November 12, 2008 | Wednesday
Social media – The online constituency
By Henry Shelley - Search Manager in Events |Marketing |News |Social Media
In more ways than one, US Election 2008 has placed a bookmark in American culture. Touted as the first election in history to truly embrace the reach and subsequent power of the internet, the question remains over exactly how beneficial the YouTube channels, the Twitter updates and the Facebook friends were in securing victory for the Obama campaign?
As a Brit, I’m eagerly awaiting the Brown/Cameron TwitVote preceding the next General Election. In the US version Obama trounced McCain with 20953 TwitVotes to McCain’s 3424.
The romance of high profile celebrities and politicians embracing Twitter has unfortunately been cheapened by the blandness of the posts that resemble regurgitated news feeds from the subjects press office. This fact made Obama’s final ‘tweet’ far more poignant for the online community.
We just made history. All of this happened because you gave your time, talent and passion. All of this happened because of you. Thanks 9:34 AM Nov 5th from web
Both candidates unsurprisingly setup YouTube channels too which Obama used to reach an audience 5 times the size of McCain’s channel.
Possibly the most unexpected Web 2.0 trinket to come from both campaigns is the Barack Obama iPhone App which featured news, local events, media and issues and a countdown timer to election day.
A fantastic accolade for the election itself is the high volume of young people that made the decision to vote, catalysed by the social media interest. Social websites such as Rock The Vote whose mission it is to engage and build the political power of young people, received an 800% increase in search volume from Google, in mid August alone. Not in 20 years has the number of voters under the age of 30 made up a larger share than of those over 65 on Election Day itself.
The beauty of online marketing is the measurability of return against advertiser cost. At Latitude we pride ourselves on transparently showing in detail the return on our client’s investment and ensuring we educate along the way in all things digital. We are passionate in ensuring our clients utilise all available online channels.
In the case of the US Election, It would be a courageous statistician that took on the responsibility of plotting advertiser spend against voters. Nevertheless, political candidates worldwide would do well to learn from the trend set by Obama’s campaign team, and how they spent their online budget wisely.
One thing may now be certain; if Brown is looking forward to a successful return to office, one of his first ports of call must surely be to acquire his hijacked Twitter username to sway the online constituency in the UK.
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