With US Presidential elections happening in November of this year, there will be all sorts of campaign activities getting underway as we move through the year. As we have seen over the last 12 months with the Arab revolutions, social media is becoming a stronger political tool, so you can be sure that it will play a role in the forthcoming elections in the United States.
Facebook pages are a great way for candidates and their campaign teams to communicate en mass with the electorate, and the chances are that if someone is a fan of your page then they are already thinking about voting for you. But when it comes to getting people onto your page in the first place, one company provides a service that aims to help politicians understand and use the science of political ads on Facebook to better connect with people.
Socialitical, a project of TargetedSocial, says its goal is to become a “one-stop shop for campaigns and PACs.” Using the information people provide about themselves on Facebook, the targeted ads can help candidates get the right messages across to the right demographics. As you’d expect, if a politician was out pressing the flesh in person, the way they’d talk to a Vietnam veteran and what they’d talk about would be hugely different from how they might engage with a 20-something college student. So why should the advertising be any different?
There is a very video-centric approach from Socialitical, whereby users who click on a client’s targeted ad are taken to a custom tab on a politicians page where a video plays, giving instant interaction. You can’t get that level of message broadcasting to different demographics with a full-page ad in a newspaper. For a more in-depth overview of Socialitical you can read the Mashable article New Tool Helps Politicians Advertise on Facebook.
At present, Socialitical has two of the six 2012 presidential canditates on their books, but they also want state and local politicians to sign on as well, in time making the process of buying ads easier for all politicians. With more and more constructive debate and sharing taking place on social media networks, it’s easy to see why Facebook is likely to be a key battleground for elections of all levels in years to come.