My advice for local officials is to let people see your excitement and your passion for your work. It used to be all about Facebook and Twitter, but those days are gone. It’s fantastic that more elected officials are using more social media channels. Triangle Blog Blog: Do you have any advice for local town council members who want to start exploring a new platform? We recently saw one town council member in Raleigh start to post on Reddit, which seemed great. I can’t imagine getting all my news from social media. As for regular news, having a few digital newspaper subscriptions is key. There’s a huge supply of that and lots of people do it better than I do. People really don’t need hot takes from me. That’s also the kind of content I like to produce. I value hot takes less and analysis more. My social media consumption habits have changed a lot with the rise of Substack. Triangle Blog Blog: How do you consume social media and new information? We imagine there’s quite a waterfall when getting to Congress - how are you able to do all of this so well? □ She said her friend forwarded it to her and she was initially annoyed that she was being sent some random congressman’s newsletter but by the time she reached the bottom she had subscribed. I got the best email the other day from a reader. That’s why I only do it once a week, because chances are I’m not going to have eight things worth writing about in one week that would justify sending two emails. So that’s what I try to do: I hold off writing until I’ve got three or four interesting things to say. I only subscribe to a few and they’re the ones that regularly have three or four interesting observations in each one. And when it comes to newsletters, the bar for that is really high. Jackson: In general, I don’t post anything I wouldn’t want to read myself. How do you decide what to write about, and what has the reception been like? Triangle Blog Blog: You recently launched a Substack to give a behind-the-scenes look at what Congress is like. I saw how much people appreciated that and it taught me that there’s a real demand for timely, unbiased information – so that’s how I try to use it. During the pandemic, I used Reddit to push out as much good information as I could. Then I realized I just had to up my game. Early on, I would just get shredded all the time. If you gloss over an inconvenient fact, they’ll call you on it. Jeff Jackson (NC-14): Reddit is a tough crowd. We’re curious how you decided to approach Reddit and what you’ve learned by your engagement on the platform. Triangle Blog Blog: You’re really, really good at Reddit - you respond to questions, you post updates that make people better understand the political process, and you hit all of the relevant NC channels. We reached out to Jackson to ask him some questions about how he communicates with his constituents, because it’s something other local, state-level, and national politicians can learn from. Jeff Jackson routinely posts on Reddit about what he’s up to in Congress. He isn’t just dropping in - Jackson has been doing this on Reddit for years, posting regularly when he served in NC’s State Senate. We love that he understands these platforms and speaks their language. (He’s also on the newsletter platform Substack, where he writes a first-person, weekly account of serving in Congress as a freshman member from North Carolina.) (Here’s his overview of the UAVs that were shot down.) He’s briefed Redditors (and people on other social media networks) about what happens after you get elected to Congress, how he received his committee assignments, and what he saw after the Speaker was sworn in. On Reddit, where he uses the handle JeffJacksonNC, he routinely answers questions and posts videos about what’s happening in the news. Jackson, a Democrat, is NC’s congressional representative in the 14th district (which covers parts of Mecklenburg and Gaston Counties) and he’s really, really good at social media. If you don’t live in North Carolina, we highly recommend following Jeff Jackson. If you use social media and live in North Carolina, you’ve probably seen Jeff Jackson’s posts.
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