Social Media Is Driving Issues… And Getting Results
What do Komen, Rush Limbaugh and the Trayvon Martin Case have in common? All of them can thank (or blame) social media for their current situations.
In the Komen and Rush Limbaugh incidents social media went after the advertisers associated with these two, flooding their FaceBook pages and Twitter accounts with calls to drop them. Advertisers and sponsors listened.
The Trayvon Martin Case might have remained filed away if it weren’t for social media (including blogs). If you were only getting your news from Television Network News or newspapers you were unaware of what was bubbling up and about to explode. And explode it did.
Social media has become a powerful tool, mainly because it reaches and organizes people quickly.
Any ideas of how social media will be used in this election year?
Not THIS election…. but next time republicans have control of the government i can bet how it will be crippled and made ineffective.
From an election perspective, how do we use social media to talk to a wider circle of people? If the electorate is made up of people who are committed partisans (let’s say 80%), and 20% persuadable – how do you get those people persuaded?
One rule, jason, sad as it is to say, is that facebook and twitter appear to be far more effective than blogs. Which effectively means that talking points still rule.
Excellent example: pandora and kilroy both did massive and very well-crafted blogging on the new school question in the Red Clay referendum. Just over 10,000 people voted. I’d seriously love to know exactly how many total unique individuals among those 10,000 read and were influenced by that blogging.
That would be interesting data, Steve. The election results broke down this way:
For Renovations: 6,675
Against Renovations: 3,494
For New School: 5,398
Against New School: 4,552
So… the renovations were approved by 3,181 votes, while the new school was approved by 846 votes.
We’ll never know what caused that big ol’ disparity… and since we’ll never know Kilroy and I will take a bow! 😉
The thing that links Komen, Limbaugh and Trayvon Martin is outrage. Facebook and Twitter are both pretty well suited to a quick statement of outrage and getting your friends and others to join in. And the LOE is pretty small. Add in that for Komen and Limbaugh company names were being attached to all of that outrage. It doesn’t take much to think that seeing Your Company Name persistently scrolling by a twitter feed is a public relations disaster in the making.
Persuading people is something else altogether. There are active blog communities (think dKos) and there are talking blog communities (think Delaware Liberal). But I don’t know how you talk to the persuadable when they are likely not reading anyone’s blog.
Blogs (sorry) seem to …. at this point, only cater to those who have made up their mind. Either people join in to agree, or to be trolls…. QP, im lookin at you.
I dont know anyone who uses opinion blogs to make up their mind…. and if i did, i smack them.
Now, THIS blog informed me about Trayvon Martin…. and other than WAY FAR DOWN on HuffPOst, DL was the only place i heard anything about it for a few days…. based on that, I blasted it all over my facebook…as im sure many others did… and now it’s a big deal….and it should be, no matter what Jeff says. If there are even 1000 other people around the country who do that, after a few hours more people can be made instantly aware than any news outlet.
Traditional news media is on life support. They fail time and time again in their duty and are out-reported by a small blogs and individuals with Facebook.
well done. 🙂