Digital Strengths Required Even in a "Wave" Year

Republicans are worrying, and Democrats rejoicing, over signs that 2018 may be a "wave election" year that sweeps Democrats to control of the House and maybe even Senate. Before Democratic hopefuls get cocky or Republicans throw in the towel, both should note a recent Campaigns & Elections article about lessons learned in Democrat Doug Jones' historic win in deep-red Alabama. C&E makes the point that, wave or no wave, a winning campaign has "got to leave it all on the field, regardless of what the forecast is ... To wit, Jones won by just over 20,000 votes—and few predicted he’d defeat Roy Moore." C&E cites six digital marketing lessons from Jones' victory. Start with realizing the importance of authenticity in both the message and how it is conveyed, especially in online ads and video where an authenticity will matter more than slick production. Note that digital success requires more than standard online ads; Jones' campaign invested heavily in social and engagement platforms, bought standalone video and audio inventory, used display and rich media, and maxed out what was possible on search. Third, C&R warns, a percentage-based budget that starts with heavy TV spending and divides small remaining percentages among other channels will risk missing that vaunted wave; C&E advises using an audience-first approach instead, maximizing reach and frequency for all marketing channels taken together and based on how various voting groups get their news and information. Fourth, campaigns need to focus on engagement as well as reach to get people to remember an ad in an extremely crowded media environment. That means investing in social media platforms and going beyond traditional display ads by using HTML5 and rich media to embed interactive content and voting resources in standard banners. Then get those engaging ads to more voters by using digital to expand voter reach, especially given the falling impact of traditional media channels (40% of voters watch no TV, C&E notes). But don't try to stretch a digital budget too thin at the outset striving for maximum audience; pick off priority audiences and build the program from there, C&E advises. See the whole article at https://www.campaignsandelections.com/campaign-insider/6-lessons-to-remember-during-a-wave-year

'Memes' the Word for Today's Political Donors

Donors to political campaigns and causes are being drawn to a new strategy for political influence: viral digital. In addition to funding TV ads and PACs, The New York Times reports that deep-pocket donors are now bankrolling partisan organizations that specialize in creating catchy, shareable memes, messages and videos, especially on social media platforms. Outfits ranging from Occupy Democrats to the alt-right Milo Inc. are gathering donors who hope that their streams of aggregated links, captioned images and short videos will garner funds, votes and real-world action. While operatives across the political spectrum are being attracted now, the bandwagon got rolling with the Trump campaign's success with Twitter and other social platforms, to the point where a study found that nearly two-thirds of the most popular election tweets were either anti-Clinton or pro-Trump. The Times story cites many new participants from the left/progressive side of the aisle today, including David Brock, a well-known Democratic operative, who started an effort last year to raise $40 million to support Shareblue, a left-wing viral news outfit to rival alt-right publisher Breitbart. And there's John Sellers, a left-wing organizer and former Greenpeace activist, who started a Facebook page called The Other 98% to promote environmentalism and other progressive causes, which now boasts 5 million followers and funding of its nonprofit affiliate by donors such as billionaire George Soros-backed Open Society Foundations. The low cost for potentially high impact is especially attractive to causes and donors. Per the Times, Stand Up America, a progressive group run by Sean Eldridge, husband of Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, reaches, on average, 10 million people weekly by only spending "in the low six figures" to produce a Facebook page of shareable graphics and news. For more detail, read the full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/06/business/media/political-donors-put-their-money-where-the-memes-are.html

Social Media Listening Informs New Political Strategy

Digital marketing to a targeted audience with relevant messaging is a must in politics now. But how can a campaign develop the required digital audience understanding to be most effective? One answer is social media listening, per a 2017 business2community.com post by Augustus Franklin, CEO of CallHub, supplier of voice and SMS broadcast software. Franklin cites 11 social media monitoring insights to help turbocharge your digital marketing strategy. Here are just his initial five tips: First, design a social media monitoring blueprint by creating an extensive list of relevant keywords and hashtags on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. Find the people who follow your campaign or cause (or brand), have tweeted about it, or have "liked" relevant posts. Second, expand on the existing network of people who have shown interest in a keyword or hashtag and ask them to tweet with a certain hashtag, or share a post with their network, to garner the followers of your followers. Try to capitalize on advocates with influence in online communities outside the social networks, such as blogs or forums. Third, turn general demand into specific engagement by identifying social activity that aligns with your candidate or cause and reach out to these prospects with messages configured to their expressed interests/needs. Keep track of those who subsequently like, share, post, etc., because that engagement is a step closer to conversion (to a volunteer, donor or voter). Fourth, merge your social media inflow data with your marketing outreach list, and directly contact the socially engaged to ask them to spread your message. And fifth, use social listening to learn what each target audience segment wants to hear, from their perspectives, so you can specifically address challenges and needs in messaging. To get even more targeting insights, also monitor the activity on social networks of opponents and allies to see what people are saying. These insights can help to map engagement paths from interest to advocacy and to craft testing for analysis of what marketing works best. For all 11 tips, go to http://www.business2community.com/digital-marketing/11-lessons-political-listening-supercharge-digital-strategy

How Presidential Hopefuls Score on Social Media

Social media has been making political news in 2016, from Donald Trump's controversial tweets to Bernie Sanders' millennial "like"-ability. So how do all the presidential hopefuls compare in terms of their social media ground game? In a recent Fortune magazine article, the analytics team of Hootsuite social media management rated the candidates on five key categories of social performance: impact, engagement, reach. sentiment, and authenticity. It should be no surprise that GOP front-runner Donald Trump comes out on top, using social media as part of a three-pronged strategy of interdependent, mutually reinforcing use of rallies, media coverage and social buzz. On the theory that any type of attention is better than no attention, Trump wins with impact, reach and authenticity, even though he is weaker than other candidates on engagement and sentiment (more negative social mentions). Close on Trump's heels is Democrat challenger Bernie Sanders, who succeeds with strong engagement, impact and authenticity, despite lack of a planned strategy. Bernie's young followers have created a collective social energy for him that his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton can envy. Nevertheless, Democratic leader Clinton comes in third overall thanks to her huge reach (second only to Trump); she has 3.1 million Twitter followers, 3.1 million Facebook likes, successful use of Instagram and early embrace of Snapchat. She also scores higher on positive sentiment. Meanwhile, Republican Ted Cruz trails in fourth place with weak reach and tepid sentiment inspiration; Cruz counts just 3.2 million followers on Twitter and Facebook compared with Trump’s 14.5 million, for example. And John Kasich is dead last, in delegates and social power, with just 292,000 followers on Twitter and 286,000 likes on Facebook. For the detailed analysis, read http://fortune.com/2016/04/18/bernie-sanders-donald-trump-social-media/

Voters Unite in Interest, Differ on News Sources

This presidential election cycle has grabbed the public's attention, whether via TV or social media, in an unprecedented way. The most recent Pew Research Center survey finds that 91% of Americans have already tuned into election information--a higher level of learning about presidential candidates than at the same point in the past two presidential elections. Yet, while united in overall interest, the electorate differs widely on which media are the most helpful sources of information, with no one source gaining more than a quarter of adult favor-- so campaigns definitely can't put all their eggs in one media basket. Overall, voters rate cable TV news as the most helpful (24%), followed by social media (14%) and local TV (14%). At the bottom (1%) is candidate or campaign digital outreach via website/app/e-mail. Unsurprisingly, preferences are affected by age, education level and political party, Pew reports. Cable television is most popular with those 65 and older and Republicans, while soical media is the favorite information source of 18- to 29-year-olds. Just as important for campaign planners is the fact that the majority of voters learn about the presidential election from multiple sources ( 45% from five or more and 35% from three or four), compared with only 9% who get information from just one source. TV still tops the media mix, with 78% of Americans saying they learned about the presidential reace from at least one of the four TV-based sources (cable news, local news, national network news, late-night comedy). Another 65% list a digital platform as one of their information sources (news website, social site, issue-based site/app/e-mail or campaign group site/app/e-mail). Print newspapers are at the bottom of the information heap (cited by 36%). And before investing in a broad social media push, campaigns also should note that Facebook far outranks other sites as a political source (37% of the public). In contrast, Trump's go-to Twitter is sourced by just 9%. For more detail, read http://www.journalism.org/2016/02/04/the-2016-presidential-campaign-a-news-event-thats-hard-to-miss/

Prep for Social Media Crowding in 2016 Election

Social media marketing has become an essential part of political candidate and cause campaigning in the 2016 election, building on the proven success of platforms such as Facebook in 2014 and the improved targeting available this time around. The problem is that everyone has the same idea, and the big-money PACs are shifting premium dollars to grab social attention, warns Mitch Dunn, senior vice president of Empower MediaMarketing, in an AdExchanger.com Politics post. This will create two new problems for social marketers, political and commercial, especially on the popular Facebook platform. Due to Facebook’s strict limit on news feed ad frequency, if more campaigns continue to use Facebook, there can be crowding out of marketers, notes Dunn. Since individual ads can only appear on Facebook twice a day, more total ads can limit an individual ad space in the news feed. The cost per thousand impressions (CPM) also can be more unpredictable and expensive. Since political campaigns often use microtargeting to focus on extremely small segments of the population, any campaign targeting similar segments on Facebook may notice higher CPMs than normal. More than in the past, political campaigns need anticipate social strategy issues and costs. Solutions include adjusting timing to avoid conflict with other higher-spending campaigns targeting the same niche, testing new target niches, and expanding ad spend to other targetable social media platforms courting political action, such as Twitter, SnapChat, YouTube, etc. For more: http://adexchanger.com/politics/the-2016-election-will-disrupt-marketers-social-strategies/

Marketing Pro Ranks GOP Hopefuls' Social Efforts

Social media branding is a must-have for today's presidential hopefuls, so how are the leading GOP contenders doing from a purely marketing standpoint? A recent MarketingProfs article by Jeremy Page, a network marketing blogger, provides one political outsider's ranking of the top six Republican presidential candidates based just on social media marketing performance. You may not agree with the rankings, but there are lessons worth gleaning. For example, Page puts Jeb Bush at the tail end of GOP contenders based on a lackluster social media presence (just 363,000 Twitter followers) and policy-oriented posts that create a persona without emotional resonance. Social media, especially Twitter, "isn't the place to be overly sensible and pragmatic," warns Page. Marco Rubio comes in fifth place with his strategy of keeping an uncontentious, low profile while building a social following (over 1 million Twitter followers). Page urges Rubio to do more to reinforce his brand as a "candidate of the people" with retweets and posts that leverage "your community for your social media content." Fourth place is awarded to long-shot Carly Fiorina for using social media to push a persona of openness, showcasing her willingness to answer questions via Q&As on niche, real-time streaming platforms like Periscope, for example. Ted Cruz gets a No. 3 position for an innovative digital strategy that stresses crowdfunding and gamification. Via Cruz Crowd, followers can recruit friends to join a personal Cruz Crowd donation page and then monitor money raised via Facebook and Twitter, plus earn game badges. With the competitive Cruz Crew app, players earn points based on actions to spread the word. Ben Carson is No. 2 thanks to his use of Facebook to leverage 4.6 million fans (compared with Hillary Clinton's 1.5 million and Trump's 3.8 million Facebook followers) via heartfelt long-form letters, plus polls and petitions to collect e-mail addresses. At the top of the heap is (no surprise) Donald Trump, who presents his tax plan on Periscope, hosts #AskTrump Q&As, and rallies fans on Facebook and Twitter with unfiltered "real" posts that keep him constantly in the media spotlight (for free). Page's takeaway: "Use social media to be controversial and troll the media." For more, see http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2015/29033/ranking-gop-presidential-candidates-according-to-digital-strategy

Social Media Still Lacks Political Fundraising Power

Political and nonprofit causes eager to leap into social media fundraising are likely headed for disappointment, according to NPR's All Tech Considered report on digital fundraising. The article cites a new Adobe study showing that, of 43 million visits to about two dozen nonprofit websites, three-quarters of visitors arrived via web search or by directly typing the url. Only 3% followed a social media link. A Red Cross 2014 survey delivered similar bad news for social fundraising: While online solicitation and engagement helped to influence giving, donors said they were more motivated by in-person requests, e-mails and direct mail. Social media is "useful because people are seeing your issue," Michael Ward, a principal at strategy firm M+R that publishes the Benchmark Study, a nonprofit industry guide to online fundraising and advocacy, explained in the NPR story. "But then to actually get them to divert that knowledge into a donation, it really takes other channels, such as e-mail marketing or even direct marketing, to close that loop." One reason social lags in gathering dollars is that when users are scrolling through a social site like Facebook, they are unlikely to click to an outside website, especially one asking for credit card info. However, digital fundraising experts see crowdfunding, based on financial appeals for small sums from friends instead of organizations, as a social approach with promise. In fact, Facebook recently facilitated crowdfunding donations with the rollout of new fundraiser pages, which allow a nonprofit to describe a specific campaign and collect donations directly through Facebook, and to promote the pages via ads and shared posts with donate buttons. Available to select nonprofits for the holidays, fundraiser page signups are set to expand in 2016. For more: http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/12/02/458008461/a-click-too-far-why-social-media-isnt-that-great-for-fundraising

Marketing Agencies Rush Into Profitable 2016 Race

Campaigns and causes seeking 2016 election victory will be able to select from a wider array of marketing services than ever before. Al Urbanski, Direct Marketing News magazine senior editor, recently took note of the rush by marketing agencies, especially those from the digital arena, to jump on the profitable political bandwagon. Examples include lead optimization specialist Fluent, which just set up the Political Pulse digital polling service and opened a Washington office, as well as programmatic ad platforms like ChoiceStream and Xaxis, which just unveiled Xaxis Politics, which are courting campaigns with claims they can harness offline and digital data to pull ahead, with social and mobile in the new media mix. Old-school direct mail experts are still in the game, too, Urbanski adds and points to the Ben Carson campaign, which raised $12 million via mail fundraising even before the candidate announced for the presidency. But e-mail will be where the real action is, according to political marketers interviewed by Urbanski. And in the e-mail contest, competitive intelligence firm eDataSource puts Democrat hopeful Hillary Clinton ahead so far, following the trailblazing of Barack Obama's e-mail blitz (20 e-mails to every one sent by opponent Mitt Romney) and segmented database (a 40 million name list compared with Romney's 4 million). Obama made marketing history by putting the small electronic "e" in electioneering, Urbanski remarks, so that while early GOP front-runner Donald Trump has made self-funding a selling point and aggressive Twitter his trademark, he may regret a lack of early "e" list building to turn donors and fans into voters down the road. See the complete article at http://www.dmnews.com/direct-line-blog/marketeering-turns-to-electioneering/article/453342/

Music Themes for Campaigns Risk Legal Tangles

Today's political campaigns are set to music. Media-savvy candidates choreograph appearances with theme tunes for their signature messages and styles. And sometimes those music choices land them in legal trouble. Ask Donald Trump. The New York Times recently reported on the thorny issue of political music use, noting as examples R.E.M.'s early complaint about Donald Trump using “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” and the more recent demand from Steven Tyler of Aerosmith that Trump stop using his band’s 1973 hit “Dream On” at campaign events. The disputes highlight a legal gray area over licensing rules for music in political campaigns, experts explained in the NYT article. For example, when Neil Young complained in June that Trump had used his song “Rockin’ in the Free World” without permission, Trump’s campaign responded that it had obtained a so-called public performance license from Ascap, the music rights agency. In addition, venues where most major campaign events are held (convention halls, hotels, and sports arenas) often carry their own licenses from Ascap and BMI, another rights agency, that allow play of millions of songs in those agencies’ catalogs. Of course, the issue is complicated when the song use at an event is broadcast on TV and shared on social media. The protest letter from Steven Tyler’s lawyer to the Trump campaign even cited the Lanham Act, a federal law covering trademark and false advertising, claiming the song could be seen as a false endorsement. However, lawyers and copyright experts interviewed cited the difficulties of proving people actually thought of the music as an endorsement. In any case, campaigns will want to brush up on the legal nuances of music use. A starting point can be the Recording Industry Association of America's guidelines on copyright issues in music for political campaigns. With expanding media channels, legal confusion and polarized politics, campaigns don't want to risk having a lawsuit call the final tune. See http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/us/politics/in-choreographed-campaigns-candidates-stumble-over-choice-of-music.html?_r=0

'Virtual Reality' Was One Loser in Democrat Debate

Virtual reality was on stage along with the candidates during the recent Democratic presidential debate as part of a CNN experiment with virtual reality (VR) startup partner Next VR. Anyone with a Samsung Gear VR headset (powered by a Samsung phone) was supposed to have an "immersive" experience of the debate, able to choose their own 180-degree views free of TV editing and in real time via live streaming. Samsung and HTC are both set to release VR devices for the holidays, and Sony and Facebook are planning their own devices for 2016, when Jupiter Research projects sales of 3 million headsets. But politicians worried about adapting presentation for a game-changing media can probably relax for this election cycle. Per a report to CNET by Max Taves, VR is "not ready for its close-up." While Taves' VR experience of the debate gave him the promised 180-degree views, the wide angles came at the expense of close-ups, he noted. So though TV viewers saw candidate and moderator faces and reactions clearly, Taves saw only distant blurs while wearing a heavy headset and holding an overheating phone to his face. NextVR co-founder D.J. Roller argued that the VR debut was still a forward step for a technology in development and promised,"That's as bad as it's going to get." But not good enough to be a political factor for current campaigns, we would guess. For the article, see http://www.cnet.com/news/not-ready-for-its-close-up-virtual-reality-makes-presidential-debate-virtually-unwatchable/

New Made-for-Digital Content Courts Young Voters

In their efforts to corral younger, millennial voters, 2016 election campaigns are investing in made-for-digital content, with a focus on social media and mobile, at record rates, according to a recent CNBC.com article. Reuters estimates that candidates will spend $1 billion on digital media advertising, close to four times the amount spent in 2012, CNBC reports. Almost six months before the primary elections, 80% of declared presidential hopefuls have created made-for-digital YouTube videos, and eight candidates have used live streaming for their candidacy announcements. Democratic contender Sen. Bernie Sanders even worked with a virtual reality production company to film a fundraising speech so viewers could have a 3-D, 360-degree experience. Candidates clearly want to tap into the 18- to 36-year-old crowd that, per the Crowdtap marketing platform, spends 17.8 hours a day consuming media content, especially through social sites. It is also a voter group that is so mobile-phone-addicted that YouTube on mobile now reaches more 18- to 49-year-olds than any single cable network. When it comes to content delivery, Facebook is aggressively courting politicians with updated ad products that allow matching of voter files with Facebook profile data, and Snapchat is curating live candidate events and offering candidates their own Snapchat channels. However, in embracing made-for-digital video, candidates are taking a new approach from the slick TV-style productions of the past. Campaigns are trying to connect to a new generation of voters with raw, live and hopefully viral content (Sen. Ted Cruz frying bacon on the barrel of a gun). A quote from Sen. Rand Paul's chief digital strategist, Vincent Harris, sums up: "2016 is potentially the first cycle that, by Election Day, voters will be consuming more content from the Internet than on television. This is especially true for first-time voters, younger voters and college voters..." For more, read http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/05/how-pols-are-targeting-the-youth-vote-go-360-and-snapchat-like-mad.html

In Targeted Donor Race, E-mail Still Beats Social

With political campaigns and causes expected to spend up to $1 billion on digital efforts for the 2016 races, npr.org's James Doubek recently discussed the impact on the political marketing landscape. Thanks to social networks, campaigns are now able to enhance static data--voter lists and consumer behavior--with personal "engagement" data. To explain the advantage, Doubek quotes Will Conway, lead organizer at NationalBuilder, a political digital platform provider: "If this person subscribes to Field & Stream and he drives a Ford F-150, there's a high percentage chance that he's a veteran. Well, if in his Twitter bio he says he's a veteran, you know he's a veteran." So it's no wonder 2016 campaigns are spending on hyper-targeted Facebook and Twitter promotion (plus Snapchat, YouTube and more) to influence voters. But when it comes to raising money, e-mail is still the "king." "Nothing comes close" to an e-mail list, Michael Beach, co-founder of Targeted Victory, a Republican digital campaign firm, explains to Doubek, adding, "Our campaigns will do 70%-plus of their fundraising through e-mail." Back in 2012, Obama gathered 90% of his online donations from e-mails. And this time around, the e-mail list targeting is likely to be more refined and efficient. For example, Hillary Clinton's team has a 5 million-person e-mail list, but the average e-mail blast only goes to 780,000, because e-mail messages are tailored by factors such as interests and likelihood of donating. Read the complete news story: http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/07/28/426022093/as-political-campaigns-go-digital-and-social-email-is-still-king

For Media Clout, Rand Twitter Ads Target Reporters

Twitter may not be the political heavyweight in social media, with 300 million users compared to Facebook's 1.4 billion, but Republican Sen. Rand Paul, one of the crowd of GOP 2016 presidential hopefuls, is hoping to enlarge his media footprint with the Twitter ad platform. How? He's directly targeting messages to certain journalists, using a list "uploaded into Twitter's ad platform of journalists," according to a story in The Hill, an influential Washington-based political website. Reporter David McCabe quotes Paul's Chief Digital Strategist Vincent Harris: "We have even created lists of journalists in early primary states, working with the communications team. And it's a really good cheap, effective, targeted way to get a piece of content out there in front of people that you want to see it--journalists who are going to help with their megaphone push a piece of content out further." Rand Paul is following in the footsteps of President Obama's reelection campaign in this respect; Obama digital strategists also used Twitter to try to influence political junkies and journalists. For more, read http://thehill.com/policy/technology/247839-rand-pauls-campaign-directly-targets-reporters-with-ads-on-twitter

Facebook Emerging As 2016 Digital Ad Heavyweight

Facebook is being declared "the single most important tool of the digital campaign" in 2016 by a recent National Journal magazine article. The National Journal reports that 2016 presidential contenders as disparate as Hillary Clinton and Ben Carson, Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders are already investing in the social network. And the reasons for Facebook's expanded clout, beyond its 190 million American users, are new features unveiled since the 2012 presidential campaign, including more customized and sophisticated splicing of the American electorate and the ability to serve video to those thinly targeted sets of people. That means "the emotional impact of television delivered at an almost atomized, individual level," as the article points out. Facebook not only has a wealth of information about its members--identity, age, gender, location, passions--its new partnerships with big data firms, like Acxiom, allow it to layer on behavioral information, such as shopping habits. Political operatives are already modeling the universes of likely Iowa caucus-goers and potential New Hampshire primary voters and uploading those models into Facebook to match them with Facebook profiles of actual voters in those states, per the article. "We are guaranteeing you will reach the right person at the right time and eliminate the waste that you might find in e-mail marketing, certainly in TV advertising," Eric Laurence, who is in charge of political advertising on Facebook told the National Journal. Cost factors are definitely driving Facebook interest. Vincent Harris, Paul's chief digital strategist, is quoted: "It's so cheap. I am getting Facebook video views for one cent a view—one cent a view! ... It's a fundraising tool, it's a persuasion tool, and it's a [get-out-the-vote] tool. It's a way to organize, too." And there's an attractive ROI potential, too. Facebook likes to point out that the 2013 campaign of Terry McAuliffe for Virginia governor recovered 58% of its Facebook acquisition costs by linking new e-mail subscribers to online contribution forms. For more, read http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/facebook-the-vote-20150612

Why the Fad for One-Letter Logos in 2016 Race?

Barack Obama rode his hip, single-letter "O" logo into the White House, and some 2016 presidential hopefuls may hope that emulating the one-letter logo idea will lead to the same political brand success. For example, as a recent Washington Post newspaper story reports, Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's campaign committee is playing with a "J" logo, while Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton has launched an active, rightward-pointing "H," former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) is using "O'M" instead of spelling his name out on signs, and Republican Rick Perry has unveiled a "P" logo. Why the popularity of single-letter logos? Blame the rise of digital politicking, suggests the Post. Single letters are optimized for smartphones, whether for a call-to-action button or a social media avatar. Single letters just fit better into the square icons of social media compared with long names. It's no accident that Facebook's logo is a lowercase "f," Pinterest uses a "P," and Tumblr has a lowercase "t." But the fad for bold letter logos also may reflect the pressure to stand out in a crowded field of presidential hopefuls, adds the Post story. A strong campaign logo, like a strong corporate brand logo, can set a candidate apart from the competition and quickly help voters recall a candidate's message and brand attributes. For logo examples, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/06/04/the-rise-of-the-single-letter-political-logos/

Snapchat Enters Political Media Arena

A New York Times article recently noted moves by Snapchat, America's fastest-growing smartphone app, to enter the political media arena. With its more than 100 million users, most between the ages of 18 and 31, Snapchat's ambitions could have significant impact on 2016 election coverage for candidates and causes. One sign that Snapchat is serious about growing political content: It recently hired Peter Hamby, a political reporter for CNN, to head its emerging news division. While Facebook is talking with media companies about using their political content, Snapchat is moving to create its own content, leveraging resources to hire editors and reporters. Snapchat's "Discover" feature already allows media partners, such as CNN, to post content to the app every 24 hours on their own Snapchat channel, but Snapchat also has its own channel, which could increase political coverage under Hamby. Snapchat also has its "Live" app that allows the company to drop a digital boundary around an event, a "geofence," so that Snapchat users can upload their image or video "snaps" to be stitched into a story by Snapchat. For example, 40 million watched Snapchat's feed from the Coachella music festival over three days in April. Imagine the application to a political event. As the NYT story pointed out, Snapchat has the potential to bring millions of first-time voters and millennials into the political arena."There are a lot of young people who are just killing time on their phones, who are on Snapchat and are not getting all that much political news right now," Tim Miller, a communications adviser for potential Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush, told NYT. "I doubt there will be any policy symposiums taking place on Snapchat, but you've got to find a way to reach people who aren't reading long-form political articles." Definitely a heads-up for campaign strategists! Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/business/media/campaign-coverage-via-snapchat-could-shake-up-the-2016-elections.html?_r=0

As Social Costs Rise, Will Campaigns Boost Search?

Social media gets lots of political buzz, but cost realities could soon see social ads fighting paid search engine marketing for a share of 2016 campaign budgets, suggests a recent article for MediaPost's Data and Targeting Insider. The cost-per-click price of social ads on Facebook, for example, rose 180% in the first quarter of 2015, which makes those ads more expensive on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis than many search keyword buys, especially on Yahoo and Bing. So how are presidential hopefuls juggling the online channels so far? Per SimilarWeb analysis reported by Laurie Sullivan's Data Insider article, some candidates like Republican Ted Cruz have opted to put more into paid search, yet, so far, those increased search dollars aren't necessarily paying off in site traffic. For example, Cruz, who spent more on paid search than other presidential bidders, reaped the second lowest percentage of search traffic to his website, only 11.28%, behind Democrat Hillary Clinton's 26.95% or even Republican Rand Paul's 19%. Fellow Republican Marco Rubio does get less from search than Cruz, with a mere 7.43% of traffic and most of that (92.87%) organic rather than paid, but Rubio claims the majority of his website traffic from social media, about 25.98%. Meanwhile, Democratic candidates and causes may be interested to learn that 22.72% of Hillary Clinton's website visits come from referrals, mainly from Politics1.com and Mashable.com. And if your campaign is curious to know where to troll for supporters on the web, note that visitors to hillaryclinton.com tend to visit sites in the interest categories of auto buying, computer and electronics, business and industry, and law and government, while marcorubio.com fans distinguish themselves by also frequenting sites in categories such as people and society, and religion and spirituality. For more, go to http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/248182/political-campaigns-and-the-race-between-social-s.html

Hillary's Campaign Logo: Follow the Arrow to Action

Hillary Clinton launched her presidential bid with a new campaign logo: two blue pillars with a rightward-pointing red arrow between to form a capital H. Social media wits, graphic design critics and political pundits may scoff, but a recent Target Marketing magazine article points out why Hillary's logo and its arrow could hit the political marketing bull's-eye. The article cites research from Bounce Exchange, for example, which has found that adding an arrow to online call-to-action improves conversion by 22%. So Hillary's campaign is placing her logo in crucial spots to aim eyes toward her comments and CTA requests to volunteer and donate now, and presumably to vote down the road. It's too soon to say that it's working, but the logo isn't hurting Clinton's drive to stay ahead of other candidates in converting followers and inspiring social engagement. Read more at http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/hillary-clinton-demonstrates-cta-know-how/1

In Political Races, E-mail Lists Outpace Social Buzz

E-mail beats social in political races. At least that's the takeaway from The Washington Post political blog, The Fix, which recently asked veteran digital campaigners for advice on 2016 strategy. The experts' advice can be summed up by Laura Olin, who previously was the outbound director of social media for Obama's reelection and now is a principal at Precision Strategies: "E-mail is still the largest driver of fundraising and a volunteer program. Social is a drop in the bucket compared to that." Nick Schaper, former director of digital media for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and now the president and CEO of Engage, agreed that "e-mail is still the killer app." In reaching potential voters and donors, e-mail offers broadest reach (85% of American adults over the age of 18 use e-mail), rich targeting (data firms have built detailed profiles around e-mail addresses), and a way to directly re-contact the best prospects for more support and dollars. However, the digital marketing pros also urged campaigns to embrace social media. A basic social presence today is key to conveying legitimacy as well as organizing. "Social is obviously the best place to take advantage of network effects, like people getting their friends to do stuff for us," Olin pointed out. And for both e-mail or social networking, making it mobile-friendly is now essential, they all agreed. The outline of a good mobile strategy per Schaper: "Making sure that people can donate with one click. Making sure they can encourage their friends to do the same. Making sure that they're storing credit cards when appropriate. Making it easy for folks to give when they want to give, because that moment's going to pass." For the whole article, read http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/02/13/in-politics-a-great-e-mail-list-still-trumps-a-buzzy-social-media-account-and-its-not-close/