Thursday, July 19, 2012

The politics of Twitter

Earlier this month, we posted an infographic breaking down the political lean of different social channels. Here's one that does basically the same thing for Twitter. As confirmed in the last infographic, Twitter leans to the political Right.

While you're thinking about Twitter, be sure to follow us @PolitiKlout!

Click image to enlarge.
Via mainstreethost.com

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Targeting influencers on Twitter vs. brand advocates

Jay Baer’s Convince and Convert published this infographic which compares influencers with brand advocates on social media. Mediabistro's "AllTwitter" explains:
As the infographic explains, influencers are the high-tech version of celebrity endorsements. They are characterized by large followings and usually require an incentive – such as money or free products – to support your brand on social media. 
Brand advocates, however, are highly satisfied customers who take it upon themselves to promote your brand because they genuinely value it. They are trusted by 92 percent of consumers, while influencers are trusted by only 18 percent.
Though, Lauren Dugan goes on to say that this study shows that "influencer outreach is overrated," we would argue that the term "influencer" is just oftentimes misused or misunderstood. Certainly, as the term applies to national celebrities like Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh, influencer outreach will most likely prove fruitless.

But what about niched influencers (people who are "celebrities" about a specific topic - like Chris Brogan)? Or influencers within a geographic area (like a local newspaper, or a well-respected politico)? While it would prove a monumental effort and achievement to get attention from, or the endorsement of, a national-level celebrity, the same isn't necessarily true of local, relevant influencers.

We'd also argue that if brand advocates are trusted by 92% of consumers, they are influencers about that brand.

Favorable tweets or retweets from your local paper or a well-respected figure within your county's party could potentially have as much impact in a local race as anything you might receive from a national level celebrity any way, and they're a lot easier to acquire. As we say at PolitiKlout, targeting matters.

Still, it's important to understand the difference between a brand advocate (or ambassador) and an influencer.

Click image to enlarge. H/T All Twitter.

Friday, July 13, 2012

What's the most effective type of digital marketing?

Texting, apparently.

According to this infographic from Mogreet, 84% of Facebook news feed stories aren’t viewed, 71% of tweets get ignored and 88% of emails go unopened. Yet, 98% of text messages get opened. So, in theory, companies that market through SMS/MMS have a far truer reach.

Thank goodness PolitiKlout offers texting solutions in addition to social media outreach alternatives. But as a general rule of thumb, we'd advise that you not assume everyone's using the same platforms - and so a comprehensive digital marketing strategy is necessary.

Click on image to enlarge. H/T Mashable

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

The political lean of different social media

As the infographic (found on Mashable) indicates, users of services on the left of this chart are more likely to vote for Obama, while users on the right are more likely to be Romney supporters. Services higher on the chart have more politically engaged voters, while those on the bottom have more politically disengaged users.

Click image to enlarge...

The take-away here, is that the largest social channels (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Google+) are relatively politically centrist, and pretty politically engaged. Meaning, the oft-encountered myth that the internet is dominated by the political Left is just not true. These social channels are the new age battlegrounds for political hearts and minds, and any campaign would be ill-advised to neglect using social media to engage constituents.

Monday, June 18, 2012

PolitiKlout teams up with the Atlanta TEA Party and Peach Pundit to offer Georgia Ethics Text Poll


In May, the Atlanta TEA Party and Peach Pundit teamed up with PolitiKlout to determine views regarding the upcoming T-SPLOST vote.  We had hoped to run the poll 3 times before the election.  However, with multiple polls recently out on T-SPLOST, we have decided to poll the issue of gift caps for lobbyists instead.
To participate, text “ethics” to 28748
Do you support ending Georgia’s practice of unlimited gifts to legislators from lobbyists?
A) Yes
B) No
C) Undecided
ONE PHONE NUMBER, ONE VOTE.
The poll will run through Wednesday at 5:00pm.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Atlanta T-SPLOST poll puts power of political texting on display

As an interesting display of PolitiKlout's texting solutions, PeachPundit.com and the Atlanta Tea Party Patriots ran a poll on the upcoming Atlanta Regional T-SPLOST set for the July 31st Primary.

As Peach Pundit recently reported, the results are in!

(Click to Expand)
The strong turnout is no surprise when you consider that nearly 300 million Americans have cell phones (about 94 percent of the total U.S. population) and send about 4.3 billion text messages every day, according to the Washington-based trade group, CTIA-The Wireless Association. About 26% of American adults have used their cell phones for political purposes in 2010.

It appears the interest in political texting has local interest here in Georgia as well. The initial post announcing the T-SPLOST poll on Peach Pundit attracted 52 comments (the second-most discussed thread on that site in the month of May). What's clear is that there is both interest in the subject matter and the method of polling.

Indeed, the Atlanta Tea Party appears quite pleased with the level of engagement they received in the poll:


But issue polling is just one example of what texting brings to the table when it comes to political issues and campaigns --- keeping in mind that text messaging campaigns are bipartition. In fact, it is this opt-in nature of text message outreach that leaves many campaigns uncertain. But it needn't be.

In 2008, President Obama built a list of 3.3-million contacts simply by asking people to opt-in when they attended events and by asking people to opt-in to be the first to know whom his vice presidential nominee would be. Sadly, someone leaked it to the press shorty before it was announced via text message, taking away some of the impact. Still, the engagement was there.

And political use of texting didn't stop in 2008, and it doesn't look to slow down any time soon. 

U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt put “Text JOBS to Blunt” on his campaign RV. Meg Whitman, candidate for California Governor, had a text-message trivia contest where she asked which California college baseball team had won the most College World Series wins. If you entered the contest, you could win a "Whitman for Governor" baseball cap. Senator Scott Brown sent out a text message to his supporters minutes before his opponent was going on the air for a talk radio show, essentially probing his base into action in a very public way.

An early study showed that political text message reminders increased a new voter’s likelihood of voting by 4.2 percentage points. That difference in voter participation can mean the difference between an election victory or a loss

Text messaging is just one of the services PolitiKlout offers to help political campaigns. If you would like more information about our other service offers, please visit www.PolitiKlout.com.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Most of TIME's 100 most influential using social media

"Influence" is a funky mistress, as a recent Klout review of TIME magazine's top 100 most influential people reveals.

“We define influence as the ability to drive action, and we find that keeping up a steady cadence of quality content inspires people to stay engaged with you online,” said Lynn Fox, who wrote the rankings post for Klout's blog.

We suppose that Fox meant "the ability to drive online action," because that's all Klout can realistically measure. Yet, as Mashable rightly notes, just over half (53%) of the TIME 100 even had Klout scores (because they were participating in social media). Still, it is interesting that a majority of the world's most influential people are using social media. It is more interesting, still, that most of those influential people have Klout scores that are indicative of their overall influence, as Mashable notes:
A shift in what drives influence greatly impacted the movers-and-shakers who landed on this year’s list. Justin Bieber is the only person with a perfect 100 Klout score, perhaps thanks to his “beliebers.” Bieber made last year’s Time 100. Other high scorers are Rihanna (95), Lady Gaga (94) and Barack Obama (92) — all on this year’s list. Mashable’s own Pete Cashmore ranks high, too, with a Klout score of 89.
Of course, one would expect the likes of the President and Lady Gaga to have pervasive presences on social media, right? The chicken/egg question here is whether their presence on social media drove their present-day influence, or if they turned to social media out of some sort of perceived obligation to tap every available marketing channel. Klout's blog noted the following:
As TIME Editor Rick Stengel writes in his excellent opening letter, “Before microphones and television were invented, a leader had to stand in front of a crowd and bellow. Now she can tweet a phrase that reaches millions in a flash. Influence was never easier — or more ephemeral.” This is an important statement from a publication that issues the annual barometer of real-world influence.
Not sure if that resolves our chicken/egg dilemma, but it raises a good point - and one upon which PolitiKlout is essentially founded - that social media influence is just an extension of real-world influence. If the relative clout, so to speak, of a Facebook or Twitter user didn't translate into real-world influence, it wouldn't be worth pursing. And so the opposite is true: because the relative clout of a social media practitioner does, in fact, tend to translate into real-world influence, it is absolutely worth targeting and leveraging.

Monday, April 16, 2012

Targeting matters, especially on social media

Targeting matters - and not just geographically. Each social medium has its own community, culture, zeitgeist  and standards. Pairing the demographic data PolitiKlout gives you with known information about certain social media can help you better ensure that your content is being seen by the relevant voters you seek to reach.

To that point, Mashable shared a new infographic today that helps you understand the basic differences of some of the major social media.

When to use social medua
^ Click for larger image ^

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

So, about our logo...

PolitiKlout Logo
You might be thinking to yourself, "What's up with that funky PolitiKlout logo?"

Beats us! We just slapped a bunch of logos on the wall and blindly chucked a dart.

In all seriousness, discussing our iconography might seem to some folks an odd way to strike up a blog conversation - but we think it fits right in with our mission statement, branding and service offerings.

Ultimately, "PolitiKlout" - as a brand - is about targeted political outreach. While it's true that trust in online, social, and mobile advertising is growing, it's also true that word-of-mouth advertising is still the most effective type of advocacy

"But what does that have to do with your logo?" you may be asking yourself.

Everything.

The robot spittle that vaguely resembles a cloud is, in fact, meant to resemble a technological cloud. Don't worry, it's not as nebulous as it sounds. Just as "cloud computing" refers to an inherent and mobile interconnectivity, so too does our cloud-esk logo.

And to what does the "klout" in PolitiKlout refer?

You're no doubt familiar with Klout.com, which provides social media analytics to measure a user's influence across her or his social network. We're big fans - mostly of the idea of tapping social media influence. When 92 percent of consumers around the world say they trust earned media, such as recommendations from friends and family, above all other forms of advertising (an increase of 18 percent since 2007), you have to come to terms with the idea that tapping influential social media users has become a necessary element in any outreach campaign.

When you combine all of these branding elements together, what you have is a service that connects candidates with influential thought leaders - through traditional and social media - for targeted campaign advocacy.

Not bad for hurling a dart at the wall, huh?