Tracking the presidential election with social media

With just weeks until the 2016 Elections in the U.S. it is clear that this cycle has become the social media-driven elections.

No matter who you support, who you despise or who you wish would just "be quiet" there is an endless supply of Twitter tweets, Facebook posts, Instagram images and YouTube videos to variously inform, annoy or enrage. How to make sense of it all? 

First, decide if social media can help you stay informed. If the answer is "no" you can just stop here. But if the answer is "yes" then here are a few suggestions: 

Twitter
• Follow a popular hashtag or hashtags: Some popular hashtags this election season include #election2016, #debates, #debates2016, #trump, #clinton, #donaldtrump, #hillary, #vote, #nevertrump, #hillaryemails
• Explore some new hashtags: There’s an exhaustive list of hashtags (Warning: some are NSFW) on the Top-Hashtags.com website.
• Create a Twitter list: This is simply a way organizing the Twitter "firehose" so that it is more manageable. In other words by viewing a list you are only seeing the tweets of the people you place on that list and not all of the people you follow on Twitter. (For more how to create a list see Using Twitter lists from Twitter). Who should be on your list? A good place to start is adding the Twitter accounts of the candidates, their proxies and their official campaigns. After that add people you think are informative and helpful.

Facebook
• Like the pages of all the major candidates: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Jill Stein and Gary Johnson
• Like the pages of the political parties: Green, Libertarian, Independents, Democrat and Republican. • Use the filtering functions of Socialfixer to exclude certain kinds of posts. Although this article from ZDNet talks about using Socialfixer eliminating all political debate from your Facebook feed, the same principles can be applied to cut down on certain types of content in your feed. See How to filter politically sanctimonious Facebook posts from your news feed. 
• Use the USA Today/Facebook Barometer to gauge which candidates are doing better or worse based on Facebook activity (likes, shares, mentions).

Others
• Follow the Instagram accounts of … Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Gary Johnson and Jill Stein
• Subscribe to the YouTube accounts of … Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump 

I hope this is an useful primer. Please feel free to post other social media tips around the elections in the comments.

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Social Media and Politics Makes for Odd Bedfellows

Social media listening – it’s time to commit to it

What is social listening (and why commit to it)?
In a nutshell it is paying attention to what is being said on social media, but obviously it’s more than that. 

It starts with social monitoring – or collecting every social mention and action relevant to your organization, brand, purpose etc.

After monitoring comes social listening – this requires analysis and reflection on what has been gathered. It also means watching for patterns, tracking sentiment and drawing conclusions based on where and when conversations happen.

So why should you commit to social listening? Among the things it can do:
• Improve customer care
• Learn about opportunities – business and otherwise
• Get feedback on products and services
• Identify your influencers and advocates
• Discover where your community hangs out

How to do it:
• Monitoring – what people are actually doing, not just what they say they are doing, on social platforms and the web in general
• Listening – separating signal from noise; determining importance and relevance
• Interpreting – what does it mean to us now? In the future? Do we see a problem we can solve for a customer?
• Taking action – turning data into insights; acting on those insights

Manual steps (free):
If paying for monitoring tools that simplify social listening is not in your budget there are free things you can do:
• Plan to listen: Set aside time (daily is best) to search on keywords and/or hashtags that relate to your business, its name, its products and services and the industry you’re in.
• Plan to respond: Have a document that spells out how you will respond on social to both the good and the bad comments etc. about your organization. This should include how you can redirect people to helpful online resources or be helpful in other ways. Also, have conversation starters ready to use with influencers and others who are interested in your industry.
• Plan to follow up: When you have jumped into a conversation be sure to follow it to a natural conclusion … and be timely (in other words don’t allow more than a day to elapse between responses – much less time if you’re dealing with any kind of crisis communication).
• Plan to document: Keep track of who you have interacted with and when. Complete a monthly summary of this activity and its benefits to your organization so you can send it to your boss so a higher-up will understand the value of spending time on this.

Paid tools:
There are a lot (see "Resources" below). Here’s what’s important in whatever tools you use:
• Learning curve: How hard is it to get up and running on the app/software?
• Data collection: What kinds of data can be collected and how customizable is this?
• Reporting: How is the data reported and can it be manipulated by the end-user for inclusion in reports?
• Historical reporting: In addition to the regular reports how does it aggregate data and report it over extended timeframes?
• Planning: Does it allow any kind of “what if” scenarios that show how changing one action might affect results?

So, there you have it, social listening is clearly important for anyone on social media. The question is to what extent your organization should commit to it…. I’ll address that in a future post.

Do you have thoughts on things I may have missed? I’d welcome your feedback.

Resources:
• 6 Social Media Monitoring Tools to Track Your Brand
• Top 8 Social Listening Tools That Do Way More Than Listen
• A Wiki of Social Media Monitoring Solutions

In Review: 2012 - The Year of the Social Image

2012 saw big developments for platforms sharing images

The year 2012 in social media will be remembered for a lot of things, but the No. 1 thing? It was…

The Year of the Social Image

Pinterest: It’s rapid growth began late in 2011 and rocketed through 2012. In many months it experienced 400 percent growth month-over-month. The site that features images of cute cats and delicious cakes became a huge time-suck for millions. The final seal of approval? The White House joined Pinterest in December.

Instagram vs. Twitter: Facebook bought Instagram and it was probably only a matter of time until Facebook/Instagram wanted nothing to do with rival Twitter. In early December the relationship was over: Why Instagram pulled its photos from Twitter. Then Twitter launched its own set of photo filters

Facebook: The world’s largest social network introduced automatic photo syncing which was a worry for some (Facebook automatic photo sync: 3 reasons to say "No thanks") and no real cause for concern for others (Relax, Facebook’s Photo Sync is an opt-in feature).

Viral videos: We couldn’t get enough of some videos this year and YouTube was the beneficiary. From South Korean entertainer Psy and his 'Gangnam Style' to 'KONY 2012' it seemed video sharing just got more popular by the month. For a good wrap up of the year’s top viral videos see CNN's top viral videos list.

Snapchat icon

Snapchat: This mobile social network is where friends share images (snaps) that disappear forever (its icon is a ghost ... get it?) after just seconds. In a world of perfectly controlled social presences this idea sounds crazy, but it is catching on. It’s now used at least 30 million times a day according to Forbes: Snapchat: The Biggest No-Revenue Mobile App Since Instagram. But a growing concern in late 2012 was that although the images disappear from Snapchat there is no stopping anyone from grabbing a screenshot and sharing that … forever (See: “Snapchat Sluts Hit the Internet on New Website”).


Other 2012 social media developments

Facebook:

• The social network went public and quickly lost money for founder Mark Zuckerberg and lots of speculators: Zuckerberg loses half his personal fortune in market slide as shares go for $18.75.
• Facebook was the subject of a widely circulated, viral hoax that seemed to imply users could add copyright to material they posted to Facebook.
• The ubiquity of the social network became unquestioned in 2012. For example, 80 Percent of Social Network Users Prefer to Connect with Brands through Facebook, according to Kevin Jorgensen, on the Business 2 Community blog.

Twitter:

• The network surpassed 500 million users.
• It has the highest percentage on mobile with 50 percent of users accessing Twitter on a mobile device. 
• It became an important player in conversations around the November elections: Election 2012 Breaks Records with 31.7 Million Political Tweets.

Hurricane Sandy proved how helpful social media can be: From self-organized clean-up crews organizing around social media sites to social media make helping personal it was clear that the super storm had created a deluge of social media responses. The good that came from this included government agencies realizing that they can now listen in real time to the needs of citizens and weather forecasters realizing that in social media they can find out what’s happening on the ground.

More generally it became clear that government agencies and entities of all sorts can no longer ignore social media, according to Elaine Pittman at the site Government Technology: 2012 was the year that using social media to reach citizens became business as usual.

The growth of social media continues to be staggering. For a good wrap up on social media in 2012 see Brian Honigan’s piece on the Huffington Post: 100 Fascinating Social Media Statistics and Figures From 2012.

So what big social media events and happenings are missing here? What other social media news from 2012 will you remember?

A social media - Twas the night before Christmas…

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

The only thing stirring was the click of a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that social media St. Nick soon would be there;

The children and adults were nestled in beds,

While visions of Facebook danced in their heads;

Would mentions of iPad on Twitter be met

With stockings stuffed with tablets once hard to get?

Would discussions of smartphones for using Linkedin,

Bring gifts of devices with keyboards, but thin?

Would plus-oneing that post about the spirit of Christmas

Help earn us the gifts we circled on Google+?

Would favoriting a YouTube video about Christmas afar

Help to deliver that coveted DVR?

No, it seems good old Santa may be unaware

Of our postings to networks both here and there

What his spirit seems to say about material needs:

Christmas is not about you, but about your real deeds

So as you sit with loved ones perhaps by a fire

Consider again your real social media desire

Is it followers, friends, business leads or even money?

Or is it helping others, giving often … even being funny?

You see giving is easy on social networks – they’re free

You really have no excuse not to give … times three

Next time you sit down to network or share

Tweet, share, like – but make sure that you care

Because the true Christmas miracle is giving not getting

Be sure to give more than you get in a social setting

Spreading goodwill in deed both big and small

Will help spread the spirit of social Christmas to all

Merry Christmas and goodwill to all!

Offering social media thanks

Thanks for the great platforms that make social media part of every day of my life.

Thanks to Twitter for being my No. 1 source of news – and this from a guy who worked for more than 20 years in the newspaper industry!

Thanks to Linkedin for hosting such great groups – places I learn something every time I check in.

Thanks to Facebook for allowing me to stay connected to people I would have lost touch with years ago.

Thanks to YouTube for showing me aspects of life and this world I would otherwise never see (and the fact that so much of what I see on YouTube is funny doesn’t hurt either).

Thanks to foursquare for getting me to explore the planet – or at least whatever part of it I happen to be on at a given moment.

Thanks to Social Media Today for being the best aggregator of serious and accurate insights into the developing world of social media for business.

Thanks to Mashable for being the quickest and flashiest aggregator of news about social media.

Thanks to Alltop for allowing me to set up a social media feed tailored to my particular interests.

But, most of all, thank you to everyone I interact with daily, weekly or ever on social media you teach me so much and make every day insightful – I can’t thank you enough.

Related post:
A Social Media Feast for Thanksgiving

Pardon the Phrase, But You Need to Avoid the Social Media ‘Quickie’

You glance across the crowded room and there he/she is: Surrounded by adoring fans, looking fabulous and giving you – yes you! – a sly look. This tempter/temptress glides your way and before you know it you’re leaving the party for a brief, perhaps rapturous encounter with your new best friend.

At some point we have all fallen to the temptation of a “quickie” – perhaps not of the sexual kind, but perhaps of the eating kind (that fast food burger when real food would have been a smarter choice) or the entertainment kind (that episode of The Real Housewives of New York when a far more informative and useful episode of Nova was on the local PBS station).

But if there is one place businesses and individuals should stay clear of the “quickie” it is social media. Trust me on this: No good can come of it.

So let’s acknowledge: Yes it can be exciting to jump into the metaphorical social media bed with a few well-known social networking apps. But businesses especially need to stop and ask: “How will I feel in the morning?’

Yes those apps that everybody seems to be drawn to – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube can look very attractive and easy to conquer. The makeup is just so, the curves/muscles are just in the right place and, well, you’ve been hearing so much about social media that at this point you may be wearing the virtual “beer goggles” and blind to some of the potential problems.

So how to avoid the social media morning-after regrets? Try asking yourself these four questions:

1. Should you think twice before jumping into bed with someone you haven’t built a relationship with?

2. Are you prepared to become deeply involved and ready to deal with the long-term commitment and consequences?

3. Is this something you have time for at this point in your life? Your business? Your career?

4. Can this new relationship fit into your existing relationships or will the old ones suffer because of the new?

Answer “No” to any of these and you likely are not ready for social media. As in life social media relationships take work.

What other relationship questions would you ask yourself before deciding to jump into a particular social medium?

Possibly related post:
10 Ideas to Help Business Navigate Social Media