one of the most basic ways to improve your reach, whether it’s on Facebook, YouTube or Twitter, is to ask. Ask people to like, share, re-tweet, to help share your message.
What happened next?
Jim asked for a second video, much more specific, focusing directly on landfill issues. Understandably, being such a specific issue, not being a featured video and being released 5 days before the election date, the reach and impact wasn’t as strong. 200 views with 6 likes. Jim also provided all the footage himself (so we could turn around a video quicker for Facebook).
I thought this was a really smart move from Jim; he’s been getting out in public, sharing the issues that are important to him, but now he has a way to encapsulate what he wants and what he can do, right there in video, with the ability to comment, respond and ultimately, gauge what the reactions are to the issues within the community.
Social Strategy
Taking some of the points from his interview video, we also created a handful of ‘snippets’ for platforms like Twitter and Instagram. Since we already had the content, footage and campaign points, it was really quick and easy to re-purpose the content so we could use it effectively and get more value from it.
Without much time, we were able to produce some great video content for some of the most popular platforms, get some great results and get Jim’s message out.