Social media will play an integral role in getting out the vote in 2012, mainly due in part to social media outreach. Although the 2008 Presidential election may go down in history as the first “official” social media election, 2012 candidates are more educated than ever on the power of social media and plan on connecting with voters (both young and old) through a variety of social media platforms.

In 2004, political campaigns began to realize the important correlation between internet usage and reaching voters.  One of the main focuses during this election was the use of blogs.  Both John Kerry and George W. Bush actively took to blogs to reach their voters, writing about their campaign views and plans for the United States moving ahead.

In 2008, candidates took to facebook, myspace, youtube and twitter to get their message across and reach as many voters as possible. Although social media was still somewhat “new” to political campaigns, Barack Obama managed to dominate the social media platform.  According to a snapshot that was taken on November 3, 2008 (Election Day) Barack Obama had 380 percent more supporters on facebook and myspace, 905 percent more views on Youtube and 240 times more followers on twitter than John McCain. This alone can arguably be one of the main reasons, along with historically high new voter registration statistics, that won Barack Obama the election.

In the 2010 midterm elections, social media played a major role in how voters received and shared information about the election.  To get a better sense of exaclty how effective social media was, below is a chart issued by PEW Charitable Trust highlighting political social networking activites by age group:

Since 2008, twitter has become a social media game changer for political campaigns. With twitter receiving on average 460,000 new accounts per day, more people will turn to this social media platform for up to the minute campaign news. Although not very popular four years ago, Barack Obama now has almost 10 million followers (in ’08 he only had 112,474) and this number is expected to grow in the next year.  @BarackObama recently announced that he will be tweeting regularly while on the campaign trail. In addition, he will be utilizing foursquare and facebook where he plans to check in and share tips with voters along the campaign trail.

Social media has been so influential that the @Whitehouse even has its own Department of Social Media. Recently, President Obama made history by hosting the first ever Twitter Townhall. During the event, President Obama made the first live presidential tweet ever and the highest trending topic that day on twitter was #askobama. Below is footage of President Obama making history:

While the use of television was a huge way to reach voters for the likes of John F. Kennedy, social media will be the driver for 2012 candidates as they begin to launch their campaigns to the White House. Come 2016, social media will continue to evolve and dominate voter outreach efforts. Who knows, with additional technology advancements and support from Congress we may just be able to cast our vote online by then!

We have seen time and time again that people resort to social media to check out what’s going on and who else is talking about it. While it is an effective way to spread false information, it is also an extremely efficient way to get information fast. It is so fast that it is possible to see a tweet about the earthquake before you feel that same earthquake.

This was my first time experiencing a social media melt down, but I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it. It was a little shaky at first, but then I enjoyed the ride. My phone wasn’t working initially, so I just sat back and followed the hashtag #earthquake. Twitter was chirping away during the crisis.  Just check out this awesome map that shows all the tweets from the time the quake hit through 30 seconds after.

Social media gives people the information they can’t get anywhere else, including rumors, lies, personal accounts and jokes, such as photos of quake casualties like water bottles and lawn chairs. If there were real casualties, there would not have been any humor in the situation, but since this is the East Coast, we were lucky and yes, a bit dramatic.

The entire West Coast is cracking up over East Coaster’s shaking in our shoes over a 5.8 magnitude earthquake. However, that’s why I live in Philadelphia and suffer through four seasons including the seismic snow storms and wicked hot summers; I don’t want to live in fear of earthquakes, tsunamis, tornados or wild fires.

Now excuse me, I have to go prepare for Hurricane Irene.

MediaSync: is a free online reporter resource with a database of more than 500,000 media contacts and 9 million articles and blogs. The site allows PR pros to quickly identify, connect with and track reporters, editors, analysts, bloggers and others in the media/analyst community who are assigned to a specific beat and/or write on specific topics relevant to your marketing activities. If you don’t subscribe to expensive services like Vocus or Cision, this is an alternative. However, it seems you get what you pay for when looking for media relations databases.

TweetStats: is a free application that calculates various stats of your tweets and displays the information in colorful graphs for free. This website only requires a twitter username (no password or profile required) to compute statistics, which makes it very useful when analyzing twitter activity for clients or competition.

EdCals, by CisionPoint: is a site offering free editorial/media calendars from CisionPoint’s database of nearly 500,000 editorial opportunities in North America. Yes FREE! While not the most attractive service out there – who cares? Our intern loves this program because it puts the information in an easy-to-download Excel file too.

MuckRack: Tracks the short messages on Twitter written by the journalists who do the muckraking for major media outlets. Muck Rack makes it easy to follow one line, real time reporting. A great way to skip having to make your own twitter lists.

Prezi: is the zooming presentation editor. Prezi lets you bring your ideas into one space and see how they relate, helping you and your audience connect. Zoom out to see the big picture and zoom in to see details — a bit like web-based maps that have changed how we navigate through map books. A very cool program, if you know how to use it. If not, your presentation will give people motion sickness.

SimilarSites.com or SitesLike.com: is a related content engine, displaying a list of related sites for any site that you submit. SimilarSites.com takes past user opinions into account when sorting relevant sites. Each search result has “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” buttons, letting users help us determine a site’s relatedness. As more users search and submit feedback, the results get increasingly accurate. These programs help me widen the range of outlets when pitching… and it is kind of fun to look up the sites you prefer to visit for fun.

SlideShare: is the world’s largest community for sharing presentations. Upload and share on blogs, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. 50 million people use SlideShare every month for research, sharing ideas, connecting with others, and generating business leads. SlideShare also supports documents, PDFs, and videos. Why didn’t I have this site in college? You can search any topic and find hundreds of presentations –genius.

NewsBasis: is an online service for media professionals and businesses. Companies, agencies, non-Profits and academic Institutions can easily and efficiently promote story ideas to the media and content publishers and respond to their specific requests. This works like HARO  and ProfNet but with in a website with a search function. While interesting to sort through, I tend to find other services are better.

The social ask is when those within a social community asks an individual for some sort of subsequent action. When signing on to our multiple social networks we are signing up to be bombarded with requests to friend, follow, like, donate, scan, forward, etc. These requests have leapt out of our inboxes and onto virtually everything – TV commercials, napkins, products, store windows and anywhere else people can squeeze one. Sarah and Alterian, an interactive solutions provider helping marketers engage with customers, set out to find out to how many times a day people are potentially hit with a social ask. The answer? 107,945 time a day. Find out more in this infographic:

Infographics not for you? Click here to the social media release.

As an avid twitter-er, I can relate to this cartoon. Now that we have Twitter, Facebook and a whole gaggle of applications at our fingertips, thoughts have been reduced to 140 characters and activities summed up by twitpics. Not that I think my followers are hanging on to every character I tweet, but it is fun and somewhat comforting to share in the interconnectivity of social networking.

We all remember the confusion and Armageddon when Twitter was down for a morning (yes JUST a morning and people freaked out- “but how will my followers know what I had for breakfast?”). If you don’t recall, Twitter was attacked (so dramatic) and the site was down- here is a NYT blog post about it. As much as I poke fun, I was one of those people feeling in the dark that morning. I was not wondering what @mikegross144 was doing at the moment though. I was missing my usual stream of RT-ed news articles, odd findings, area events and hilarious commentary. It is a living and personalized daily RSS feed of anything and everything from friends, icons, strangers and the lovable weirdos- and I think it is here to stay.

Oh and by the way- I had a muffin for breakfast.

So you’ve created a facebook page, Twitter account and you’ve started a blog and downloaded the latest i-phone application. But now what? Will the right people see the content you’ve created and if so, can you keep them engaged in your brand?

While designers continue to create tools to compete and keep up with the latest social media craze, marketers struggle to determine how to leverage their brand amongst all the social media clutter. To properly utilize the widgets, pages and other tools that you’ve created, you have to make sure you have a strategy behind it all, and you’re likely to need a little public relations. To truly gain leverage from social media, we’ve identified a game plan to help you gain awareness for your brand. Maven has created a social media 101 presentation as well.

Before your start social networking, create a plan. It’s important to set clear, measurable objectives for your social media plan. Why should your brand create or even take part in an online community? How will that brand be represented in these communities? What is the goal of engaging in social media? Is it to receive feedback from an exclusive group, drive traffic to your web site or raise awareness? No matter what the reason, define the “why” before the “what”.

Everyone has heard about it and rolls their eyes when people reference it. As a one time eye-roller myself, I have seen the error of my ways.

Yes, the world is all a twitter over twitter. If you have no clue what I am talking about just google it so you are not the only one at the table in the dark. Thinking about tweeting but don’t know how to start? Check out this article from Mashable about 5 steps for beginners or get all the information from the New York Times.

Personal twitter accounts can be endlessly entertaining by posting relevant news article, events, personal reflections, random facts, etc. all the while keeping tabs on hundreds or thousands of people entertaining tweets. You can even follow your favorite celebrities inner most thoughts- go to www.wefollow.com to find a few.

Companies have caught on and harnessed its power- which, to me, is the most interesting part of this whole phenomenon. Here are some articles I suggest checking out:

4 Ways Companies Use Twitter for Business

ReadWriteWeb.com

Contests and Giveaways Move To New, Fast Terrian of Twitter

The Wall Street Journal

While you are at it, watch Kevin Spacey on Letterman talking about twitter, then follow him @KevinSpacey!

When the government of Iran attempted to lock down all communications with the outside world, eyewitness accounts of the election and first-person updates flooded social media channels like facebook, Twitter and YouTube. According to a recent post on Mashable, the sheer volume of social media postings enabled them to track the progression of the election results in real time using only social media updates.

BBC – Protest against Iran Election Results

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcHT8-ps64w&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fmashable%2Ecom%2F2009%2F06%2F20%2Firan%2Dyoutube%2F&feature=player_embedded]

Say what you will about the voyueristic, sometimes inane uses for Twitter – there is no denying that the ease with which the average citizen can disseminate information via “tweets” of a 140 characters or less has played a significant role in changing how breaking news and international affairs play out on the world stage. The ability to reach a global community instantly has significantly weakened the propoganda machines of oppressive governments all over the world, and has changed the way these governments think, act, respond, and are held accountable for their actions.

We are looking forward to the next stage of growth for twitter, but in the meantime, you can follow #iranelection on twitter to see how the story unfolds.

Her next words of advice however I must disagree with. She told the class of 2009 to put their texting fingers to rest, close their facebook pages, chill out for a while on Twitter and go dormant on email (gasp!).  Instead talk to friends and family, attend networking events and (wait for it) follow up with handwritten notes instead of sending an email.  Now I can understand where she is coming from. Kids these days (yes, I can say it, I’m almost 30) have lost, or never gained, the ability to appropriately socialize as a result of communicating via cell phones and laptops.  Shunning technology is not going to solve this…but that’s a topic for another time.

My reaction to her advice is that it is short sighted.  It assumes that your friends and family have the contacts that you need.  It assumes that those that attend a networking event in your city and within your interest area are the right connections.  It assumes that your network is sufficient enough to help you get a job in this economy.  Let me tell you 2009 graduate, it’s not.

What I’m sure this very well intentioned speaker meant was that you can’t hide behind your computer or your cell phone and expect to get a job today, which is true.  However, her advice completely misses the most powerful element that social media offers us: weak ties.  The “friend” on facebook that you met once at that party last summer, fellow members of the “I love Philly” group, your 250 “followers” on Twitter who you’ve never met before and possibly  more importantly, their followers.  These are the folks who allow you to expand your network.

Weak ties are the threads that make social media possible.  They may also be the individuals who open the door to new opportunities or introductions.  I’m not saying that by tweeting “looking for a job in marketing!” you’re all set and don’t have to get out there, because you still need to get out there. But you can do this online as well as off.  Create a webpage and post your resume, contact information, writing samples, letters of recommendation, projects and whatever else might be in your portfolio and then tweet, facebook, and yes, email out the link.  When you add new content let people know.  Think of yourself as a brand and market the heck out of it.  Make those weak ties understand who are you are and what you’re looking for and don’t be surprised when opportunities come knocking.

Graduates of the class of 2009 have something that I never had, and that’s the ability to reach way beyond our traditional networks.  Social media gives an opportunity to reach people we may otherwise would never have had the opportunity to connect to.  This is an amazing thing!  Enough with the excuses – get out there and make those weak ties work for you!