Can Campaigns Tap Instagram's Growing Clout?

Social media's political strategy has been so dominated by Facebook and Twitter that campaign marketers may have missed the swift rise of another social platform: Instagram. Thanks to a post by Aaron Blake on The Fix blog of The Washington Post for pointing out the growing political potential of Instagram. While Facebook still corrals the most Internet users, Instagram's photo-sharing service has now surpassed Twitter in terms of total users, per the Pew Research Center's 2014 data. More significantly, Pew found that Instagram's demographics skew strongly toward younger voters (53% of 18- to 29-year old Internet users), minorities (38% of African-Americans and 34% of Latinos, compared with 21% of white Internet users) and women (more women use Instagram than men). Those are the groups that made up the supposed "Obama coalition," and both Democrats and Republicans are courting them for a 2016 win. So no one should be surprised that, in his recent State of the Union address, President Obama concluded his praise for astronaut Scott Kelly's yearlong stay in space to prep for a Mars mission by telling Kelly, "Make sure to Instagram it." Campaign marketers may want to take the hint and start planning how to reach Instagram's key voting blocs by sharing some persuasive images. For details of Pew's social media data, read http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/02/04/why-the-two-parties-need-to-figure-out-instagram-now/