Personal Branding for Political Candidates (An Actionable Guide)
If you’re reading this, you probably feel overwhelmed at the thought of having to build a personal brand as a political candidate. I get it!
The good news is it’s not nearly as hard as you think to appear like you’re everywhere digitally.
You don’t need to build yourself into something you’re not. You just need to amplify who you already are.
And this guide gives you everything you need to do that.
What characteristics do you want people to associate you with?
Throughout this article, I want you to think of yourself as a business. You are selling your product (your ideologies, solutions, and personality), and your potential voters are your customer.
So the first question you need to answer is: What characteristics do I want people to associate me with?
Before I help you answer that question, I want to explain the psychology behind why this is important.
Consider these 2 psychological factors before you decide
The goal of your digital presence as a political candidate is to make 2 psychological factors work in your favor: the mere exposure effect and the halo effect.
The mere exposure effect is the idea that the more someone is exposed to a thing, idea, or person, the more familiar they’ll feel, which leads to a stronger affinity.
It’s the principle that guides every ad campaign and why you’ll see the same commercial multiple times a day if you watch a channel long enough.
For your digital presence, you capitalize on this effect by posting content on social media as frequently as you can without burning out.
The more people see you in your feed, the stronger their feelings toward you…but be careful. This applies to negative feelings too.
You just have to accept you can’t be everyone’s cup of tea if you want to succeed on social media.
For those that do like your social media, that brings the halo effect in play. This is how it works.
If someone assigns one positive characteristic to you, they’re more likely to assume you possess more positive characteristics.
At the most base level, advertisers exploit this principle when they use sex to sell products.
In this context, that positive characteristic people assign to you is that they like your social media content.
The halo effect really comes in handy when people in your district who have seen your social media content regularly meet you in person.
It almost creates the same feeling in people’s brains as meeting someone famous.
Choosing your core characteristics
Your goal is to choose the 3 things about you that you think, with enough exposure, will make people like you enough to vote for you.
These 3 things have to be authentically you. That’s the only way this system works. With that being said, authenticity is a dicey thing.
Of course you want to be genuine. But sharing EVERYTHING about yourself online bites you in the butt sooner or later.
Now you’re probably trying to think of characteristics right now and freezing. That’s totally normal! It’s hard to define ourselves out loud like this.
This exercise will help you break through that block in 30 minutes max.
Step 1: Get a massive list of character traits into a Google Doc
I use this one from TeacherVision, but you can use any one you find in a search. All that matters is the list is as big as you can find.
Note: If you use the one I linked, don’t add the physical traits section. It’s irrelevant to the exercise.
Step 2: Go through the entire list of traits and bold the ones that apply to you
It’s very important that you give each trait as little thought as possible.
If it’s not an immediate yes, it’s a no. You’re going to have way more traits that 3 bolded, but we address that in the next step.
Step 3: Whittle your list of bolded character traits down to 3
Now is where you put thought into your decisions.
These need to be the 3 traits that you think will move the needle most in voter’s minds. This informs the tone of your content, which is the foundation of every piece of content you create.
Once you’ve got your core character traits, now you need to figure out who you want to reach.
Who are you speaking to?
The mistake so many political candidates make with positioning themselves is they try to be everything to everybody.
Yes, you obviously need to build a broad coalition to win. And in some districts, that can mean trying to appeal to independents and moderate republicans in a general election.
But you can’t be everything to progressives and everything to moderates. One of those groups is going to dislike some of your ideas.
In traditional marketing, you create an Ideal Customer/Client Persona, which is a representation of a targeted segment of buyers for a given product.
For political marketing, you create an Ideal Voter Persona, which represents the segment of the Democratic party that you see as your base.
There are 2 core components of the IVP.
Understanding demographics and psychographics
Demographics are “hard” characteristics determined by quantitative data. So this would be the typical data collected by the Census, for example.
Psychographics are “soft” characteristics determined by qualitative data. Polling surveys collect psychographics by asking potential voters how they think and feel on issues.
An ideal voter persona is just a collection of demographics and psychographics that represent a certain segment of voter.
We’re going to build an IVP template to use so you can make a persona for each voter segment you are trying to target.
Step 1: Build your ‘questionnaire’
Here’s the questionnaire I use when I build Ideal Voter Personas with clients.
Demographic profile
Age range and generation (Gen Z, Millennial, Gen X, Boomer)
Gender identity
Race/ethnicity
Education level
Income bracket
Employment status/occupation
Geographic location (urban/suburban/rural)
Housing status (own/rent)
Marital status and household composition
Civic Engagement:
Voting history frequency (always/sometimes/rarely/never)
Party registration/affiliation
Primary information sources for news/politics
Social media platform usage
Community organization involvement
Psychographic Profile
Values & Priorities:
Top 3-5 political issues they care most about
What motivates them to vote (or not vote)
How they define "success" for their family/community
What they're most worried about for the future
Their view of government's role in solving problems
Media Consumption:
Where they get political information
What time of day they consume news/social media
Preferred content format (video, text, podcasts)
Trust level in different media sources
Social media behavior (lurker vs. sharer vs. commenter)
Economic Mindset:
How they view their current financial situation
Biggest economic concerns/challenges
Attitude toward corporations vs. small business
Views on government spending/taxes
Economic optimism vs. pessimism
Communication Style:
Preferred tone (direct vs. nuanced, emotional vs. factual)
What types of messengers they trust
How they prefer to receive political information
What language/terminology resonates vs. turns them off
Decision-Making Factors:
What would motivate them to vote for your candidate
What would definitely turn them off
How much they research candidates vs. vote on instinct
Influence of family/friends/community on their voting
Step 2: Fill it out from the perspective of the ideal voter you have in mind
For the demographic data, you can use Census data for your district to help you create answers that are reflective of actual voters in your district. CensusReporter.org gives great district snapshots based on 2020 census data.
For the psychographic profile, get creative. Visualize people in your district that you’ve actually spoken to and picture how they would answer.
For example, say working moms are part of your ideal base. Visualize yourself in the shoes of that working mom as you fill out this psychographic profile.
I can help you knock through one of these in a single coaching session if it feels too overwhelming.
Next, you’re going to decide on what you’re “selling” to these people.
What are you “selling”?
As a political candidate, you are like a service-based business. The issues you care about and the ideas you have to solve them. Voters “buy” those services when they vote for you.
They become investors when they donate to your campaign. They become brand advocates when they volunteer their time.
So you need to select issues and craft/support solutions that appeal to these buyers, investors, and brand advocates.
Here’s the questionnaire I work through with my clients.
Personal Foundation
What issues do you have lived experience with? (personal struggles, family challenges, career background)
What problems keep you up at night when you think about your community?
If you could only pass 3 pieces of legislation in your entire term, what would they address?
What issues do you find yourself talking about naturally in conversations with friends/family?
Voter Alignment
Based on your voter research, what are the top 3 issues your constituents care most about?
Which of those issues do less than 50% of voters think are being handled well by current leadership?
What issues come up most frequently in town halls, community meetings, or voter conversations?
Which issues affect the largest number of people in your district daily?
Political Positioning
What issues give you the strongest contrast with your opponent(s)?
On which issues can you speak with the most authority/credibility?
What issues align with your party's priorities while still feeling authentic to you?
Which issues have clear, achievable policy solutions you can articulate?
Strategic Considerations
What issues are trending upward in voter concern (not just currently high)?
Which issues allow you to tell compelling personal stories?
What problems can you address at your level of government (federal/state/local)?
Which issues help you build the coalition you need to win?
Next you will compile a list of all the issues from your answer and rate each one from a scale of 1-10 on:
Personal passion/authenticity
Voter priority in your district
Ability to create contrast
Credibility/expertise
Achievability/concrete solutions
The issues that have the 3 highest scores are the ones you should center in all of your digital content.
Once you have your 3 core issues selected, you’re ready for the final step - choosing where to “sell” yourself online.
Where will you set up shop?
Think of each social media platform as a different corner of the internet to set up shop to sell your ideas.
Each one has a different crowd. Obviously you’d love to be everywhere, but running a 5-6 stand operation is a lot more work than running a single stand…
Unless you have the right system. First off, these are the platforms that actually deserve your attention:
Threads
TikTok
Instagram
Facebook
YouTube
Notice X and Bluesky are not on this list. I don’t think it’s worth investing time to create original content for these platforms. Create for Threads and cross-post to X and Bluesky if you really want to maintain a presence there.
A system for being everywhere
The key is to choose the right platform for creating a given type of content, and then distributing it everywhere else.
For example, a long-form thread can be posted on Instagram as a carousel, remixed into a Facebook post, and extended into a video script for TikTok, Instagram reels, Facebook reels, and YouTube shorts. That long-form thread can also be shared to Instagram stories and Facebook stories with a single click.
That’s 7 different ways for your target audience to discover and consume your content.
I’d love to get into my system for creating content, but that’s for another post.
It’s gotten one client who pays for my daily package 1.5 million views on Threads in the last 30 days with over 650 new followers.
He’s also cracked 150K total views on TikTok over the last 30 days, with over 800 new followers.
If you want to know how I would approach creating content for your campaign, book a digital diagnostic. It’s only $50 and you get
Specific analysis for each of your digital channels
An actionable suggestion for each channel
A SWOT analysis of your overall digital presence
