Utilizing social media effectively
Posted Oct 3, 2011 2:53 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Social media is being creditted for yet another successful political campaign — the Progressive Conservative Leadership victory by Premier-designate Alison Redford — but an industry consultant tells 660News that utilizing forms of social media effectively isn’t just a matter of coming up with a name for a Twitter account.
“It’s not just something that you can throw up a Facebook page, or create a profile, or a Twitter account and then just expect it to take off,” says Consultant Mat Wright of “The Wright Result” of Victoria. “It takes a great deal of work to engage with people on social media to actually create some kind of buzz around there.”
Wright adds there’s a reason why social media is becoming increasingly influential in election campaigns.
“About 77 per cent of households in Canada” (that) “actually have some kind of internet line coming in, have a social media account. They’re either on Facebook, which is the most prevalent platform right now, and increasingly on Twitter. Social media now is no longer the realm of geeks or really, really techo-savvy people. It’s become mainstream. It’s part of the overall media environment that we have in Canada.”
In recent years, forms of social media have been creditted for election victories by the likes of U.S. President Barack Obama and Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi. But Wright says it’s not just so-called progressive politicians using social media, pointing to the Harper Conservatives use of social media as another success story.
