Mashable.com: How Political Campaigns Are Using Social Media for Real Results

June 9th, 2010

http://mashable.com/2010/06/09/political-campaigns-social-media/

Excerpt:

As businesses have known for some time, the social web can be a cost-effective medium for targeted advertising. Whereas expensive television and print ads might blanket a wide swath of voters with uncertain viewership and impact, social media engagement costs pennies on the dollar, and can deliver highly targeted and measurable results if executed properly.

In 2008, Julielyn Gibbons, President of i3 Strategies, an online strategy consulting firm, and Senior Fellow at the New Organizing Institute in Washington, DC, helped an “unorganized, under-funded” group, defeat deep-pocketed opposition by relying on social media marketing to get messaging to constituents.

As part of a campaign to pass a ballot initiative in Michigan that year, Gibbons and her team establishedTwitter, Facebook, and YouTube presences, and invested heavily in Google and Facebook ads “that mirrored our traditional media advertising, with a twist. We focused heavily on micro-targeting by age and gender, going for the the ‘goosebump factor’ as I call it — giving the public something that was very personal that they could relate to and that would win over the scare tactics that the opposition was running.”

Gibbons notes the importance of a “cyclical message strategy” when digging into the nitty gritty of social media advertising. “Every outlet linked to or mentioned the other outlets. For instance, at the end of every YouTube video, we included the URL of the campaign website, the Facebook Page, the Twitter page. Tweets linked to YouTube videos, important updates on the Facebook Page, links to fundraising pages on the site, etc.”