Thanks for signing up! This is the debut of my political social newsletter. Each month I’ll share some of what I think is new and exciting in the political social media world from what others are writing, new tools I’m playing with, the newest bloopers we can learn from and more. Additionally, I’m going to try to answer your questions...email me at beth@beckerdigitalstrategies.com and every month I’ll pick one or two questions to answer in the newsletter.

Feel free to forward this to your friends and ask them to sign up! And let me know what you think or want to know more about via email or Twitter!

Beth

For now I’m focusing on what it has the potential to be. Could it be that third viable social network that isn’t just a Facebook or Twitter wanna be? Will there be unique ways to engage people in your cause? The possibilities are endless.

The functionality still leaves a lot to be desired, for example there’s no way to “like” a post as a way to let someone know you saw it, read it or even actually like it. There’s no way to easily share someone else’s post with your audience. You can however upload gifs that are fully functional.

Social Media Users are More Charitable Than You Might Think - this article had me thinking a lot about how we use social media to build the stronger relationships with people that in turn allows them to feel invested in what we do and thus contribute financially

How social media is reshaping news News plays an important role for both our content creation and driving our messaging, this report from Pew contains some useful nuggets of information we should be aware of

Minnesota campaign board gives social media advice More and more we are seeing advice from official Campaign related enforcement agencies regarding how social media can and can’t be used...the latest is from Minnesota

How to Make Social Commerce More Appealing Some interesting numbers on why people aren’t really buying through social. The standout to me was something that reflects what I’ve been saying about social content in general...if someone doesn’t want to be seen buying it, they won’t do so socially

How Twitter's 'Buy' button will shake up social media and more on social commerce, this time with Twitter dipping into the scene but again I’ll add the reminder that regardless of what you are asking people to buy if they don’t want to be seen buying it publicly they won’t

The real story behind Facebook likes nothing new here other than yet another link we can point to when explaining to the people we report to why the number of likes/follows is meaningless when we can actually report meaningful numbers like engagement and conversion to social action

FacebookThe biggest change on Facebook this month was that they’ve added a “Your Pages” module to your timeline if you are admin on any Facebook page. This is what it looks like:

The other big change this month was the algorithm tweak which emphasized the timeliness of posts. This tweak has resulted in your newsfeed showing you posts from friends/pages that are about topics that are currently trending on Facebook. Something to think about as you fill in your planned content with spontaneous content based on the current news cycle.

Twitter Twitter cards are here! Twitter cards have long been available to use in Twitter advertising but now you don’t even have to run an ad to use them. This post contains everything you need to know about using them and how to create them. I’ve found them to be most useful in two ways: video and email grab direct from Twitter. How are you using them?

Rootscamp 2014 By far one of my favorite political gatherings of the year. This unconference put on by New Organizing Institute is always a source of inspiration, a great place to meet people, reconnect with old friends and learn.

Netroots Nation 2015 To be held next year close to home in Phoenix, Arizona this is a don’t miss conference

epolitics My go to blog for all things digital and political (disclosure: I often blog here)

AllFacebook My go to for info on all things Facebook

Connectivity A relatively new blog that focuses on the cross section of digital and advocacy

AllTwitter All Twitter, all the time

What happened was Colin had snagged the image from the original site it was hosted on and resized it for his blog template. Sadly said blog image was then snagged by Facebook as the thumbnail for the link to his blog post and the result led to all kinds of snark from his friends.

Lesson to be learned: Be mindful of image sizes when you post on your website if you want people to link back to your site. The optimal image size for Facebook newsfeed is 504 pixels by 504 pixes (though in truth that number does occasionally change!).