The Social Media Election

As the pundits pick apart the election results, they are relying on years of logic that they have stored in their memory banks.  What I haven’t heard one pundit or statistician talk about is social media.  Many are incorrect when they think that 2008 was the first social media election.  That was the first election that had social media in it, but no one actively used social media to microscopically target voters.

This time it was much different and there are a lot of lessons to be learned for politicians and businesses.  Effective use of social media can make the difference between profit and loss, or political victory and being out of office.

Many businesses and politicians have a Facebook page, Twitter account and all the rest.  But they don’t know how to use them. It’s simply free banner advertising for them.  They treat it like a big megaphone. Boom boom boom.  Hitting customers/constituents over the head with their message.  No to relatively little interaction and a young kid monitors the feed to make sure any untoward comments get deleted.  That’s not going to influence anyone.

Obama for America was smart.  First, early on it hired Harper Reed.  I know Harper and he is a super sharp guy.  He and I find little in common when it comes to politics.  But, Harper started back in 2010 building a team of technicians in Chicago.  They came from all over the world to work on the Obama tech team. Harper was a CTO at a successful company, Threadless, before he went to work for Obama.  Harper said there wasn’t any code, no metrics left over from 2008.  They were starting from scratch.  Their effort showed in places like Wisconsin and Ohio where they were able to turn out their voters.

They couldn’t afford an election like 2010.  If 2010 happened in 2012, they get crushed and the administration was finished.  They knew they had an unpopular President with unpopular programs.  Obamacare still isn’t favored by 60% of Americans.  But, they hit on themes that motivated minute segments of voters.

It’s interesting to hear the analysis on MSNBC, CNN, FOX et al.  They are talking about how Obama had small themes in his campaign.  Some are scoffing at that because Presidents should have big themes.  Big ideas.  There is a great reason for Obama’s strategy.  He was hitting on themes that would turn out targeted voters.  There was a continuous feedback loop between what they were learning on social media and what they would say on the stump.  Because they knew they had the media in their back pocket, they knew it would be reported in the news exactly as they wanted it to be.

For businesses, it means microtargeting customers to get them to buy.  Finding their hot buttons and interacting with them.  Some businesses are already very good with social media.  Ford and GM are great examples.  Ironically, Ford is grinding out a profit and GM has abandoned Facebook ads.  GM is showing continual losses.  There is something there and if you are a business you better pay attention.

The code and cookies that Harper’s team dumped on voters hard drives isn’t going anywhere.  It stays with the Democratic party.  Republicans better up their game.  Romney’s social media team wasn’t as robust as Obama’s.  He also had it outside his organization rather than internal.  For a little bitter humor, it was “outsourced”.  This is a brave new world. I think that the core themes of smaller government and individualism that most Republicans value, resonate with a majority of the American public.  Those themes require a lot of intellectual thought and education.  Republicans need to learn how to use social media to motivate and target the people that will respond to them.  It can’t start in 2014.  It has to start now.

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