Well there off over the next 4 weeks we will be inundated via the television, newspapers on the election from each different political party. Equal billing is given to prevent bias towards a particular party on television but media that is very much in its infancy in the form of social media networking sites such as facebook and twitter has no bias controls.  We will be following it closely of course and keeping an eye on any trends but already we have seen the conservative poster being adapted to suit particular comedy slogans.

The power social networking sites have over some of the other forms of media is astonishing. The ability to target via advertising on these sites to a particular age range or gender for instance is so precise. The campaigns messages can be finely tuned in order to appeal to this particular partys political message. Lets take this as an example a political party had a policy that provided an increase in national pensions a campaign could be set to target this particular age range. The potential is massive and the variables are also long and wide.

Will political parties take advantage of this medium I should hope so if not they really will be losing out. Not only does it provide a up to date image for the party concerned but it helps the message reach people on a daily basis and parties will reach people they might otherwise never be able to communicate with.This election has already been mentioned as having the potential to provide a hung parliament . Do I feel the use of the Internet to market a political party could make the difference between a labour or conservatory victory,  Yes I do. OK you may think coming from a company that provides Internet marketing services that is a hollow message.

You only need to look at the way Barack Obama used his website and email marketing to reach people on a regular basis.

The email inbox, twitter pages and Facebook profiles are the new battle buses in 2010 and the party not taking full advantage of this medium will probably lose the election in our humble opinion.

Social Marketing – Case Study – Claretsturf.co.uk

Beginning life as a totally new domain the idea of the clarets turf forum was to create a base online where supporters of Premier League team Burnley can socialise regarding team news, fixtures and transfers.

Key achievements:  (Achieved in 2009 since October 10^th)

Google Analytics Stats

Claretsturf google analytics

To give you an idea of the power of social marketing and the power it has here are some impressive numbers of visits and page views. Also being a forum there are good average visitor times. As you can see back on the graph back in September the site didn’t exist and has increased as a result of facebook and other social marketing.

We also achieved 1000 plus followers on the facebook forum and this would increase all the time.

We have generated a total number of 230 full time members on the forum. All the members receive a weekly email newsletter.

Traffic sources

We have invested no money in advertising this product via cost per click advertising and this has been totally reliable on Facebook, Twitter and Natural listings.

Claretsturf Traffic Source