Please get better at social media (a desperate plea to Democrats)

Since April of 2025, I’ve been running the social media operation for a congressional candidate. I handle both strategy and content creation, and I fully own the results. After generating over 2 million views and taking their follower count from 299 to 1400 on Threads from April to November, I figured I had good enough results to convince other congressional candidates that they should have a seasoned social media professional on staff.

I was wrong.

So I thought maybe the results weren’t good enough. I did 2 things.

I obsessively studied Threads and determined long-form threads were making a comeback. I committed to one high-quality thread per day. We started that on December 17th, and have since generated close to 7 million views, over 350K interactions, and over 9000 followers.

I also obsessively studied what was working algorithmically for political content creators and sitting politicians on the video front, and got my client to do a 30-day video sprint. One video per day got us over 131K views and over 800 new followers.

It also got us local press coverage on a key issue, and people were referencing his content when meeting him in person. The crazy thing is, particularly on the Threads front, I’m not doing anything special at all.

I’m running the same playbook I ran for ethical founders and service-based entrepreneurs on Twitter, back when the thread feature just dropped. Particularly when it comes to political content, Threads is prioritizing depth, as they have realized their platform has become the new political town square.

But since I launched BlueThread Social in November, I’ve studied the digital presence of over 650 Democratic Congressional candidates, and I was absolutely shocked at the state of things.

Over 90% of candidates have what I call the bare-minimum presence.

The bare-minimum presence revolves around 3 things:

1. Photos from the campaign trail (IG carousels)

2. Endorsement announcements (IG graphic)

3. Press statements for significant events (in screenshot format)

They treat Instagram as the nexus of their digital presence and simply cross-post to every other social media platform. Most don’t even have Threads, and many that do are just cross-posting from Instagram.

And there’s no strategy other than post and hope it gets attention.

I am writing this to urge you, whether you’re a candidate, consultant, or campaign manager, to find 2-3K per month to invest in a social media professional who has a proven track record of building personal brands.

If you are skeptical, just give me 10 minutes to make my case. I’m not being hyperbolic when I say the fate of Democracy depends on it.

Here is an outline of my arguments:

1. Social media use is WAY more prevalent (amongst ALL demographics) than you think

2. Digital natives are allergic to typical campaign outreach - and that voting bloc grows larger each year

3. The stakes are too high to delegate social media to interns or the youngest person on staff

4. Social media is a donation-generation channel and should be respected as such in a campaign budget

5. Social media is a powerful relationship-building tool that allows you to build strong affinity at scale.

And here are the counterarguments I’ll pre-emptively address:

1. Only young people use social media so the youngest person on staff should handle it

2. Social media is a waste of resources because it doesn’t bring in as much money as calltime

3. Traditional advertising and campaign research is more effective than organic social in this district

4. Attention from people outside of my district is useless

5. Posting on social media gives the opposition ammo for attack ads

Point 1: WAY more people use social media than you think

Social media is a free, scalable, 24/7 communication channel that lives in the pocket of every voter you need to reach.

According to Pew, 84% of U.S. adults have used YouTube. 71% have a Facebook, and 52% check it daily (with 37% checking it several times a day). And yet, across Democratic campaigns at every level, social media remains an afterthought.

It is delegated to interns, handed off to the youngest person on staff under the assumption that youth equals proficiency, or managed by an already-overextended campaign manager. Meanwhile, every Fortune 500 company in America employs an average of 3.3 dedicated social media professionals, and the conservative media ecosystem has built a 5-to-1 advantage in online followers against us.

The crux of the problem is a persistent misconception in Democratic campaign circles that social media is a young person’s game. It’s false.

80% of adults ages 30-49 use Facebook. 74% of adults ages 50 to 64 use Facebook…and even a whopping 59% of adults ages 65+ use Facebook.

Sure, platforms like IG and Threads skew younger and aren’t as widespread, but this is the thing about Threads…

It’s a Meta platform, and Meta pushes Threads in people’s Facebook feeds. Creating content consistently on Threads is actually one of the best ways right now to reach new people on Facebook.

The point is there is no voter demographic in America that isn’t reachable through social media. And the trend is accelerating. 37% of adults and 79% of Gen Z use TikTok. Threads hit 150 million daily active users in just 2 years of existence.

The question for Democratic campaigns is not whether your voters are on social media…

It’s whether you’re willing to accept that social media is the most valuable messaging channel you’ve got.

Point 2: Digital natives are allergic to typical campaign outreach

The numbers from Change Research paint a stark picture of how younger voters want to receive political information. Only 6% of young democrats prefer phone calls. Only 10% prefer in-person contact from campaign volunteers. Meanwhile, 44% prefer learning about candidates from coming across them on social media.

This is a generation telling Democratic campaigns as clearly as possibly can how they want to be reached, and most campaigns are ignoring them. And this gap will only get wider as more digital natives age into the voting pool.

CIRCLE at Tufts University found that 40.8 million Gen Z voters were eligible in 2024, with roughly 4 million new voters aging in each year. By 2028, Gen Z and Millennials together will constitute the majority of eligible voters for the first time in American history.

And 77% of those surveyed by CIRCLE named social media as a top-three source for political information.

I cannot say this any more explicitly: The old candidate exposure playbook is going extinct. Evolve or watch your ability to get candidates elected disappear.

And let me say this even more explicitly to any consultants reading this: Don’t let your buddies at media agencies that you have a long-standing business relationship with convince you that this means digital ads are the answer.

82% of Gen Z skip ads as soon as possible. 69% will disengage from their device during unskippable ads, and 63% use ad blockers. Like I said, they’re allergic to interruption-based outreach tactics like phone banking and door-knocking.

If the social media management role is not elevated to a compensated core part of campaign staff, then we have absolutely no shot at beating Republicans in this algorithmic war for the hearts and minds of the next generation.

Point 3: The stakes are too high to delegate social media to unpaid interns

Politics is the only professional sphere in America where the norm is to not have a dedicated social media professional on staff. 99% of Fortune 500 companies maintain an active social media presence. CEO social media adoption is up to 74% as of 2024.

Corporate America used to think interns should run social media too. Now it’s a six-figure role at large companies like Wendys and Duolingo.

Yet in political campaigns, the digital director is explicitly the last hire, brought on only, in the words of one campaign staffing guide, if you’ve already covered all the basics and can afford the addition. Most campaigns below the Senate level have zero dedicated social media staff.

The assumption underpinning this decision is one of the most damaging myths in Democratic politics: that since their intern is young, they automatically know how to generate attention on social media.

There is a well-documented principle in social media known as the 90-9-1 rule: 90% of users only consume content, 9% will consume and engage, and only 1% consistently create.

In other words, delegating social media to an unpaid intern gives you a 1% success rate…at best.

Consuming social media and creating effective social media content are as fundamentally different as the difference between consuming a television show and being able to produce one. It’d be silly to assume someone can conceptualize and create a TV show because they watch Netflix all day. It’s just as silly to assume a heavy social media user can conceptualize and execute a successful social media strategy for a Congressional candidate.

Obviously I realize that, especially for true grassroots campaigns, even a 1K per month investment in social media is a stretch.

But there are other options besides a completely done-for-you service.

I have a 7-session social media training package for volunteers that teaches them everything I do. They’ll learn how to conceptualize a strategy, create algorithmically-friendly content, and iterate on strategy based on content performance. That’s just a $297 one-time fee.

I also do coaching sessions for $50 a session.

At least get your intern some proper training to set them up for a higher chance at success.

Point 4: Social media is a donation-generation channel that deserves investment

As you know, the DCCC recommends that congressional candidates spend four hours a DAY making calls on calltime. If I’m just doing daily Threads for a client, that takes 2 hours a WEEK of their time to review the content. If we’re doing video and threads, it’s about 5 hours a week.

You can have a donation channel working for you 24/7…yet so many still scoff at the idea of social media being able to raise a significant amount of money.

And that’s fair. No one is saying it should completely replace calltime, but it should certainly be seen as an important complement to it. Because not all dollars are created equal. Sure, you have a way better chance landing a $2,800 max contribution on calltime from a donor known to give out checks that size.

But that same amount in $5 donations would mean 560 people contributed to your campaign. That says a LOT more about your momentum than a single max contribution. Plus, it’s these small donors that are likely to contribute to your campaign in other ways because their financial situation doesn’t allow them to give as much financial support as they would like.

Also, a strong social media presence lets you take advantage of the fact that taking donations from outside of your district is completely legal.

Look no further than the perennial fundraising machine that is AOC for proof.

By mid-2025, she had the largest war chest in the house at $21 million, with 72% of donations coming from outside New York. A large part of the reason for this is she’s been in people’s social media feeds consistently since her 2018 primary, building that positive affinity brick by brick.

A consistent social media strategy focused on providing some sort of value for your audience can lead to significant dollars for your campaign.

It deserves a chunk of your advertising budget because, unlike traditional advertising channels, it can directly generate donations.

Point 5: Social media builds positive affinity at scale

Next to in-person, face-to-face conversation, social media is the most powerful relationship-building tool in a campaign’s arsenal. But it has one advantage that in-person interaction does not: scale.

A canvasser reaches roughly 60 doors in a five-hour shift, with 20–40% door-open rates, yielding 15 to 30 actual conversations per day. That is the physical ceiling of in-person outreach. A single social media post that connects with an audience can spark hundreds or thousands of conversations in a single day. And the evidence suggests those conversations matter.

Bond et al.’s landmark 2012 study, a randomized controlled trial with 61 million Facebook users, found that social messaging generated 340,000 additional votes: 60,000 directly, plus 280,000 through social contagion as close friends influenced each other. Close friends exerted four times more influence than the message itself.

The real power of social media, though, is the parasocial relationship.

Cohen and Holbert, surveying 2,055 U.S. adults, found that parasocial relationships were a powerful predictor of Trump support, outperforming all other predictors including past voting behavior. Tsfati et al. found that reading politicians’ tweets made users feel they were in direct face-to-face conversation, developing favorable impressions and stronger intentions to vote for them. Hidayanto et al. confirmed that user experiences with politicians’ social media accounts evoke emotions that directly influence both sharing behavior and voting intention.

This is what social media does that no other campaign tool can replicate: it creates fans. Not just supporters. Not just people who will grudgingly vote for you because the alternative is worse. Fans. People who feel like they know you. People who are emotionally invested in your success. People who will share your content, defend you online, donate without being asked, and show up to volunteer because they feel a genuine connection to you and your mission.

AOC is the proof of concept. She went from 397,000 Twitter followers before her 2018 primary to over 12.7 million across platforms. Her social media presence did not just build awareness. It built a durable fundraising machine, a volunteer pipeline, and a political brand that has positioned her as a frontrunner for higher office. And when she does decide to write her first book? It’s a million-dollar check sitting in her back pocket.

There is no rule against taking money from donors outside your district, and there is no rule against building a national community of supporters who amplify your message, donate to your campaign, and invest emotionally in your success.

But these relationships do not form through campaign ads or robo-texts. They form through the daily, authentic, human presence that only a professionally managed social media operation can sustain.

5 common arguments against the importance of social media

If you made it this far, I’m sure you have one of these 5 counter-arguments percolating, so I’d like the chance to address them before I go.

1. “Only young people use social media, so the youngest person on staff should handle it.”

This argument contains two false premises. The first, as documented above, is that only young people use social media. 83% of U.S. adults are on at least one platform. 71% are on Facebook. 74% of adults aged 50–64 use Facebook. 59% of adults 65 and older use it. Social media is not a youth medium. It is a mass medium.

The second false premise is that being young qualifies someone to professionally manage social media. It does not. 90% of social media users only consume content. The professional skill set required to build and execute a social media strategy, which includes audience analysis, content strategy, algorithm literacy, community management, performance analytics, and crisis communication, is not something people absorb through scrolling. It is a learned professional discipline, the same way media buying, field organizing, and fundraising are learned professional disciplines.

Would you hand your fundraising operation to an intern because they’ve donated to campaigns before? Would you let a volunteer manage your field program because they’ve knocked on doors? The logic is identical. Consuming a thing and professionally producing that thing are fundamentally different.

2. “Social media is a waste of resources because it doesn’t bring in as much money as calltime.”

This framing misunderstands what social media does and how it generates value. Social media is not a replacement for calltime. It is complementary to it. But the comparison itself is misleading.

The more important metric for social donations is the amount of donators, as it sends strong signals in regards to name recognition.

Calltime is extraordinarily resource-intensive. Candidates spend four hours a day on the phone to yield, in many cases, modest returns per session. Social media operates on a fundamentally different model: a single piece of content can reach hundreds of thousands of people and drive donations at scale, 24 hours a day, with no additional marginal cost per impression.

More importantly, social media donations come with strategic value beyond the dollar amount. A $2,800 maxed-out donor from calltime gives once and is done. A $5 social media donor, by contrast, can give again. And again. And again. ActBlue data shows 40% of small-dollar donors give more than once. And they are also more likely to volunteer, share content, and show up on Election Day. They become part of your operation, not just a line on your finance report.

AOC raised $21 million in 2025 at an average of $21 per donation, with 99.9% of her donor base not having maxed out. That is a renewable, scalable fundraising engine that calltime simply cannot replicate.

3. “Traditional advertising and name recognition efforts are more effective than organic social in this district.”

Let me start with a question: effective at what?

Broadcast TV now represents just 22.2% of total viewing. 62% of U.S. adults lack cable or satellite subscriptions. A primetime TV CPM runs $43.35, while organic social media costs effectively zero beyond staff time. And the 2024 election provided the most expensive cautionary tale in American political history: Kamala Harris outspent Donald Trump by approximately $460 million in advertising and lost.

Meanwhile, Trump’s strategic investment in organic reach through influencer partnerships and podcast appearances proved devastatingly effective. Navigator Research’s post-election survey found that 45% of swing voters cited social media as a main news source. Trump’s podcast appearances reached 23.5 million American adults per week compared to Harris’s 6.4 million.

No one is arguing that traditional advertising has zero value. But the idea that it is inherently more effective than organic social media is contradicted by the largest dataset we have: the 2024 presidential election. The campaign that invested more in organic reach and authentic digital presence won. The campaign that relied on traditional ad saturation lost.

Even in smaller districts, the math favors organic social. A professional social media manager earning $80,000 per year who produces content reaching millions of impressions delivers a cost-per-impression orders of magnitude below any paid channel. And unlike a TV ad that airs and disappears, social media content lives on, gets shared, generates conversations, and compounds over time.

4. “Attention from people outside of my district is useless.”

This is one of the most common objections I hear, and it reveals a fundamental oversight in regards to how modern campaigns should be funded and built.

There is no law, anywhere, that prevents you from accepting donations from outside your district. AOC’s 72% out-of-district donor base is not a bug in her strategy. It is the strategy.

Out-of-district attention on social media converts directly into dollars, volunteers, and amplification. When your content reaches 50,000 people, but only 5,000 are in your district, you haven’t wasted 45,000 impressions. You’ve potentially gained donors who fund your operation, online amplifiers who extend your reach, and a national profile that attracts press coverage, organizational endorsements, and volunteer interest.

Grassroots fundraising is, by definition, not geographically limited. And in a competitive district where every dollar matters, the ability to raise money from supporters across the country is not a distraction. It is a competitive advantage.

5.“Posting on social media gives the opposition ammo for attack ads.”

This objection is the one that frustrates me most, because it reveals a defensive posture that has cost Democrats dearly.

First, the practical reality: your opponent’s opposition research team is going to find things to attack you on regardless of whether you post on social media. They will pull quotes from local news interviews, town halls, public records, and donor lists. The idea that staying quiet on social media protects you from attack ads is a fiction. It just means you’ve surrendered the most powerful narrative-control tool available to you.

Second, the strategic reality: the candidate who controls the narrative is the candidate who sets the terms of the debate. Zelensky’s selfie video from bombed Kyiv was viewed 3 million times within one hour, something traditional media channels could not match. Social media gives you the ability to respond to attacks in real time, on your terms, in your voice. Without a social media presence, you are entirely dependent on earned media to tell your story, and earned media is, by definition, someone else’s framing.

Third, the philosophical reality: the conservative movement is not sitting on the sidelines worrying about whether their social media posts will be used against them. They are posting aggressively, building audiences, dominating the digital ecosystem with a 5-to-1 follower advantage, and winning elections. The left’s caution is not protecting us. It is costing us.

A seasoned social media professional understands message discipline. They know what to post and what not to post. They understand how to be bold without being reckless, how to go on offense without creating vulnerabilities, and how to build an authentic voice that resonates with voters while staying on message. That is precisely why you hire a professional instead of leaving it to someone without that training.

My Final Plea to Candidates, COnsultants, and Campaign Managers

If you read this far, I urge you to scrounge together some funds to bring someone with professional social media experience on board. Even if you pay them a one-time fee to build a strategy for you and have an intern follow it, you’ll see way better growth than your current bare-minimum strategy.

Obviously, I put the time into writing this because I’m trying to get clients. I have a multi-platform done-for-you service, but I also do digital presence audits for $50. I have a 7-session coaching track for interns and volunteers that teaches them how to build and execute a social strategy from the ground up for just $297.

I promise you I could be charging way more in the private sector, but I won’t lie, I’ve become addicted to building an audience for someone who is in a toss-up R race that is crucial to flipping the house. It’s way more satisfying than creating shareholder value.

And I want to do it for more candidates.

Let’s chat if you’re invested in making social media the x-factor of your campaign.