Social Networks and Political Contributions

A growing trend in politics is to allow donors to share their contributions with the world. I donated money to two candidates in as many days and at the end of each donation was a request to have me share news of my donation with my friends and followers. One politician was set up to connect with Facebook and yet another with Twitter.

Really, they all need integration with a service like Hootsuite allowing me to connect with more networks if I so choose.

Social sharing adds a new twist to contributions to political parties and PACs and we can expect to see many ecommerce sites follow the lead of politicians soon. Moreover, this new development changes the ROI on a donation as a single donor could spark a wave of donations.

In fact it would be very smart if show organizers like TMC would suggest that people who register for TMC events such as ITEXPO share their decision to participate with their networks.

In fact you can expect this to happen soon as I am sending this post to my team for implementation.

When President Obama was elected, I was excited because I expected the use of social networking in his campaign to be emulated by small businesses. To some degree, this has happened but we are likely far from where we need to be as many businesses sill don’t understand social networking enough to use it properly.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

The Obama campaign used integrated marketing better than just about any corporation I have ever seen. The had people going door to door, call on phones, they emailed, Twittered, SEOed, social networked, YouTubed, wrote iPhone apps, sent text messages and ran ads on TV. It was insane really – the Obama brand was everywhere.

It seems that use of social networking is one of the rare instances where politicians are embracing technology at a faster rate than private industry. This is something unexpected and hopefully as more tech-savvy politicians are elected we will have a more tech-savvy and efficient government.

I’m not holding by breath either by I am crossing my fingers. Laughing

  • Peter Radizeski
    September 27, 2010 at 5:40 pm

    Obama’s campaign had an incredible number of smart, savvy people running his social media machine, including Shawna Vercher of VTI-Web in Tampa Bay.
    Social Media is a time commitment. Most SMB owners don’t have the time or energy left to “do” social media. Some don’t know what to say. Some are techno-phobic. Some are just surviving.
    Then there is the wave of Social Media Experts, who swoop in to charge the business owner for their expertise as if one size fits all in any marketing plan, let alone social media.

  • Rich Tehrani
    September 27, 2010 at 5:42 pm

    So what is an SMB to do?

  • SEOx2
    September 28, 2010 at 7:00 am

    No doubt many businesses still don’t know how to use social networking. I don’t think social networking is the only thing which could help a business achieve success but yes it definitely plays and important role in the over all success of any business. A time will surely come when social media will become the biggest tool for the politicians to run their election campaigns.

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