From cats and conversion - 5 Takeaways from the CDU party convention for your digital event coverage

Despite a growing demand for online participation, political party events and conferences are usually pretty old-fashioned. You are able to tune in via live stream for speeches from the party leadership and watch members debating proposals or current topics. But for someone who is not physically present, there are nearly no possibilities to get involved. If you want to stand out from the rest, this list is a good starting point in proving your digital capabilities for dialogue and reaching out to potential supporters. 

1) Build a digital volunteer task force and empower them!

Parties don’t usually have the money to employ a whole digital army for full real-time event coverage. Depending on how many channels your organization will use - you should consider using your most digital savvy people as volunteers and empowering them to act as a strong team. Build up the group a couple of months or weeks in advance according to the key strengths and skills you need. Creation of media content, such as videos or pictures is crucial as well as creative Tweet Geeks who know how to spin a message the right way. Most importantly: make sure to actually build a team! It’s not about competition or proving something. Go get a pizza the night before or at least make sure people start building trust and friendship amongst each other. When it gets a bit more hectic and stressful, you need people who can work under pressure and still have a great team spirit. 

2) Real-time means you can’t check everything

For sensible topics and your most important Facebook posts, you should still have your Digital Director checking the content for mistakes and tone of the messages. Otherwise - let it loose! Especially on Twitter, you won’t be able to fully engage in conversations on your hashtag AND show your followers exclusive insights and valuable information at your event at the same time. Real-time means now and not in 5 minutes. This can only be achieved if you have at least one person ready on Tweetdeck screening for comments and mentions and another down at the main stage for emotional visual coverage of the event.  

3) Start and end your event coverage with the right emotional trigger 

It is crucial that people start and end your party convention with the right emotions. First you need to define for yourself what kind of feeling you want to convey for the beginning and end of your event. Start with a funny video or maybe an emotional appeal to get the delegates and viewers in the right mood for the big decisions - but the most important thing is that you have content that is easy to share and fun to watch. End with an entertaining or emotional summary with the visual highlights of your convention and make the party feel a signal of strength, unity, and passion. 

A best-practice example from Ireland: Fine Gaels thrilling video to build excitement for their party convention. 

The beginning: It's not a secret that cats are the secret kings of the internet. Therefore we decided to integrate them in our kick-off video that announced our communication channels and greeted the delegates and interested people in the CDU party convention. People were supposed to start the hard two days with a smile on their faces. 

The end: Due to the refugee crisis the CDU had seen a lack of orientation and unity in its ranks. With zero budget we created a final video that had the aim to motivate the members and send a clear signal of hope and optimism. 

4) Have someone dedicated to fighting off haters and trolls

Sad but true. In times of growing hate there will certainly be trolls that will spam your timeline with insulting and completely off-topic comments. Therefore you need to have at least one person in your team dedicated to fight off haters and banning inappropriate content from your channels. Your party conference should send a signal of positive motivation to your supporters and not be a harbor for all the angry trolls in your country. Of course, you should be careful what you will censor - excessive use will create a backlash and the public and the media will criticize you for banning discussions that are fair but against the positions of your party. 

5) Be a first mover and create new ways of engaging content

Let’s be realistic. Your true enemies on digital platforms are not necessarily your political opponents - entertainment is king and is always the first attraction. If Justin Bieber breaks up with his girlfriend the same day, what do you think will dominate the social feeds? It will be hard to gain the attention of your supporters or your new target audience. So how do you gain new fans or sign ups? Find new and creative ways to interact with your community - we created a special Spotify playlist to which delegates as well as online users could contribute their favorite songs.

In conclusion: 
Just do something people would not necessarily expect from your party.