Impact of Social Media

Today I would like to share with you what is perhaps my favorite video of all time. It was created by the blog Socialnomics which is managed by Erik Qualman. The video is called Social Media Revolution:


The stats which you see are well researched. I have seen similar numbers from multiples sources and Socialnomics does provide a list of citations if you would like to look them up.

While the video focuses on business, many of the same principles apply to campaigns. A campaign's "product" is the candidate and his or her platform. Finding people to volunteer and work for the campaign is not that much different from finding potential employees (although you are looking more for a specific passion rather than a specific skill). All this information should at the very least show the vast opportunities that lay out there in social media.

I could go into detail about each statement the video made, but that would create a ridiculously long post. I have in the past touched on many of the specific issues, but I would like to address an important concluding point of the video. It states "We no longer search for the news, the news finds us..." That, in summary, is the point of social media. Campaigns have the ability to send out information and news through social media and deliver it straight to the voter. And if that does not happen, then someone's friend, family member, or co-worker will forward those news items to them. Part of any social network, even off-line and in person, involve sharing ideas and opinions. The Internet has just enabled this to happen effortlessly on a massive scale.

I do want to end with one word of warning. Consider demographics before buying into social media. Know how your constituency reacts to various social media outlets. Additionally, those voters on Facebook, Twitter, etc are going to have a different demographic make up than your district in general. A couple of years ago I would have said the main difference is age. Today that is a difficult claim to make. Some polls suggest that Twitter is having difficulty being popular with teenagers because too many of their parent's generation are using it (thus of course making Twitter "uncool"). In any case just be aware that the audience on social media may be different.

I encourage you to visit Socialnomics, read some of the posts, and watch the other videos.

The next post will be December 8th.