How To Win Votes & Influence People Using Social Media Vol 1

*Originally written for Marketing Magazine's January Publication. The spread can be found here.

[update] Read how the conversation shifted on social media leading upto the elections in Vol 2 here.

During Social Media week 2013, Prime Minister Najib Razak declared that GE’13 would be Malaysia’s first “social media” election - and he was right. Despite his realisation of the potential of social media the government coalition, Barisan Nasional (BN), lost 7 seats that election along with the popular vote; partly because of the oppositions strong use of it.

In the past 4 years, social media has become the primary operating system we use to organise our lives. Today, 100% of Malaysian netizens use social media and mobile social media has rocketed from 70% in 2013 to 91% in 2017 (We Are Social). So it should be no surprise that all political parties have realised that social media is a key tool in reaching their audience.

Since the last election the number of political parties with social media presence has more than doubled. These vast improvements come on the heels of government initiatives to improve the public sectors fluency in how to use social media. In 2016 the Malaysian Digital Innovation Center was set up and launched during Social Media Week to serve as a “platform for government employees to learn and develop skills for new media technologies”. Other foreign non-profit entities, like the US-based National Endowment for Democracy, have also come to help train political candidates on social media, across party lines, in a global-effort to strengthen democracy (The Star).

As we inevitably approach Malaysia’s 14th general election, it’s interesting to note the similar opportunities and challenges that social media presents to the public sector. After a thorough review, some trends emerge that all marketers should take note and use in their business.

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Listen To Your Audience

In ‘How To Win Friends And Influence People’ Dale Carnegie said “talk to someone about themselves and they’ll listen for hours” - but in order to talk about them you have to know them. What do they like? What do they love? What makes them angry? For example, did you know Malaysian's ‘love’ political posts?

After such a close GE13, political parties experienced the influence that social media had on their voters and began to a ‘listen-first’ strategy to more effectively earn engagement. Many began to employ big data companies, even create them, to better understand and target their audience segments.

“Never preach or campaign to converted people...we should only campaign to persuadable swing voters”

Last year, PKR Vice-President Rafizi Ramli started Invoke, a big data company working with 50 candidates to help identify their prime segments. In an interview with The Malay Mail, Rafizi shares some marketing wisdom: “You should never preach or campaign to converted people...we should only campaign to persuadable swing voters” (The Malay Mail). Rafizi’s goal is identify those people whom he has the most potential to convert into a vote come election day.

Other companies that have publicly stated they’re working with Malaysian political parties or candidates include a Singaporean company AutoPolitical and global social media monitoring company Meltwater. There are many other social media strategy and consulting groups who have given their expertise over the last four years to help bolster each parties strategy in different ways.

Identify Your Segments

While many parties are employing data companies to listen, each is executing in different ways. BN parties have focused on building segmented fan bases, while opposition parties have been focused on increasing engagement.

The Democratic Action Party has employed a top-down approach, leveraging targeting capabilities from their centralised page, posting content a staggering 65X per week! According to Socialbakers a vast majority of DAP posts are promoted, which has earned them 43 of the top 50 most engaging political posts on Facebook.

Meanwhile, UMNO has taken a bottom-up approach, creating multiple Facebook pages that cater to each of their segments at a grassroots level. As a testament to to their hard work, Malaysians have interacted with political party posts about 5 million times in 2017.

By segmenting their voters, political parties are able to use state-centric venacular and discuss issues that directly affect their audience. Politweet, a non-partisan social media research and analytics firm, has done extensive research on the relationships between language, location and political preference, which points to how each party could effectively market themselves in different vernacular. (Politweet)

Create 1:1 Conversations

Improved 4G networks and 6 million more mobile social users since GE13 have made prioritising a mobile strategy imperative for modern political parties in Malaysia. As a result, almost all major political parties assert that WhatsApp is one of their main social media channels.

Amanah for example, relies heavily on WhatsApp groups, created by leaders in the local surau, parent-teachers’ associations, and other neighbourhood groups to communicate (Source: The Star). While Amanah employs a grassroots strategy, former Prime Minister, Tun Mahathir, created memes designed to be shared in messaging apps (The Malaysian Insight).

Both Amanah and Tun Mahathir have also effectively used Facebook Live to facilitate open and personal conversations at scale. In his web series #HangpaTanyaCheDetJawab, Tun M shares his thoughts in very open interviews leveraging the format to create an experience that feels like you are in the room with him (Malaysian Digest).

Messaging apps aren’t just a strategy to communicate with constituents, they are also a way for leaders to better organise. PM Najib opened his Telegram acocunt publically in September to hear from the rakyat, but it’s likely that politicians have been using the highly secure messaging app for internal communication as well (New Straits Times). In a more orchestrated effort, Singapore public officials have started using Workplace, by Facebook, to more effectively communicate between departments. (Straits Times).

Build & Promote Strong Personal Brands

Partly because of Malaysia’s multi-party system, Malaysia’s political party landscape on social media is incredibly fragmented and decentralised. As a result, politicians personal pages are the primary podium for parties to communicate with their constituents, wielding as much or more influence than some of the top brands and celebrities in Malaysia. Leading this is UMNO Youth & Sport Minister, Khairy Jamaluddin, who is the most followed Malaysian on Twitter, according to Politweet.

Remember organic reach?...politicians still get it. In a single tweet, Khairy can reach 35% of Malaysian twitter users. In single Facebook Post, Rafizi claims to reach about 500,000 Malaysians. This is all without spending one single sen.

Building a strong personal brand in politics is also a way to signal to voters who’s in charge. This has been the primary struggle of the opposition coalition, who has been able to deliver a leader who is clear to the people of Malaysia. Using social listening tool, digimind, we can see the difference in leadership between parties. Tan Kok Wai, the leader of DAP, is only mentioned 2% as often as his party, while former Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, is mentioned 5X more than his newly formed PPBM party. **Since writing this, Mahathir has been named the leader of the opposition, leading one to ponder as to whether a similar SOV and influence analysis was done.

But it’s not just the big names like Khairy, Mahathir and Najib who are effective at leveraging their personal brand on social media. Oliver Woods, Director of Red2 Digital in Vietnam and former Director of Social Media at Leo Burnett Malaysia, also notes that new Warisan Party lead, Shafie Apdal and UMNO Minister & senior leader Abdul Rahman Dahlan, have been very very successful in using Twitter, Facebook and other digital channels to communicate their agendas and steer the online debate in a positive direction.

In effect, these politicians are proving that the sum of their political parts are greater than the whole of their political party brand.

Fighting Misinformation

Just as brands must fight online trolls, the public sector must fight similar agents of chaos. Not exclusive to the United States, #FakeNews also poses a challenge for both politicians and the electorate in Malaysia as well. This was the theme for Social Media Week 2017, where PM Najib Razak’s called on Malaysian's to “take fake news seriously” and to “not believe every post and tweet.” (Free Malaysia Today)

To fight fake news, the government launched Sebenarnya.my, an “information verification forum” that seeks to combat the spread of false information. Quite often, misinformation is shared through private messaging apps, which makes it even harder to track and call out. Recently, a fake article entitled “Starbucks Disahkan Haram Oleh JAKIM?” went viral on WhatsApp in September (The Sun Daily). **Since writing this, BN launched its own portal, www.therakyat.com, to combat fake news against the party.

There are also those who claim that the #FakeNews debate is used to delegitimize real information being shared on real social media accounts. “It’s a campaign of misinformation” says Amanah communications director Khalid Samad. In a country where political partisanship is heavily based on race and religion, misinformation only serves to further polarise opinion and deter national discussion about actual policy.

Engaging The Next Generation

Just as Facebook struggles with teen apathy on their platform, political parties are faced with it in their electorate. According to Politweet “interest in political parties has dropped to its lowest point in recent years – 33.68% of potential voters.”

This decline is the steepest among young voters. Between October 2016 and January 2017, BN lost 48% of this audience while the Opposition lost 40%. **Caveat: Different sources claim Facebook deleted between “10’s of thousands” upwards to 5.8M fake profiles around this time, which could impact this.

Understanding this threat, Najib recently told UMNO Youth to be “more aggressive in reaching new voters” (The Malay Mail). Also recognising apathy from young voters, Mahathir and his wife did the Mannequin Challenge, which went viral across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (Vulcan Post).

But compared to global trends, Malaysia really hasn’t had a problem getting people to the polls. Participation spiked to 84.8% for the 2013 elections up from 76% in 2008, compared to the global average of 65% in 2014 (Quartz).

Don't Stop Running

Despite theses challenges, Malaysian politicians at all levels have proven that their social media savvy has improved greatly since 2013. From being a powerful tool to get input on Budget 2018, to creating personalised viral memes and sharing live content, there is a something every brand can learn from for their social media strategy.

Back at Social Media Week 2013, Najib aptly described social media like “running on a treadmill that never stops” (The Star) - a sentiment most brands and marketers can empathise with.

“Social media is like running on a treadmill that never stops.”

If GE13 was Malaysia’s first true social media election, characterised by the oppositions ability to be a first-mover in leveraging the platform, then GE14 looks to be more like an arms race between parties and politicians who are using sophisticated technologies and strategies in an attempt to influence votes. Let’s see if it influences yours.

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