Social media as a marketing tool
It is not that social media was not there during the elections of 2008 and 2012, but the popularity and the way people are using it nowadays signals a new era for political campaigns not only in the US but in the whole world.
We cannot ignore the fact that the Saudi Vision 2030 made its presence felt initially by opening a Twitter account.
The first sign of change can be glimpsed in the amount of money dedicated to social media in the overall budget of the presidential campaigns.
In 2008, Obama spent around $22 million (SR82.5 million) on the digital part of his historical “yes, we can” campaign. However, in his 2012 campaign, the digital part ended up growing to staggering $47 million (SR176 million) although his Republican rival by that time, Mitt Romney, dedicated no more than $4.7 million (SR17.6 million) from his budget to online campaigning. The results could not be more obvious; Obama posted a lot more online and got outstanding response.
“In a sample taken from June that year, Obama had accrued almost double Romney’s Facebook ‘likes’ (1,124,275 v 633,597). His victorious Facebook post in the afterglow of his presidential election was a simple image of Obama and his wife with the caption ‘Four more years,’” reported the Social Media Week.
According to many analysts in political marketing, the amount of money spent for campaigning to win the US presidency this year will easily cross the $1 billion (SR3.75 billion) mark. That is a huge leap of faith in the influence of social media platform these days, from $47 million to $1 billion in four years.
Prof. Marjorie Hershey, from University of Indianapolis, has been quoted by DNA India saying, “73 percent Americans are now on social media and that’s an upward trend that shows no signs of stopping.
The last US election was prominent for its innovative and effective use of social media campaigning. With all this year’s prospective candidates spending time and money on digital campaigns, though, voters now expect engaging social content as a given.”
Another interesting point to notice is that not only the candidates are interested in social media, but the platforms themselves like Facebook, Google, Twitter and Snapchat are trying to take part in the political conversation first hand. Twitter, for instance, shut down two apps that showed tweets politicians had deleted, and hosted a breakfast event in Washington rolling out the proverbial red carpet for candidates as reported by the Social Times.
Facebook’s head of US Industry for Politics and Government, Eric Laurence, once cited the benefits of their video advertising saying that it was a “great way to reach and mobilize supporters and voters that candidates need to win elections.”
Even the newcomer, Snapchat, has rolled out many stories and filters specifically designed for the presidential race.
It is a new field of research in marketing and political campaigning; how to find winning strategies to persuade crowds and engage them in discussions surrounding political races. It is another sign that social media has become a vital part of our daily lives.
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