How to influence an election: a breakdown of Russia’s content strategy to hijack the US election of 2016
So I just read Robert Mueller’s entire 36 page indictment of 13 Russians for hacking the US election.
It’s pretty detailed and supplies a decent undersanding of how to manage your content marketing – Putin style.
Content marketing the Russian way
The Internet Research Agency used a few key strategies. Namely:
- They ran multiple Twitter accounts, often run by bots, each linking to an account run by a real life troll.
- They ran multiple group pages on Facebook and Instagram grouped around geography or a theme
- They contacted and sometimes paid social media influencers
- They paid for political ads to promote a campaign or rally
- They paid folks to promote their posts or help organise events
Running on a monthly budget of $1.25m, their organisation broke down into a few key departments:
- Graphics
- Data analysis
- SEO
- IT
- Finance
Here’s a five step guide to content marketing the Russian way.
They tracked social media groups
The IRA tracked other politically motivated social media group’s size, frequency of content, level of audience engagement, average number of comments and responses. The goal was to collect information on US politics and to better target their campaigns. They also contacted administrators of large social media groups to advertise their rallies.
They developed fictitious personas and fake accounts to promote posts
The IRA also used multiple social media accounts to support and engage with their own tweets. The strategy can be viewed as an attempt to conjure the “majority allusion”: each time they ran a main account from which to post information and auxillary accounts to promote that main account via links and reposts.
They contacted US political activists/ influencers
The IRA reached out to US activists to promote their tweets. Sometimes they offered to pay them to organise rallies. Sometimes activists would suggest where the IRA should focus their attention. (eg on “Purple states”).
They made a content calendar
The IRA made content based on US holidays. They also optimized their text and graphics for better engagement. Posts had to appear “authentic”. They used election-related hashtags such as #Trump Train and #MAGA etc
They created thematic groups
Pages on social media sites Facebook and Instagram were grouped around issues such as immigration or geographic regions. IRA bought ads on Facebook to promote these groups.
