Southeast Michigan BERNers
Organizing for Bernie: A Guide to Social Media
Updated 9/6/15
Social media is a vital tool for grassroots groups seeking to support Bernie’s candidacy, in large part
because it’s a democratizing tool, one that is available to organizers at no or little cost—a tool that
counters the inordinate influence of the .001%.
Social media has been crucial to Bernie’s success so far, and will continue to be so. But it can also take
very large amounts of a new group’s time and energy. This guide is meant to help organizers choose
which of the many social media tools to focus on, and to use them effectively and efficiently.
Please email info@southeastmichiganforbernie.com with comments/suggestions, which are very much
welcomed.
General Guidelines
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Be clear that your group and your sites/pages are not part of the national campaign. Use the
standard FEC disclosure language.
o “Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.”
o Most groups choose to be pro-Bernie, not anti-Hillary, and to moderate those posts that are
anti-Hillary.
o It’s often a good idea to aim for a mix of local and national material.
o Demographic appeal. Generally, groups try to ensure that posts engage a wide range of
demographics over time—issues that especially concern women, veterans, African Americans,
college students, seniors...
Administering your social media
o It’s good to get specific commitments from your social media leaders
 e.g., “I will make at least one post every day and will read all guest posts, deleting any
that are inappropriate.”
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Facebook
I. Pages and Groups: which do you want?
A Facebook Page is the most important social media tool at your disposal. Some groups choose to have
only a Facebook page (and to forego even having a website). While you really need to have a Page,
which will allow the group Administrator and any designated Editors to make posts to the page that are
read by anyone interested in your group, you may also choose to have a Facebook Group to enable
within-group communications.
From the Facebook Help page (they explain it very well)
Pages
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Privacy: Page information and posts are public and generally available to everyone on
Facebook.
Audience: Anyone can like a Page to connect with it and get News Feed updates. There is no
limit to how many people can like a Page.
Communication: People who help manage a Page can publish posts as the Page. Page posts can
appear in the News Feeds of people who like the Page. Page owners can also create customized
apps for their Page and check Page Insights to track the Page's growth and activity.
Groups
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Privacy: In addition to a public setting, more privacy settings are available for groups. In secret
and closed groups, posts are only visible to group members.
Audience: You can adjust group privacy to require members to be approved or added by
admins. When a group reaches a certain size, some features are limited. The most useful groups
tend to be the ones you create with small groups of people you know.
Communication: In groups, members receive notifications by default when any member posts
in the group. Group members can participate in chats, upload photos to shared albums,
collaborate on group docs and invite members who are friends to group events.
A. The role of moderators, editors and admins is partly to engage with site visitors’
comments (“like” them when you can), and with posts by the other moderators and admin. A
good flow of new posts (minimum 1/day, preferably 3-5) will keep your site in people’s news
feeds. It can be a good idea for each person to commit to posting a certain number of times per
week.
II. Improving your page’s visibility
 “Like” other pages with an affinity to yours (e.g., Veterans for Bernie, Detroit for Bernie)
 Post new material frequently. Post a good variety—some videos, some photos of your group’s
activities, some articles about Bernie, and so on. Traffic on your page is good for your group—
and good for Bernie’s campaign.
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Organizing for Bernie: A Social Media Guide / 3
Hashtags placed at the end of Facebook posts help Bernie’s status (as viewed by the number
crunchers). As of 9/4/15, these are the most common (from most to least popular):
#Bernie2016
#FeelTheBern
#FuelTheBern
#BernieSanders
If you encounter a problem moderating/administrating, feel free to get in touch with me:
Michelle@SoutheastMichiganforBernie.com I’m the Facebook admin for my group, and all of us
running our Facebook page find the controls to be unnecessarily complicated. Happy to give some tips.
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III. Moderating
 Set your profanity filter (probably to Strong) (under “Settings”).
 Click on “Settings” and then “Page Moderations” to block posts containing words that are
offensive or very likely to be used in an offensive manner—you have to list the individual words
and have to separately list, say, “idiot” and “idiots.”
 There are lot of trolls out there, posting provocative stuff on political pages just to get a reaction.
It can be a real waste of time to engage with them. On the other hand, some people are
genuinely in desire of a conversation.
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Organizing for Bernie: A Social Media Guide / 4
Website
Having a website is the best way to have a fully customizable online presence. Websites are highly
visible--and inclusive of the many who don’t use Facebook.
A website’s main purpose is two fold. First, it explains your group’s mission and history/narrative
through text and photos: fill out your “About” page, and as time allows, include photos and brief
explanations of past and ongoing events. Second, and most important, the website attracts new people
to future events and helps provide a sense of energy and momentum for your group in particular, and
the campaign in general.
I. How and where to get a website (in increasing order of flexibility and of difficulty):
A. forberniesanders.com
These entirely free, ready-to-go websites are the result of work by Coders For Sanders (125+
high tech people donating time to the campaign). This site is a great way to quickly get and set
up a Bernie website. It’s easy to use, with reasonable customization and many more features in
the pipeline.
forberniesanders.com allows you to link your website easily to your Facebook page and other
social media as you develop them, too.
Your group can choose a subdomain that is entirely your group’s. For example:
PopcornLovers.forberniesanders.com.
Detroitnurses .forberniesanders.com.
B. Choose a platform. Build a site.
Weebly or SquareSpace
Weebly and SquareSpace are relatively easy to use (though requiring much more time than
forberniesanders.com). You create your own website using drag-and-drop menus, and they host the
site for your. The cost is free or very low. You will have many more customization options than on
foberniesanders.com
Weebly: http://www.weebly.com/
SquareSpace: http://www.squarespace.com/
There are other services like these, but these two are very popular and used by several Bernie groups.
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C. NationBuilder
If you’re building a large group (and aspire to hundreds of volunteers), you might consider using
NationBuilder. NationBuilder is used by small to medium-size campaigns (city councils, state reps) and
by large grassroots organizations.
NationBuilder does offer extensive customization features—the ability to have interactive maps
showing event locations, and to manage volunteer databases very effectively. It does have a monthly
fee, and you’ll need a member of your group who’s reasonably techically savvy to build and manage
the site. Here’s one example of a NationBuilder website: www.SoutheastMichiganBERNers.com
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Reddit
Reddit is really unlike other social media tools. It doesn’t look slick, and isn’t meant to have broad
general appeal. Instead, it is:
 A user-driven tool to connect with other Bernie Sanders volunteers, and
 One of the principal channels that the official campaign uses to communicate with campaign
volunteers and groups.
In fact, it’s been crucial to the campaign’s success. (There’s a good 9/3/15 International Business
Times article on Reddit’s importance to the campaign).
I. How Reddit works
As with Facebook or Twitter, only certain Reddit communities (called “subreddits”) are dedicated to
Bernie.
Reddit operates using upvotes and downvotes. Each user has the ability to approve or disprove of a
submission. If a post gets lots of upvotes, it will rise automatically to the front page of the subreddit it
was submitted to. Lots of downvotes? The post will get shunted to the bottom of the subreddit, and will
not be seen by many people.
The primary subreddits of interest to Michigan groups are:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident (the national subreddit for Bernie)

https://www.reddit.com/r/Michigan4Sanders (the Michigan subreddit for Bernie)
The former is a national community with over 100,000 members. That’s a lot of volunteer power! The
latter is Michigan-specific, and although much smaller (about 500 members) is full of group organizers
and very dedicated local volunteers.
II. How to participate in Reddit
Anyone can post to Reddit. When you post an event, you should post it to the Michigan subreddit,
https://www.reddit.com/r/Michigan4Sanders , thereby notifying a pool of dedicated Michigan
volunteers who are likely to spread news of your event beforehand.
If the event has good photos or video, consider posting them to
https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident. You’ll draw the wider attention of the entire Reddit
Bernie Sanders community to your group and what you’ve accomplished.
III. How to get help or advice on participating in Reddit
If you need help or advice, a member of Southeast Michigan BERNers is a moderator of the Michigan
subreddit. Please get in touch with him: Alexander Deatrick, adeatrick1@gmail.com
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Twitter
I. Introduction to Twitter
Having a Twitter feed is an important way to quickly update your supporters, both local and from
across the country, about what’s going on in your group. It also gives your group a chance to support
Bernie Sanders on social media, and to reach people who don’t use Facebook or bother with websites.
II. Best practices for Twitter
When you create a Twitter account in your group’s name, there are a few things to remember. The first
is that when it comes to Twitter, consistency is golden. Tweeting three times a day (everyday) is much
better than tweeting 10 times a day, but only on one day of the week! In other words: don’t tweet in
spurts.
The second thing to remember is that you should follow as many Bernie-related Twitter accounts as
possible! You’ll be building their support, and they’ll usually follow you back. It’s the fastest way to
build your following.
Finally, give multiple people access to your group’s Twitter account. Ask each one to retweet
something at least once a day. Don’t know what to tweet? You can always go to
twitter.com/BernieSanders and retweet one of Bernie’s tweets! Furthermore, always tweet photos
and updates about what’s going on in your group. If you maintain a healthy mix of general Bernie
content and group-specific content on your Twitter feed, your Twitter will grow consistently.
III. An example: a Twitter Account for a Bernie Group
https://twitter.com/SEMichBERNers
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Instagram & YouTube Channels
These are not high priorities. But if you have a volunteer who wants to set an Instagram account for
your group, they can post photos and it will help drive engagement with mobile Bernie supporters.
And if you’ve taken some great video of a group event, edit it to down to less than a few minutes, give
it a very search-friendly name (using keywords that will come up often in searches such as “Michigan,”
“Bernie Sanders” and “campaign.” Then post it to YouTube. Post a link on your Facebook page and
ask people to visit the video and comment/like it. Be sure to post a comment that includes your group’s
website. And post a link on the national Bernie reddit group.
All this promotes not only your group, enhancing its visibility, but helps Bernie Sanders’ statistics.
by Michelle Regalado Deatrick
Southeast Michigan BERNers
info@SoutheastMichiganBERNers
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