The Political Whore

According to the election returns map, Kevin Beckner did pretty well across the entire Hillsborough County yesterday in winning his Democratic primary and a shot at Republican incumbent Commissioner Brian Blair.

His campaign consultant says social networking media played a big role.

This from the consultant today:

First-Time Candidate Used Social Media to Mobilize Primary Voters,
Seal Victory Against Better Known Competition
* * *
Kevin Beckner Taps Micro-Targeting, Video, Social Tools
to Deliver Message on Facebook; Garners 50% Increase in Users

St. Petersburg, FL [August 27, 2008] Any campaign manager can tell you getting voters to the Primary can be an uphill battle.  Equally difficult is finding the budget to do it with.

Hillsborough County Commission candidate Kevin Beckner took his message to Facebook, tapping the network’s advertising and social media tools to build their campaign brands and mobilize the most likely Primary voters.

“It’s no longer about casting the widest net and hoping the few you want respond to a message,” says Brian Bailey of Rearden Killion Communications, the firm handling the Facebook campaign for Beckner, and with the help of Political Consultant Larry Biddle.  “Facebook, allows you to find your target and speak directly to them.”

Facebook advertising tools allow targeting specific users variables including age, gender, education, profession, employer, interests and hobbies, to name a few.  However, the ads themselves can also address specific issues when data is not readily available.

Kicking off in early August, the Facebook campaign introduced Beckner to potential voters by leading with the issues as a means to grab attention and get users to learn more about the candidate’s position. While some ads addressed the Tampa community as a whole, others prodded specific groups such as seniors in college.

In one example, Beckner, used a Forbes article putting the Tampa Bay area behind Detroit in offering opportunity to young professionals as a means to address “Brain Drain” in a video in which he said members of the County Commission “…can’t wait for companies to come here and provide jobs.  We have to go out and seek them.”  That video garnered nearly 700 viewers and some discussion by viewers.

While those numbers may not equal that of TV advertising impressions, it is not even a quarter of the budget for a single commercial.  Equally, Facebook users are not passive viewers, they are influencers and activist viewers that share and discuss what they see.  They end up becoming fans of the candidate and spread the candidate’s message using word of mouth and are the mostly likely to contribute and vote.

The overall three-week effort increased Beckner’s Facebook Group membership by 50% and allowed Beckner to build a social army that was called on to help give videos, news, announcements and action items more legs.  When he received endorsements by both the Tampa Tribune and St. Petersburg Times, the campaign reached out to his Facebook Group members and asked them to post the news items to their new feed.  If a mere 10 members with modest 50 friends each posted the news that introduced Kevin’s campaign to 500 new people.

Rearden Killion also created a Facebook Application that allowed fans to show their support by putting a campaign button on their pages. When added, the buttons provide a link to the candidate’s fan page and notifies friends of users that they have become a fan of the candidate.

“In the end, it’s about spending less on traditional advertising and letting the voters spread your message within their online social network,” said Biddle.  “It’s a real mix of public relations and advertising that gets results overtime – in Beckner’s case, success within a few weeks.”

[Disclosure: Larry Biddle is the domestic partner of CL Editor David Warner. David played no role in the creation or editing of this blog post.]

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