Following on the heels of our recent post about designing a political campaign website, let’s shift focus to another aspect of online promotional tools that are vital to building a candidate web presence: social media.

There are literally hundreds of different online tools that can be described as “social media,” so don’t be embarrassed if you don’t yet have a firm grasp on exactly what it entails.  Basically, social media is any website or Internet program that allows you to meet and share information with groups of people online.

Some of the more popular social media websites include Twitter, Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon, Yahoo Buzz, Reddit, LinkedIn and YouTube, many of which you’ve almost certainly heard of.  Each social media site lets you share information in different ways and with different types of materials: Facebook and LinkedIn help connect friends and colleagues; Digg and Yahoo Buzz let you promote online articles; YouTube focuses on video.

Before you scoff at the idea of using social media in your political campaign, consider a few important things.  Regardless of the size of your district, the odds are that there are many, many more potential voters than you realize who are members of online communities in one or more of these social networking sites.  And there are numerous ways for you as a candidate to become involved in those social media communities and use them to find volunteers, donors and votes for your campaign.

As social media becomes more and more popular, elected officials and political candidates from across the country–and on all levels–are starting to realize the amazing potential that the phenomenon has to drum up support.  Even office holders who were first elected long before the Internet have started to maintain active Twitter and Facebook pages to reach out to constituents and supporters.

Here’s why social media is so perfectly tailored to help in political campaigns: because there has never been an easier way to stay in immediate and direct contact with thousands and thousands of supporters. While political campaign promotion in the past involved laborious tasks such as bulk mail lists and automated phone calls, social media lets you reach out to every single one of your supporters with jut a few keystrokes.

Even email listbuilding, which was an Internet predecessor to social media, isn’t as effective in keeping a finger on the pulse of your consitituents and keeping them updated about your political campaign.

I can tell you firsthand that social media like Facebook and Twitter can help you raise more money and support than you can imagine–with one caveat.  You have to put in a bit of work early on to learn both how to manage your social media accounts, and how to build up lists of friends to communicate with.

And don’t think that you absolutely must have a political campaign website in order to take advantage of social media as a tool to help you win on election day.  Although a website helps, social media can be used effectively by political candidates even if they are running in a small race and can’t afford to hire a website designer.

In future articles here on Killer Campaigning, we’re going to focus on specific social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to tell you everything you need to know about using them to get votes.

Until then, start learning a little bit about social media on your own time by visiting these sites and navigating through them.  Open your own social media accounts and start teaching yourself how to join groups and find friends, and the process of integrating this online networking into your political campaign will be even easier.

I’m happy to see today that the Killer Campaigning Facebook page now has more than 500 fans, and our Twitter page has hit 600 followers.  Thanks to everyone who has become a fan and a follower!

If you haven’t joined us on Facebook or Twitter yet, please take a moment to do so.  We’re going to start running contests and other special giveaways for our fans that won’t be available to those who aren’t subscribed.

Also, please remember to subscribe to the Killer Campaigning RSS Feed to stay updated on our latest political campaign articles.

This guest post was written by Nathan Babcock of Run Smart 2 Win.

“More people watched more video on YouTube last week than watched the top ten shows on network television.” (Seth Godin, Meatball Sundae)

For local campaigns on a shoestring budget, how valuable is a television spot…accessible to the entire globe?  How about a free spot?!

If it sounds good (and it should), then it’s time to take your campaign to the airwaves on YouTube.  More specifically, it’s time to use YouTube Insight to target video messages to the voters and volunteers you need to reach, test the effectiveness of your spots, and fine-tune your campaign’s message to achieve ultimate victory.  Think about the level of detail and strategic value a high-priced media consulting firm would give you for your 30-second TV spot — suggestions for improving your campaign’s message, theme, delivery, and numerous other factors — all supported with empirical data from expensive focus groups, polls, and field tests.

Now imagine those benefits in real-time — continuously updated throughout the campaign — free of charge.

That’s what you get for your online campaign videos with YouTube Insight. Here is the introduction to YouTube Insight last year on the Google Blog:

“…uploaders can see how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions, as well as how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time. You can also delve deeper into the lifecycle of your videos, like how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as popularity peaks.

Insight gives the creators an inside look into the viewing trends of their videos on YouTube, and helps them to increase views and become more popular. Partners can evaluate metrics to better serve and understand their audiences, as well as increase ad revenue. And advertisers can study their metrics and successes to tailor their marketing — both on and off the site — and reach the right viewers. As a result, Insight turns YouTube into one of the world’s largest focus groups.”

Here are a few sample charts from a video I posted to YouTube:

This is just the tip of the iceberg. You can drill-down into each chart, focusing on a particular geographic area if you so choose (e.g. a state or congressional district) or other factors. You can also look at:

• How people found your video (through a direct link, a search, an embedded video, etc.)
• Who is talking about the video through comments (and their demographic information, of course)
• And how popular the video has been over time

Do you remember Frank Luntz interviewing focus groups of swing voters during the ’08 campaign, analyzing their positive or negative feelings towards candidates and their commercials using hand-held electronic dials? YouTube Insight offers that as well in a feature called Hot Spots:

“The ups-and-downs of viewership at each moment in your video, compared to videos of similar length. The higher the graph, the hotter your video: fewer viewers are leaving your video and they may also be rewinding to watch that point in the video again. Audience attention score is an overall measure of your video’s ability to retain its audience’s attention, compared to videos of a similar length.”

If you’re not sold yet on YouTube Insight — or YouTube, for that matter — consider that more people watched YouTube last week than the top ten shows on television combined. Also, consider that many media outlets air campaign ads that are created and uploaded to YouTube. This is free advertising.

The winning campaigns of 2010 and beyond will be the campaigns that utilize the power of online video (of which YouTube is the undisputed king) — and understand the campaign messages and delivery methods that are working through YouTube Insight.

For more information on YouTube Insight, visit the Google Blog and watch this instructional video.