And the winner of the presidential election is...(drum roll)...SOCIAL MEDIA!
So last night at 3:30 in the morning, Eastern time, my phone gets a text message, from the Obama campaign: Joe Biden has been chosen. In the fog of sleep, I remember thinking: this just can’t be true. This MUST be some kind of ingenious hoax. Joe Biden makes sense, of course, but no sane presidential candidate would release this kind of news at 3:30 in the morning. What about the news cycle?
Now in the light of day, as the storm clouds of Fay begin to scatter and we actually see patches of blue sky for the first time in several days here on the coast of Georgia, I realize what Obama’s media strategy is. It’s an anti-news-cycle strategy, designed to give the bloggers, emailers, MySpacers and FaceBookers time to get the drop on all the C-suite media companies – CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, etc
I went online at 6 in the morning and the ether was full of chatter. By the way, a terrific analysis of Obama’s media strategy (actually, it’s an anti-media strategy) is available at the Times of London.
At this year’s conventions, there will be a whole swarm of non-media media types. Google will have a tent outside the Demo convention to accommodate hundreds of bloggers, video uploaders, and various 20-something social media types.
Not to be outdone, the McCain campaign has already released a fully produced video attack of its own.
At this point, anyone who thinks social media isn’t completely transforming our world is just not paying attention. I am like so totally jazzed up!
Related Entries
- Starting Out in Social Media
- Forrester's Moira Dorsey: The Future of Online Customer Experience
- Guest Blogger Martin Hayward: Supporting Social Media Engagement on Your Website
When planning an SMS campaign, it’s important to balance the “urgency” of the message with what time of day the message is being sent. Repeated messages sent at an inconvenient time of day (or night) may result in a negative experience for the subscriber. If repeated, subscribers may unsubscribe and/or complain to their wireless companies about being contacted inappropriately.
So marketers must consider time zones and time of day when sending an SMS message. And “Time of Day” is just one of the many considerations when planning an SMS strategy—including value to the subscriber, measurement of the campaign, timing and choice of SMS as the delivery method, among others.
R. J. Talyor, Product Marketing Manager, ExactTarget
www.exacttarget.com
The fact that the Obama campaign is using mobile strategy and social media just shows that it's not just for high-tech industries and the geek squad anymore.
Last week I spoke to RJ Taylor at Exact Target. He runs the company's SMS program. He said it's all about urgency and portability. These factors will drive the need for mobile messaging. Obama's strategy definitely played into this. And I'm sure he got a lot more potential donors to register with the campaign so they could be the first to know. It's very smart.
Today's issue of 1to1 Weekly discusses the economic impacts of a social media strategy, from experts at HP, Intel, and Cisco. They illustrate how thinking of social media as part of an integrated marketing strategy makes good business sense for businesses, not just candidates. How do you measure social media's benefits?