Campaign Tips

Candidate Tips & Tricks

 

This section contains all you need to know about your manifesto, digital campaigning, and brand guidelines for your campaign materials.

 

Your Manifesto Should Include:

  • Your name
  • What course you study
  • Reasons why you would make a good faculty rep - for example 'I am an excellent communicator' or 'I am great at negotiating'. 
  • You will also need to add a photograph to this page

Your manifesto is your chance to tell students why they should vote for you!

You do not need to know what issues you will be worknig on yet! Our Rep Coordinators have curated over 1500 pieces of student feedback over 2023/24, so they will be able to help you develop projects and campaigns once you have been elected.

Your manifesto must be over 10 words and comply with the SU's EDI policy.

 

Digital Campaigning

As part of your campaign you may want to use a number of digital tools to help students get to know you and your manifesto; this guide is intended to help you out! There will also be a more in depth campaign training offered, which we highly recommend attending alongside reading this guide.

Social Media

Pick the right platform.

Instagram and TikTok are great for driving awareness with quick and creative photos and videos – short form content greatly increases your reach by pushing your campaign organically onto people outside of your audience.

Facebook is good for community engagement – chances are you have a message you want to communicate directly to student voters, and by curating that amongst a close community you can drive powerful engagement with your peers.

X is best for gaining insight and inspiration – you can easily see the topics and conversations that interest students, and even run polls that could help you understand further.

First Impressions Count

Make sure your candidate photo is a high-quality image taken in a well-lit area with a plain background that doesn’t distract from your face – the candidates want to see you, not what’s behind you!

If you ever find your images are too large in file size to upload, you can compress them using TinyPNG.

Free Digital Tools

There are plenty of tools available for you to use to create and improve your campaigning materials.

You can use Canva for all your content and design needs.

Adobe Spark allows you to create graphics, web stories, and animated videos.

 

Guidelines and Branding

The SU Comms team have put together a guide to branding, marketing, and how to use resources appropriately in your campaign. 

Please note that Manifesto Videos are not being used for the Faculty Rep elections. You are free to create one of your own for your own campaigning and distribution, but the SU will not be posting them on SU social media channels or hosting workshops.