In the 2008 Presidential contest, Barack Obama
has 380% more friends on Facebook than his rival, John McCain. Obama’s YouTube channel boasted 18 million views while McCain’s were just over 2 million. Barack Obama has 112,474 followers to McCain’s 4,603. Of course, you didn’t need to read social media statistics to realize Barack Obama had momentum behind him. But what these stats re- ally say is that Barack Obama was generating much more interest. And this wide ranging engagement gave Obama a huge advantage over his opponent in being able to push his message out to the wider public through multiple channels. The recent Massachusetts Senate race offers an-
other prime example of where interest or popu- larity online can offer a strong indication of voter preference. Even when pollsters had the contest between Republican Scott Brown and Democrat Martha Coakley in a dead heat, social media met- rics indicated that Brown would best Coakley on Election Day. Brown has a 10:1 advantage on YouTube views,
almost 4 times as many friends on Facebook and was mentioned over twice as many times mentions on Twitter than his rival. It is well established how important buzz is to creating the “Big Mo”; and Brown had it going into the final stretch of the campaign. How intensely individuals are engaging your campaign online can be a direct indication of how well you’ll do at the polls. The third metric is probably the single most im-
portant one to track – conversion rates. In busi- ness, conversion rates refer to someone coming to your site and actually taking concrete action, such as filling out a contact form or phoning your sales office. A high conversion rate translates to a high ROI on social media expenditures. Political engagement can be measured in the
exact same manner. Tracking a voter as they visit your site, engaging your online campaign and ul- timately signing up to support your candidate or donate and/or volunteer for your campaign. The most effective way of get the most accurate
conversion rates is to separate your “recruitment” or “action” pages from the rest of your online con- tent. You want to be able to direct interested parties to specific areas without cluttering your data with regular visitors looking for information. Steering your visitors in such a direct way will assist in high- er conversion rates – studies show the more clicks a visitor has to make, the more likely they are to not complete the transaction. To maximize conversion rates, your forms should
be as easy to fill out as possible. You want folks to get their contact or payment information to you quickly and efficiently. If you are asking people to
Change in Social Media Marketing Budgets in 2010 According to US Marketers, by Industry (% of respondents)
Retail/e-commerce 79% 1% Publishing/media 63% 3% Computer hardware/software 55% 5% Business/consumer services 54% 1% Manufacturing/packaged goods 53% 1% Travel/leisure 52% 3% Education/healthcare 43% 2%
Note: n=2,317 Source: MarketingSherpa, “2010 Social Media Benchmark Report,” December 11, 2009
donate, make sure you have as many forms of pay- ment as you can; if you are recruiting for volun- teers, get an e-mail rather than a phone number and if you need to ask for a phone number, don’t make it a requirement for completion.
Data indi-
cates that people just don’t want to give out their phone numbers - and completion rates drop off when you make that a prerequisite. You can and should track conversion rates on
everything: your online and search advertising (while testing different ad copy, images and URLs to ascertain which is most effective); all of your links and various URLs; email blasts; your cam- paign tweets; your referring sites that generate traf- fic (is it an online newspaper? A particular blogger, or website? A video?); anywhere your campaign is mentioned. It is no longer good enough just to have an on-
line presence – you need to be measuring how ef- fective it is and whether your efforts are having a measurable positive impact on the success of your campaign.
Brett Bell is the principal of Grassroots Online (www.
grassrootsonline.ca). With over 15 years of real cam- paigning experience, he was one of the early Canadian advocates for the powerful potential of social media in the world of politics and advocacy campaigning.
June 2010 | Campaigns & Elections 65
Increasing budgets Decreasing budgets
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