Social Media or Microtargeting and Engagement? Political Strategists Contemplate 2012 Net Strategies

Political strategists are debating whether Facebook pages and friends can really be turned into the ground troops needed to win a national political campaign or whether more sophisticated marketing technigues based on microtargeting and engagement are required. The answer, of course, is both. The discussion, such as it is, ignores the fact that Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media provide the raw material from which targeting strategies can be derived. That said, this provides a useful preliminary insight into some of the thinking going on in preparation for next year's US Presidential campaign. Ben Smith at Politico comments:

"Micah Sifry thinks the importance of social media has been exaggerated and the real digital frontier is microtargeting and engagement:

Based on conversations I've had with a range of Republican and Democratic online political strategists over the past few weeks, the conventional wisdom of the moment is wrong. Facebook and other third-party social network platforms aren't the central battlefield. It's data and targeting and figuring out how to use online strategies to enable motivated volunteers to identify, persuade and get out the vote.

The truth is that in the sure-to-be hard-fought election of 2012, Obama has two current advantages. He starts off with a huge lead in online infrastructure -- a massive installed base, if you will -- and thus in useful data. Even if his 13-million-member email list has gotten old and open rates have declined, which they undoubtedly have, he still towers above the rest of the field in the raw size of his contactable base. Nothing that any of the Republicans currently entering the presidential contest are doing online comes close. No one else, for example, has a my.barackobama.com-type platform (aka myBO), where supporters are enabled to create their own blog, fundraising page, or organize house parties or online groups -- and where all the resulting engagement data provides the campaign's managers with an incredible trove of information about people's level of interest and activity