Social Media and Politics

Few years ago, nobody would think that traditional campaigning could be replaced by a digital one. However, after Barack Obamas’ super successful and innovative social media campaign which most specialists say that made him win, more and more potential leaders decided to leave traditional campaigns a step behind and focus on social media platforms.

Let’s see some of the reasons why:

1. You achieve direct contact with the voters.

Using social media tools and platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, you can reach more people than using earned media. Not only that. You can target your audience specifically and that helps you in order to spread your message across without losing too much time.

2. It is really cheap.

Social Media give you the opportunity to advertise yourself and furthermore your campaign with a very low budget if you will. From videos to speeches you can spend not even the half of the money you would spend in a traditional advertisement and the message will be “delivered” to more people.

3. You can analyze the statistics of your campaign.

Social Media let you see and analyze the data of the reaction of your campaign has on the audience. You can see the best time for a post, the gender and the age of your reactors, which post had the best response and hence you can customize again and again your campaign based on the data given to you by the social media platforms.

4. You can get feedback

Social Media let you interact with your audience and ask for feedback. Whether that is a complaint or a compliment or even a suggestion. This lets you improve your tactics and ideas for the future.

5. Fundraising

If you need money for your campaign and especially in a sort time period, then social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter are going to help you to spread the word and raise money from a little help from your supporters.

Using social media nowadays is extremely helpful and useful for everyone and politicians are not the exception. Those who do not use them they should quickly adapt to the new age rules before they lose their supporters by others who do use social media efficiently.

Danai Koutretsi