Mustang News: Covering Special Events and Optimizing Content across Platforms

Election years are always a big deal for our news team at Mustang News. The 2018 midterm election was no different. Our midterm election 2018 social media coverage was a three pronged campaign designed to educate the Cal Poly community on the election, inspire election participation and drive engagement to Mustang News social platforms. We used the hashtag “#MNVotes” to brand this campaign across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. We tailored and adjusted our content across each platform for maximize impact. The first prong was devoted to driving voter registration among students. The second prong was devoted to educating students about the election, primarily how measures, propositions and candidates would affect them. The third prong was live coverage of election night results.

• Voter Registration Prong

  • Facebook and Twitter

    • “Why I Vote” native video series: We asked students why they thought it was important to vote and created a countdown with the content. This helped students hear from other students why it is important to vote.

      • Why I Vote Countdown Video 1 (Twitter)

      • Why I vote Countdown Video 4 (Facebook)

    • How to Register to Vote Quiz: Registering to vote can be confusing in San Luis Obispo, so we created a quiz that produced directions on how to vote based where students lived.

      • How to Register Quiz Graphic

• Election Education Prong

  • Facebook

    • Mayoral Debate Facebook Live: We invited the candidates for mayor to debate topics important to students. Over social media, we asked our audience to submit questions they wanted to be answered. The broadcast was streamed on Facebook.

      • Crowdsource student questions to ask candidates

      • Facebook Live

    • Mayoral Candidate Info Videos: We created info videos introducing each candidate to promote the mayoral debate and educate our audience.

      • Candidate Video 1

      • Candidate Video 2

  • Twitter

    • Mayoral Debate live Tweeting: During the mayoral debate, we live Tweeted the highlights of each question. This empowered audience members unable to see the debate live to stay informed on important issues.

      • Mayoral Debate Live Tweeting Ex 1

      • Mayoral Debate Live Tweeting Ex 2

      • Mayoral Debate Live Tweeting Ex 3

      • Mayoral Debate Live Tweeting Ex 4

    • Proposition breakdowns: For each local and statewide proposition and measure, we explained what a “yes” and “no” vote would mean for students.

      • Prop Breakdown Ex 1

      • Prop Breakdown Ex 2

    • Twitter Polls: We used Twitter polls to give our audience members a venue to engage with the election.

      • "Did you register to vote?" Twitter Poll Example

  • Instagram

    • Mayoral Debate student reactions on Instagram Story: Our audience on Instagram is overwhelmingly students, so we asked students watching the debate what they thought about the candidates’ performances to share the student perspective.

      • Debate highlights on IG Story

    • Proposition breakdowns on Instagram Story: We created Instagram versions of each proposition breakdown graphic due to the fact that Instagram serves as the best channel for us to reach students. This was an effective way of educating students in an environment they feel comfortable in.

      • Prop Breakdown IG Story Ex 1

    • Mayoral Debate Instagram Post: We posted on our Instagram page in order to drive traffic to the debate recap article with the goal of educating students who could not watch live of the important issues discussed.

      • Candidate Instagram Post

• Live Election Night Coverage Prong

  • Facebook

    • Election Night Facebook Live: We streamed the election night broadcast coverage on our Facebook page to maximize our audience.

      • Facebook Live Broadcast

    • Results explained in a native album: We created an album on Facebook where we posted graphics explaining the results of each proposition as they came in. This kept information organized and accessible.

      • Results Explained album

  • Twitter

Live highlights from the Facebook Live: We cut portions of the live broadcast in real time to post on the Twitter page. This empowered us to take important or entertaining highlights of the broadcast and share them with audience members who could not watch live or do not follow us on Facebook (or even people who didn’t have the attention span to watch the more traditional-style broadcast)