Coronavirus pandemic has grounded presidential campaigns, political operatives turns to the Internet

coronavirus has ground presidential campaigns of Joe Biden and Donald Trump to a near halt. For many years, political operatives have been perfecting ir use of internet’s vast array of social media platforms, websites and digital tools. y’ve identified effective strategies of digital communication with supporters and press.

Now that tritional in-person campaigning has been severely limited, I believe campaigns will lean heavily on that digital experience, focusing in three areas: social media, campaign-specific mobile apps and paid vertising on social media.

In general, political campaigns group voters into three categories:

key function of a campaign is to identify supporters and mobilize m to be workhorses for cause: give money, volunteer, promote candidate and – of course – vote. Campaigns also need to find and communicate to persuables, in hopes of getting ir backing. And campaigns need to identify those who oppose ir candidates, so y don’t waste time and money getting m to vote, which would only help or side.

re are natural slowdowns and lulls in campaign season, including when presumptive nominees are settled on, but before party conventions make nominations official – like now. During se periods, candidates reduce ir activities aimed at persuables, like running TV s. Inste, y reorganize ir campaigns to complete primary phase, and set up staffing and strategy for general election.

During this time, campaigns continue to engage with ir supporters in hopes of amassing a large war chest and an army of volunteers to take on opponent.Campaigns also use this lull to expand ir databases.That’s what now-reviled campaign data analysis firm Similarly, characterizing persuables and opponents can help campaigns target ir efforts efficiently. Trump campaign identified opponents to his campaign to

For next few months, here are three things to watch. As I explain in my book, since 1996 Democratic and Republican party machines have been honing ir strategies of communicating through digital media. y use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat alongside YouTube, email and websites in an integrated communications system.

Even though digital platforms allow easy two-way communication on blogs, forums and social media, social media accounts are workhorses to cultivate supporters and draw m to campaign’s website, which is home base. That’s where campaigns can; campaigns use a tactic I call “ or both

Only supporters – and perhaps curious reporters and opponents’ campaign staff – will downlo and seriously use app. Once downloed, its function is to make supporters feel like an insider by giving m news and “inside looks” at campaign, tools to donate money and opportunities to become local organizers. Trump’s app encourages users to “Become a Trump Team Leer” by registering voters and knocking on doors in ir community.

Most of se political apps are also designed to help grow campaigns’ voter contact lists. Not only do y collect user’s own contact information but y often seek to access phone’s entire contact list. se apps may also

All of this data gives campaigns more extensive pictures of who ir most ardent supporters are. That helps m target ors with similar characteristics, to bring m into campaign fold. On television, most s target persuables in an effort to influence how y think about candidates. That’s because television s do not allow for degree of fine-grained or micro-targeted vertising that digital media s provide.

TV s blanket whole regions, while social media s pinpoint-target specific people based on desirable traits that campaign is after – typically people who look like supporters. This is where all that data comes in. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Google allow vertisers to create “

Those people get targeted with s; if y on poll or buy a hat that’s vertised, campaign grows its support base while also improving its data about who is likely to respond positively to future s. Political watchers have even speculated that

With conventions now postponed to end of summer, Trump and Biden have more time to grow ir databases, ir financial war chests and ir supporter bases. Although it may seem an unprecedented campaign season that candidates were ill-equipped for, truth is that digital campaigning has been well-honed over six election seasons. y just need to do more online than y h planned for.