As a self proclaimed social media fan, I am always interested in how different organizations utilize the social networking websites at our disposal. Since we are closing in on one of the most important elections in history, I was curious to see how successful the different social media tools have been for Barack Obama and John McCain.
I first checked both candidates’ Facebook pages, and I was not surprised to see that while John McCain has a respectable almost 600,000 supporters, his number pales in comparison to Barack Obama’s 2.2 million supporters.
Checking Twitter told me that John McCain has almost 4,000 followers, while Barack Obama has around 105,000. Obama has nearly 800,000 friends on MySpace, and McCain has almost 200,000 (and he makes it pretty hard to find that number…I had to sign up for a MySpace account just to track it down).
I don’t think many would be shocked to hear these numbers considering polling results show that younger voters are overwhelmingly in favor of Barack Obama. It’s no coincidence that it’s also the same age group who primarily use social media websites. Obama’s camp is taking this knowledge and using it to their advantage by actively particpating in as many social networking sites as possible. McCain’s camp is also doing some campaigning on sites such as LinkedIn, Flickr, and Digg, but not with remotely the same success as Obama’s.
While the candidates are using these social networking tools in extreme proportions, most businesses aren’t run on the same scale. However, even though the scale may be different, the core concepts remain the same. Using sites like Twitter, Facebook, or MySpace could be extremely beneficial for your company’s brand awareness.
Even if you only have 100 followers on Twitter compared to Obama’s 100,000, that is still 100 people that may have not been aware of your product/service last year. It’s not something that is going to happen overnight - just consider it your own grassroots campaign.
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