5. What We’ll Learn Today
1. Tips on how make your election coverage accurate
2. How to make sure your coverage is accessible
3. How to leverage your community and incorporate user-generated content
into your coverage
4. How you can fuel engagement that will continue after the election is over
6. 70% of Americans believe that press
reporting can “prevent leaders from
doing things that shouldn’t be done.”
Source: Open Mind
8. Make Your
Coverage Accurate
Tip #1: Know what to cover and when
● Use analytics from past election coverage to
inform content planning
● You may find that your audience pays closer
attention to news coverage on specific days and
topics, like debates, poll results, and the night
before an election
9. Make Your
Coverage Accurate
Tip #2: Include relevant resources
● Pin relevant articles, links, resources, or voting
information to the top of your live coverage
using the pin feature in Engage
● Display relevant content and articles alongside
your live coverage to encourage recirculation
10. Make Your
Coverage Accurate
Tip #3: Diversify your content
Think about including a variety of content in your
coverage, such as:
● Social posts from Twitter, Instagram,
Facebook, and YouTube
● Third-party embeds
● Audio/video files
● Articles
● GIFs
● PDF files
12. Digital media consumption is on the rise,
with weekly internet television viewing
hours in Canada increasing from 5.8 hours
in 2015 to 6.4 hours in 2016.
Source: Statista
13. Make Your
Coverage Accessible
Tip #1: Two-way conversations with
your audience
● Host Q&A chats with local MPs or representatives,
Party Leaders, or local/national candidates.
● Initiate an open forum for people to discuss and
debate election topics.
● Host a Q&A with a political editor/content expert.
They can field readers’ questions, keeping your
audience involved.
14. Make Your Coverage
Accessible
Tip #2: Use interactive content
● Post polls in your live blog to encourage
audience interaction and survey their opinions
on topics of interest.
● Publish quizzes to your live stream during
breaks in commentary to keep your readers’
interest. Topics could include trivia on
candidates or issues.
15. Make Your Coverage
Accessible
Tip #3: Organize your content
● Use content icons to clearly differentiate and
flag types of posts within your blog.
● Leverage Engage’s text formatting features to
differentiate content from opinions in your
live engagement initiatives.
● Make sure that your content is scannable so
that your readers can easily locate and
engage with the topics that are most
important to them.
18. 62% of Americans and 40%
of Europeans get their news
via social media platforms.
Source: Journalism.org
19. Leverage Your
Community
Tip #1: Leverage UGC
● Use social walls to run a Social Media contest
(“I Voted” posts, political rallies, election photo
contest)
● Incorporate UGC (Twitter reactions, Instagram
photos, etc.) into your live coverage.
● Track and automate relevant hashtags on
social into your existing coverage.
20. Leverage Your
Community
Tip #2: Ask for submissions and input
● Take advantage of citizen journalism by
encouraging users to upload content into your
live blogs.
● Encourage your journalists in the field to cover
political/election stories on social.
● Host a blog with live Q&A elements: ask users to
upload their own content or ask questions in
addition to your coverage.
22. ● Use storytelling to bookend the election overall
● Write a comparative piece on how this elected
leader differs or relates to past leaders
● Partner with local MPs or key election
influencers to examine or follow up on a key
story/person from the election
Keep Up the Engagement
Post-Election
Tip #1: Use long-form content
23. ● Use a live blog to host all post-election resources
(relevant articles, links, videos, photos, etc.)
● Summarize key photos from an election using a
pinboard
● Use Engage as a “post-election promise tracker” to
document and follow up on all of the promises
made by an elected leader
Keep Up the Engagement
Post-Election
Tip #2: Become a resource hub for your audience
24. 1. Make your election coverage accurate
2. Make sure your coverage is accessible
3. Leverage your community and incorporate user-generated content into your
coverage
4. Fuel engagement that will continue after the election is over
What We Learned...