Go Where The People Are
Recently I’ve teamed up with three different people on three different projects to offer my advice to new politicos looking to launch aggressive web campaigns. It’s very difficult to organize so much into something so streamlined and organized. My thoughts are often all over the place because I’m used to thinking about a specific strategy and how to build tactics using various mediums, but while teaching a seminar a couple weeks ago, a young lady asked me “where should campaigns spend the most time and effort?”
It’s hard to think about just one medium and how it can singularly be used for success. That’s like asking how to win a football game with just a wide receiver and no backs.
Lately my thoughts have centered on Facebook. I love Twitter and YouTube and I have a renewed obsession with Google, but I always come back to Facebook. I think its because over the last few days I sat and watched my mother-in-law spend every free minute on the social network.
I don’t think she’ll mind me louding her out. All her friends saw her there anyway thanks to the snappy little chat feature in the bottom right hand corner.
A recent study showed that it didn’t matter if a person did or did not regularly read a print newspaper – they all are now more likely to get their news from online. A 2008 poll revealed that 80 percent of Americans over 17 say that the Internet is “a critical source of information.”
Here’s the big news folks – as people move toward the web to get their news, they are staying there to connect other people, something that cannot happen with television or direct mail.
According to Nielsen, “member communities” (social networking and blogging) are now the fourth most popular Internet activity, even surpassing personal email. Also, time spent on social networking and blogging sites has grown by three times the rate of the rest of the Internet. In terms of time spent, between December 2007 and December 2008, Facebook saw a massive increase of 566 percent. It’s not just teenagers and college students, either.
Facebook launched in 2004, primarily as a place for college students to get together, get in contact with each other and find students of a like mind. In the past six years, it’s grown and expanded, and now most new Facebook users are middle-aged.
Like my mother-in-law, people are spending much more time on the social networks and as I tell my clients “go where the people are.” People visit blogs, and watch videos, and even fly with little twitter birds, but they play on Facebook. That’s where they get hooked.
That’s what I told the young lady who asked me where to spend the most time and effort. A smart Internet strategy utilizes many mediums, but if you’re going to concentrate on just one, go with Facebook.