Social beats cash: a local campaign case study
It seems like we're miles away from an election right now, but the next local polling in England might just be the social media election we didn't quite get in May.
Stephanie Noble describes a local election in Newark, New Jersey and the role that social media played in getting an 'underfunded', underdog candidate a place on the city council. Since she's a social media consultant, we probably need to take it all with a teeny grain of salt and there are certainly questions I would ask about ROI of certain tools.
However, she does describe a whole array of social media tools including the first use I've heard of Foursquare (a location based game) in a local campaign. I doubt Foursquare would work in the UK, but since it began in New York it may have greater penetration in a city just across the river. She describes how they measured penetration of messages using link-shortening service (bit.ly) and includes certain measures of success on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube.
In the end, her candidate won by just 11 votes. A squeaker! In hotly contested races, social media may just provide the edge.
