by Julie | Mar 2, 2016 | 2016 Election Social Media, The Lens Blog
Super Tuesday was as exciting as expected! Here is my take on the campaign’s social strategies, which builds off a piece I did yesterday for Portada and a MocoSpace Community Voter Engagement Study Lens released last Friday. My biggest takeaway from a social-marketing-lessons-learned perspective was on the Democrat side. Basically, what’s coming out of the Bernie Sanders camp is really interesting from a content perspective. The Bernie team has done an excellent job of using authentic and issues-based content to spark engagement and even get his community to create content for him. It’s an Obama-like movement aka “Yes We Can.” This has led to some messaging and content that really stands out and has helped Bernie Sanders build an engaged community and war chest of more than 40 million in donations just in February. Here’s a shout out to one of the best Spanish Latino-targeted campaign videos I’ve ever seen aimed at Mexican Americans. It was made by David E Rojas, part of an Austin, Texas collective of artists working to create videos for Bernie: But as Super Tuesday showed, Bernie Sanders doesn’t seem to have cracked the code on getting votes. One supporter summed it up perfectly, “you need to vote, not just say you are.” The “We got so many tweets, likes etc. But they bought zero, they didn’t sign up” is something every social marketer struggles with. Translating social interests and engagement to conversion is hard and often takes some not as exciting, backroom tech and data activities: building up proprietary data on fans, continuous engagement/management of these contacts and giving your organization access to the data they can actually use. Here is...
by Tom Young | Feb 25, 2016 | 2016 Election Social Media, Research, Social Research, The Lens Blog
60% of multicultural gamers have had no recent contact from a campaign As 2016 heats up, mobile gamers are following the election and engaging with candidates via social media, despite being largely ignored by campaigns. That’s a top finding in a MocoSpace Community Check-In conducted by Social Lens Research. The survey had 2,351 completes and was fielded last weekend, February 13 to 14 without an incentive. The respondents were 46% white, 31% African-American and 16% Hispanic. MocoSpace is a top mobile gaming community with more than 50 million users. This diverse community represents digital-first populations who live online, are eligible to vote and plan to vote in above average numbers.They are highly active on social media, and widely broadcast their views to their networks. And they are a growing part of the electorate. Gamers are expected to grow to close to 56% of all Americans in 2016, and mobile games are played weekly by half the likely voting population. A third of likely Democratic voters play daily. Key Findings: Opportunity To Increase Engagement: MocoSpace Community members are watching the 2016 campaign carefully. Seventy percent read campaign stories via social media at least occasionally, 31% frequently. But 60% have had no recent contact from a campaign. African Americans The Most Engaged: More voted last time [83%], more are registered to vote now [87%], and African Americans are most engaged with the campaign on social media. And they are solidly for Hillary Clinton – 54% more likely than the general population. Hispanics Not As Engaged: Least likely to be registered, not as committed as African Americans to Democrats or Hillary Clinton....
by Tom Young | Feb 1, 2016 | 2016 Election Social Media, Social Media Monitoring, The Lens Blog
Eyes On Iowa You can measure social media, but can you take it anywhere? Presidential campaigns have their first contact with actual voters Monday night in Iowa, and we might get our first real clues what’s going to work in the 2016 election, the first campaign expected to top a billion dollars in digital media spending. Print media used to alternate two election day headlines, “It’s Up To The Voters” rotating with “Turnout Is Key.” Covering social media in the buildup to Iowa is more all over the place. Many metrics are known, but how they win results if at all really is still up to voter turnout, and for whom. The leading candidates in both parties are pursuing very different social media campaigns. Incredibly Loud & Not Even Close? CNET labeled Donald Trump an “anti social media god” after his recent Iowa debate withdrawal. He dominated social media during and after the debate, and the night brought him 31,000 new Twitter and 17,000 new Facebook followers. But a study going from last March into January shows Trump may have not gained a lot from his numbers: “we were able to not only measure a campaign website’s number of shares through social media, but also see the top retweeted tweets that were authored by the campaign. On these metrics, Donald Trump was abysmal. Although his website was shared more than 61,000 times, Cruz’s website was shared more than 580,000 times.” – Lara M. Brown, Associate Professor, George Washington University Democrats...
by Tom Young | Dec 31, 2015 | 2016 Election Social Media, The Lens Blog
2016 is here, and visions about election tech’s’ next big “It Girl” are everywhere. And all over the place. The Washington Post’s Philip Bump ran through the many prophecies in a piece titled “Why 2016 Will Not Be The Snapchat election” – pointing to visions of the Meerkat election, the Periscope election, and the Facebook election, while somehow missing theSkimm election. Ahead of any actual votes there is a large dose of subjectivity in anointing both tech and candidate winners. Media rating of who is “winning” Instagram has brought us two Trumps and a Clinton, your mileage may vary. We may not yet know precisely how, but campaigns are doing many interesting things, and the leap in smartphone use Pew found since 2012 [from 46% to 64% of adults] means vast new playing fields for whatever does end up the tech politics winner. The big numbers come with some caveats. Old people vote more, but you may only reach the 27% with smartphones. And while Pew found 85% of phone users under thirty have smartphones, almost half max out on their data plans frequently or occasionally, which may damper enthusiasm for watching politicians for hours on Periscope. Some 2016 unknowns are legal. A company doing digital fundraising for Bernie Sanders failed to persuade the Federal Election Commission to modify its disclosure requirements for mobile phone ads, which threaten to be larger than the ads themselves. Revolution Messaging asked that telephone mobile advertising be treated like other media where the Commission has found its own disclosure rules impractical because of size or other reasons. But the FEC deadlocked 3 to 3, making no...
by Julie | Nov 9, 2015 | Conferences, The Lens Blog
Social media can have a big impact on small businesses. Unfortunately, it’s not just about publishing a few posts and nice graphics. To really stand-out on a small business budget, your business has to understand its target customer, build great content and take a bit of a guerilla marketing approach to build experiences and programs that foster community and credibility. Here is what I have seen work in my own business and also via the research I do monitoring social media and mobile marketing trends. Below is a high-level summary of my recent Business Bites 2.0: Marketing On A Shoestring session. The session was put together by the Greater Washington Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and Rhode Island Avenue Main Street to help DC small businesses to leverage social media to grow their businesses. STEP ONE: Get to know your industry space before you market Define your target customers, the competition and what’s working well in your space. Craft stories that exemplify why your target audience should choose you and your business. This will drive the content and marketing actions you’ll invest time in. Top Tips: Your target: Take a highly targeted approach to understanding who your customer is and refine your message and marketing efforts to maximize communication. What motivates your customer? What are the use cases for your product? Who influences your customer the most? Why should they care about what you do? The competition: Understand the competition so you can stand out and be noticed. What social accounts and tactics do your competition use? Which are working? Are there gaps in what your competition is doing? Is...
by Julie | Jul 6, 2015 | Research, The Lens Blog
A new Social Lens Research study conducted in partnership with MocoSpace, a top gaming community, highlights that marketers who offer deals, contests, localized content and optimized mobile experiences have the opportunity to better reach and generate mobile commerce sales among Millennials. Mobile commerce is gaining traction amongst Millennials, 35% of respondents purchase via mobile phones today. Millennials that purchase on their phone do so regularly, 91% purchase monthly. In order to accelerate mobile commerce adoption, marketers have some clear opportunities to improve the ad content and mobile commerce experience; 64% say none of the mobile ads they see usually are relevant or useful; only 9% feel that companies offer a great experience once they click on an ad. Given how mobile savvy and active MocoSpace Millennial users are, the feedback is telling: optimizing mobile ads and commerce experience is still in the early stages. Key findings from the study include: The current state of mobile commerce: Millennials are starting to shift spending to mobile. Those that shift to mobile buy regularly and spend significant amounts. • 35% of all Millennials surveyed buy via phone currently • 23% buy via the mobile internet • 18% use an app to buy on their mobile • 91% of mobile commerce users purchase monthly • 30% of mobile commerce users purchase over $50 monthly via their phone Increasing mobile commerce adoption will require a mix of more useful and relevant mobile ads and an optimized mobile commerce experience. Discovery: Big opportunities exist to increase the relevancy and usefulness of mobile ads by using smartphone features to customize, increase the entertainment value and localize...
