Purchasing Power of Social Media

February 25, 2009 by Steve Schultz @GeniusbyOsmosis
Filed under: Campaign Technology, Social Media

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I was pilfering through my Google Alerts today and found some interesting stats I had never seen. We all are well aware of the success of the Obama campaign with social media. The numbers though are astounding if you look at four of the major social networks.

These stats were compiled courtesy of Jeremiah Owyang’s blog.

Internet Usage in United States

United States Population: 303,824,646
Internet Usage: 220,141,969
Penetration rate: 72.5%
Growth from 2000-2008: 130.9%

Stats from Internet WorldStats (Census, Nielson)

Facebook

Obama: 2,379,102 supporters
McCain: 620,359 supporters
Obama has 380% more supporters than McCain

MySpace
Obama: Friends: 833,161
McCain: Friends: 217,811
Obama has 380% more supporters than McCain

YouTube
Obama: 1792 videos uploaded since Nov 2006, Subscribers: 114,559 (uploads about 4 a day), Channel Views: 18,413,110
McCain: 329 videos uploaded since Feb 2007 (uploads about 2 a day), Subscribers: 28,419, Channel Views: 2,032,993
Obama has 403% more subscribers than McCain
Obama has 905% more viewers than McCain

Twitter
Obama: @barackobama has 112,474 followers
McCain: @JohnMcCain 4,603 followers*
Obama has 240 times more followers in Twitter than McCain

Obama won the Presidential elections.

We were not just beat, we were left in the dust. Imagine if each individual that was following contributed just $100 to his campaign. Just from Facebook, MySpace, Youtube, and Twitter, assuming no repeat users, Obama would have raised $343,929,600! Let’ look at the actual dollar amounts raised according to the Federal Election Commission.

Obama raised a total of $744.9 million | McCain raised a total of $346.6 million

Here is how it happened. If you check out FEC.gov you’ll see breakdowns of donation amounts. 45% of Obama’s total contributions were $200 or less. Guess what the amount was….$334,636,346; very close to our previously calculated $343,929,600. Obviously the assumptions behind my calculation are inaccurate but I have read that President Obama had around 8.5 million followers across all social networks & his website. That would mean each follower would only have to contribute $39.37. That’s not much. Again, this is based on the assumption that those who donated $200 or less all followed online.

This is the power of social media.

On the other hand, contributions of $200 or less for McCain were merely 18.5% of his overall contributions.

It is blatantly clear that social media is a powerful and progressing force in the political arena and NO candidate on any level of government can afford to ignore or underuse these tools.

Furthermore, NO candidate can afford to use them incorrectly.

By leveraging social media tools in your campaign…no matter the level (local/state/national) you will raise more money, reach more people, increase your capacity to influence others, and position yourself such that you will always know what your constituents want.
That’s a winning formula.

How Obama Will Use Web Technology (techcrunch.com)
Social Media and the Presidential Election – Obama 4 times more visible than McCain (webmetricsguru.com)
Snapshot of Presidential Candidate Social Networking Stats: Nov 3, 2008 (web-strategist.com)

Tags: campaign contributions, campaign finance, facebook, mccain, myspace, politics, president obama, Social Media, social networking, twitter, youtube

Comments

One Comment on Purchasing Power of Social Media

cherie on Wed, 25th Feb 2009 11:05 am

Obama knowing the internet will not make him a better president, just give him more in common with my generation and the younger generation. This election was more like a pagent than an election. There is not enough real information out there, and what information most of the populace gets is twisted.

We have to do a better job of communicating or we will end up a failing socialist government devoid of our superpower status.

But the republicans will do well to remember that greed and nepitism brought us to this point also. Building moguls and corporate empires can cripple us as much as socialism. Balance is the key.

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