Great Voting Tweets and Election 2.0 Thoughts
Enjoyed following some election tweeting this morning, especially while standing in line for an hour to vote:
Keith O’Brien, EIC, PR Week
http://twitter.com/keithobrien/status/989161273
http://twitter.com/keithobrien/status/989102523
Peter Shankman, HARO
http://twitter.com/skydiver/status/989292656
Southwest Airlines
http://twitter.com/SouthwestAir/status/989332489
Nick Leonard, MD, Ruder Finn UK
http://twitter.com/nickleonard/status/989443598
Bonin Bough, Social Media Director, Pepsi
http://twitter.com/boughb/status/989191681
It’s been interesting to see how the Internet has effected this election. Of course, the full results remain to be seen, but it looks like Obama has led in most of the "social media" fronts. Last week’s front page WSJ story, Campaigns Try New Web Tactics In Battle to Tap Fresh Supporters, included an interesting interactive graph:
- Measuring an Internet Election -
What’s interesting about it is that while Obama leads in every category (web hours: 39% lead; website visitors: 33% lead; YouTube site views: 29% lead; Facebook friends: 58% lead), his slimmest margins are in blog mentions (McCain 49%, Obama 51%) and poll results (McCain 43%, Obama 49%).
This begs the question of whether Obama’s online efforts have really resulted in moving
the voting needle all that much. How much of his pre-election lead can Obama attribute to Web 2.0? Would his efforts have been better spent elsewhere?
Businesses are facing a similar question:
What’s the ROI on web strategies?
Any social media communications coordinator should be heartened to see how widespread the use of these new tools has become, but their audience base is likely going largely untapped, and corporations face the challenge of engaging them or letting an opportunity slip by. And considering the scale, letting an opportunity slip by could actually be very damaging.
Of course, some of Obama’s lead must be attributed to the changing political and social landscape in America, but it also seems that the Internet has played a similarly game-changing role as TV did in JFK’s 1960 election, as pointed out in yesterday’s New York Times, Campaigns in a Web 2.0 World
What do you think corporations can learn from the "online election?"
**UPDATE 1 (11/5)**
WIRED: Propelled by Internet, Barack Obama Wins Presidency
**UPDATE 2 (11/7)**
- Change.gov – President-elect’s Obama’s online office
- PR Week blog, The Cycle: Obama might have to shift social media strategy now
Comments (2)
November 4th, 2008 at 1:54 pm Posted by Rachel Spielman
What I find most amazing about today is the lines and lines of people waiting to vote, if social media had anything to do with motivating all these scores of people, that could only be a good thing. But you know what’s even more thrilling? Walking into the real live booth and pulling those levers. The old world still has something on you new media guys!
November 4th, 2008 at 2:36 pm Posted by Darius
Just wait until 2012 — I bet we’ll be voting by SMS!
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