FB as a training ground

By Maria Ortiz Perez
June 8th, 2010

I absolutely loved Mark Leccese’s blog post regarding the use of social media tools like Facebook (or FB as cool people now refer to it) and Twitter in political campaigns.

For the longest time I thought these tools were used by procrastinators and voyeurs at worst and journalists and policy wonks at best. But then I started working at this think tank and was given the task to start blogging, and using FB and Twitter as tools to reach my audience. Eighteen months later, I am happy to report that these tools have proven extremely useful at my job, and I am still in awe by their power and our current ability as a society  to spread the word, contact people and advance an agenda in a massive scale.

A couple of examples on Leccese’s blog : President Barack Obama sent news from his campaign to 13 million Americans and raised $700 million through online social media tools  (and these 13 million people accounted for the 19 % of the 67 million who voted for him) .  Scott Brown’s campaign sent targeted online ads and Web-based spreadsheets, and raised $12 million from 157,000 individual donations in the last two weeks of the race.

Leccese also focuses on our gubernatorial candidates: Governor Patrick is leading the way with FB “likes” (about 13,000 likers), Baker goes second with about 9,600 and Cahill’s is last with about 3,400. And on Twitter, Baker has more than 2,000 followers, more than three times as many as Patrick or Cahill. The cool part is that in Baker’s case, he is actually doing some of the tweeting (or at least it looks like he is).

These tools are relatively new (FB was launched in 2004 and Twitter in 2006) and although one might be tempted to still think that only teenagers, intelectuals or geeks use them, the story that Leccese tells us is a real one.  He writes:

” According to The Internet’s Role in the Campaign 2008 by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, more than half of all social media users — or 14 percent of all adults — “used these sites for political information or to take part in the some aspect of the campaign.”

To take advantage of these tools is a no-brainer for gubernatorial candidates.  In this day and age of social media and 24/7 online presence, candidates have to be fast, smart, fierce and creative to spread their message. When you think about the challenges the new Massachusetts governor will face in the coming 4 years, getting trained in the social media field might not a bad thing.  Some creativity, fierceness and quick action will definitely be needed.