Debates and forums are major events in the life of a campaign and careful preparation goes into each one. But the audience isn’t just the group in the room and your work isn’t done after you step off stage.
Effective campaigns use their debates and forums as content engines for the rest of the election. Your candidate is giving authentic, unscripted answers on the record, on camera. Don’t waste this valuable well of untapped potential.
Get The Video
Before you commit to the event, ask whether the sponsor plans on recording the video and what they plan on doing with it. Some may commit resources to capturing it professionally and you can ask if they’ll share the file with you.
You’ll still want a video file you control, so have a phone with a tripod as close to the stage as permitted. Clip a small wireless microphone or audio recorder to your candidate so you get the best quality audio. The video should be recorded horizontally and cropped for vertical later.
Rapid Response Is Step One
Live posting during a debate reaches the audience that’s already engaged and following along, which is a small and predominantly political group. Having a war room account that posts live reactions is a key part of a debate or forum strategy, but it is not the end.
Posting clips or quotes during the event doesn’t mean you can’t reshare them later in different versions or better quality.
Find, Cut & Format The Clips
Yes the full video exists, but most of the voters who would find it valuable and relevant aren’t going to spend the time so your next task is to package it for their consumption. An AI tool like Opus Clip will speed up your workflow, finding the right moments, editing them down, cropping to mobile, and adding captions, but you know best the moments worth sharing.
Some longer segments may deserve their own 3-5 minute versions on YouTube where voters are searching for candidates and learning about election issues.
Transcripts To Articles
Clips for social media are just one dimension. Articles on platforms like X, Facebook, and LinkedIn are popular with the algorithm and let you organize your argument. Upload the video of the debate or forum to an app like Rev then turn to your favorite chatbot to outline and draft a platform-specific article.
These should be focused on a single topic. Take the question you were asked, the answer you gave, and add in a few paragraphs of context you didn’t have time to share.
Update Your Issues Page
Your candidate just spent valuable time saying out loud where they stand on the issues in more authentic language than any consultant or AI could come up with. Don’t waste that resource.
Use the transcript and incorporate that language into your campaign website’s issues page, which is one of the most critical parts of your website for undecided voters and AI models.
Conclusion
Approach your campaign’s debates and forums as a content production opportunity. Lots of work goes into preparing, but not enough campaigners recoup that investment in the form of evergreen content for the rest of the election.