Social, Mobile and Presidential Campaigns to Dominate 2012
January 04, 2012
By Guest Blogger, Donna DeClemente, Donna's Promo Talk
Happy New Year! I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays and had some time to relax. For my last blog post of 2011 I did a review of the year and featured a post from every month. It is a tradition I have done for the past few years and its a way for me, and I hope you as well, to reflect back on the year dominate
As always with a new year we read about what many predictions and forecasts. With today being just the fourth day of the new year, and the morning after the Iowa Caucus, we already know that it is going to be a heavy political season which has just begun.
This MediaPost article is interesting which states that if we take a look at some of the recent engagement on social media we may be able to predict who will be our next President. Similar to search engine stats which have predicted what items were going to be the big holiday sellers, social media can give us a glimpse into the future as well. This company called Socialbakers has created metrics based on Facebook Likes, sentiments in comments, and interactions to identify the candidates most likely to win at the polls.
Another very popular topic and prediction that I've been reading centers around mobile and the need for marketers and publishers to ramp up their efforts here. This also goes for those seeking to become the next President. While social media played a very important role in the 2008 presidential election, the explosive growth in smartphone usage and the introduction of tablets could make or break the candidates for president in 2012.
This article on Network World goes on to say that while some of the GOP campaigns have special links on their websites for getting updates via SMS, they don't appear to have candidate-specific downloadable mobile apps on Apple's App Store or the Android Market so far. I would agree with this writer that this will most likely change and we move forward with the race. However, it is odd when you think about how you can now follow the NFL playoffs with an app, but you can't follow the race for the White House.
It is definitely going to be a very exciting year and it will be interesting to see the expanded role both social media and mobile play in the campaigns along with how marketers continue to utilize these resources. I'm glad to be able to bring to my readers updates and unique examples of how social media and mobile will be utilized as the year moves on.
For now I just want to end my first post of the year by featuring one more holiday promotion that I "Liked". Cox Communications launched its first social giving campaign on their Facebook page in support of Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) by spreading social media cheer with their Holiday Snow Globe.
Cox Facebook fans were invited to place one of their photos into a holiday-themed snow globe that offered a variety of different designs, such as Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Winter Wonderland and more. They then were allowed to share their personalized snow globe on Facebook as well as through email. I shared mine with a photo of my husband, Kevin and I in the globe. But unfortunately when I went to look for it today, it's been deleted.
Anyhow, Cox will donate one dollar to the organization for each snow globe created this holiday season, up to $10,000.They have not yet announced how much they raised since it just ended yesterday. They also were running a Holiday Sweepstakes as part of the campaign in which they are giving away a trip to attend a holiday concert in NYC along with a selection of prizes including an iPod Touch, PlayStation 3 and a Dell Streak Tablet.
Great article. I feel like there are so many software options to choose from every day. Right now I can’t get through a day without: Facebook, Google, Twitter, Skype and Bizodo (form builder, project management and CRM in one;www.bizodo.com). I know there are other ones too that are great but sometimes I feel like software overload!
Posted by: jessie | January 06, 2012 at 06:20 AM