SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Social Media — tracks feedback from leading marketers about social media practices and issues.

Last week’s poll question: President Barack Obama announced his 2012 re-election campaign through Facebook, YouTube and text messaging instead of traditional media outlets. Do you think social media will play a major role in this election cycle?

• Yes — 89.21%
• No — 8.27%
• Not sure — 2.52%

We saw it first in the 2008 and 2010 elections — and now we are seeing social media take even more prominence in the 2012 elections. It wasn’t much of a revelation that President Barack Obama used social media to spread the word about his re-election campaign, given his campaign history, but to not announce something so significant on national television first, demonstrates a radical shift from mass media to the one-on-one communication model.

Television was always perceived as the most influential channel of political communication. Now, the social Web may be taking over that title, since diverse individuals of all ages spend their time online to connect with others, share ideas and voice their opinions.

But, could relying on social media too much have disadvantages as well? I would say this is my main concern, and I doubt I am the only one who worries about this. Since political leaders have been accustomed to broadcast-only media for so long, I am not quite sure if many are ready for the authenticity, openness and two-way dialogue that social media requires.

In 2008, Obama used social media exceptionally well because he understood the technology and the power of the social Web, as well as its remarkable communication capabilities. Many believe the strategic use of social media helped Obama topple Republican nominee Sen. John McCain. Although social media has changed considerably since 2008, I don’t doubt that the president and his staff have a terrific social strategy lined up. However, are other candidates ready for the challenge?

Many political leaders and their staffs are still at the embryonic stage with their social media presence. Also, the more popular the social Web becomes, the more people will expect political candidates to authentically engage by addressing issues and answering questions, and not just delegating their social media engagement on to their staff. The social Web is not a broadcast-only medium and failing to interact with constituents is no longer an option for any political leader.

Do you think political leaders are social media ready? Have your political views changed due to social media?

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Just weeks after the shooting in Tucson, Ariz., brought calls from politicians, pundits and members of the public to re-examine the tone we use to engage one another in political debate, it took just one unofficial response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address to get the fighting words flowing again.

Nowhere was this seen more clearly than on social channels. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., utilized YouTube to deliver her response to Obama’s speech — separate of the official GOP response from Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan — only to see many commenters take to social networks to fire back. Facebook reported that in the hours leading up to Obama’s Tuesday night address, social chatter was more focused on Bachmann — for better or for worse.

WebTrends looked at conversations about the speech across a variety of social media mediums, finding the economy as the leading topic, with education, military matters, innovation and health care all coming in behind the 10,000-plus hits the top topic drew in the 24 hours after Obama’s speech.

CNN’s coverage of the State of the Union looked at Twitter’s trending topics during the speech, using them as a sort of instant analysis of the Obama speech by the public at large. But going beyond a raw number of mentions and actually grasping the tone of what is being said is much more difficult, notes ChicagoNow.com writer Fernando Diaz.

“What was interesting was to see how few people actually cared about the State of the Union,” Diaz writes of the CNN Twitter trend compilation, which showed topics such as the Apple iPad and Katy Perry receiving a higher number of tweets than those mentioning the State of the Union address.

Perhaps political discourse can’t prosper online in less than 140 characters, despite efforts by Republicans and Democrats to flood social media channels before, during and after the speech.

Several lawmakers, including Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., posted thoughts on their Facebook accounts during the speech, allowing for a level of access to power that may be changing the game, despite the issues of indifference on one hand and partisan fervor on the other.

Inhofe, like many others, planned ahead for the president’s speech, choosing to go beyond merely disagreeing with the president in his own words, but also putting up links to past Obama speeches or government documents to drive home a point.

While Obama’s campaign successfully used the Internet, and social media specifically, during the 2008 elections, most are willing to admit the Republicans and other political groups have caught up in terms of their ability to use such tools to great effect.

“The Internet is a medium for challengers. It’s a medium to disrupt the existing power structure,” Republican digital media consultant Patrick Ruffini told NPR. “Inherently speaking, a decentralized online movement is going to be frustrating to people who have the power, and the White House is the very definition of power.”

Image Credit: Bosphorus, via iStock Photo

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Having more Facebook connections is far from the same as having more votes — several high-profile candidates with larger Facebook communities lost last night — but having the capacity to create and nurture those ties goes a long way toward keeping the base fired up.

David All Group Vice President Jake Ward says that right now, Facebook isn’t being used to connect with every last voter — it’s being used to stoke the passions of true believers who will then go out and act as evangelists, rallying others to your side. Ward estimates that social tools are great for connecting with the roughly 1% of voters who are most engaged in your contest. Those people can be used to make your case to another 9% of the electorate — giving you a solid base of highly engaged supporters that you can mobilize to win over the rest of the crowd.

“It’s like that old joke: Why are you preaching to the choir? Because that’s how you get them to sing,” he says.

What does that have to do with corporate social-media marketing? Ward argues that the two are more alike than they are different, because they rest on common principles of building reach, engagement and empowerment. “The key to both … is finding your brand activists, the people who already believe in what you’re selling,” he says.

Of course, there are meaningful differences, he notes. Brands are harder to relate to than politicians. All manners of jokes about politicians being out of touch with the real world aside, these are still human beings with stories and passions and ideas that can touch and inspire people in a way that logos just don’t. Policy positions aren’t usually very exciting — but the reasons why a political leader will embrace a given policy can be riveting, because they’re often tied to real human experiences. Brands can tap into that power by using social media to tell the story of how and why they do what they do.

But that’s only half the battle, Ward says. The best politicians — Ward points to President Ronald Reagan — have a knack for telling stories about others as way of explaining the importance of their policies. Rather than just making it about themselves and their ideas, great politicians can turn the script around and make the campaign about the voters. If a corporate brand wants to be able to tap into the power of storytelling, it needs to be able to do the same thing, refocusing on how the brand affects its customers.  Social tools can be a powerful way to collect and then share those stories. “It’s about the way a product makes you feel,” he says.

Not everything from the world of politics can be adapted to corporate social-media marketing, however. While politicians often “go negative” and run adds attacking each other personally, such tactics would be a hard sell for corporate social-media marketers. Communities tend to spring up around common passion that can unite and inspire people. “I’m not so sure that works in reverse,” Ward says.

While brands can benefit from studying how politicians use social channels to create narratives, there’s at least one thing that politicians are going to have to adopt from the world of corporate social media, Ward says. “Politicians need to learn to listen more. … When you run for office now, there’s the expectation that you won’t just create the infrastructure to listen — you’ll actually do it.”

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At ER 2.0, Doug was captivated by FrontlineSMS:Medic, a content management system for mobile messaging that’s used worldwide to bring medical care to rural communities. Created by two Stanford grad students on only a few thousand dollars, the software turns a laptop and a mobile phone into a central communications hub — no Internet required.  In Malawi, rural community leaders use Frontline to send texts to the nearest hospital 50-100 miles away.  Text in a drug name, and Frontline automatically texts back dosage and usage information.  Doctors report saving $5,000 per year in fuel costs and are able to care for twice as many patients. Bravo!

Handheld Awesome Detectors: World Changing Mobile Apps spotlighted a couple remarkable technologies making a difference. Ushahidi, a mobile platform born during the turmoil of the 2008 Kenyan presidential elections, crowdsources information during crises.  Kenyans who witnessed or experienced violence during the election sent SMS texts to Ushahidi’s central server.  The central platform then mapped the incident reports and posted them to the Web for viewing by the international community.  Since then, Ushahidi has been used in South Africa, Congo, Palestine, and Haiti to allow citizens to document and report violence in places where police can’t or won’t.

Also in that session, Doug was impressed by The Extraordinaries an on-demand volunteer service which matches willing helpers with small bits of extra time (think: 10-30 minutes) with charitable organizations.  Via their iPhone App, volunteers can sign-up for a variety of tasks such as translating a single Web page, mapping healthy eating places in a neighborhood, or tagging photos of disaster areas to find missing persons.  Recently volunteers applied 80,000 tags to 8000 photos from Haiti.  Those efforts located 700 missing persons and led to 24 family reunions.  That is awesome.

Rebecca was blown away by the presentation How Telemedicine is Healing Haiti by High Alert International Publisher John Hedtke.  Telemedicine is a collaborative mission, with doctors in the field teaching teams back home what to expect, and experts at home base doing legwork on research and analysis for field personnel.  The cameras they use are “whole telemedicine suites in your hand,” said Hedtke.  Although they require low bandwidth, the camera feature plug-ins that interface with medical equipment for monitoring vitals, touch-screen drawing, and two-way VOIP with built in speakers and mic for voice, messaging and videoconferencing. And if you can believe this, they also interface with digital records systems and are HIPAA compliant.

Truly inspiring mobile technology indeed.

Image Credit, Stephen VanHorn, via Shutterstock

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I turned to Colin Delany, Founder/Editor, Epolitics.com and author of Learning from Obama: Lessons for Online Communicators in 2009 and Beyond and How Candidates Can Use the Internet to Win in 2010 to start today’s conversation about social media in politics and how it overlaps with what we’re all experiencing in the business world.  To kick things off:

Colin, can social media give challengers — be they political underdogs or upstart business competitors — a real leg up?

Absolutely, social media tools are a perfect fit for underdog or insurgent candidates and companies. Since they’re cheap in terms of money, they work well for organizations with more time and enthusiasm than cash on hand.  Plus, they connect a campaign or company directly with its potential supporters or customers without going through some kind of intermediary or filter. Social media channels provide a straight path to people’s hearts and minds.

And since social tools aren’t as trackable as, say, TV commercials, they can let a company operate a little more out of the direct public eye.  Look at Scott Brown — he built his base via personal appearances, email, Facebook and Twitter without his Democratic opponent even realizing it until it was too late.

How important is integrating social media across all aspects of a campaign/organization, rather than isolating the responsibilities within one department?

Integration is absolutely key for social tools, both with other online tools (email is still the killer app for political communications, for instance — Obama raised 2/3 of the money he took in online via email) and with a campaign or company’s broader communications and outreach.  Each tool on its own may have a limited effect, but used together they tend to reinforce each other.  It’s a big mistake to think of social media in isolation.

Social tools also seem to work best when they’re integrated across an organization rather than being confined to a defined “online team” (or worse, the tech team…).  Encouraging employees and customers to use social media makes each one of them an ambassador in the online spaces they frequent, and can help to put a human face on a brand.  They also can help a company or campaign spot trends in the public mind before they show up in sales or votes. Of course, many companies and organizations find it hard to cut people loose to speak in what is effectively a public space — training and clear expectations are vital.

And now, your turn: what social media takeaways from the Massachusetts senatorial race will you point out to your boss or client?

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Last week’s SmartPulse question: Has the use of Twitter in reporting news of the Iranian election and uprising changed your attitude toward its importance as a tool for crisis communications?

• It has improved my perception of Twitter as a critical tool for crisis communications, 46%
• I’ve always thought of Twitter as a useful tool for crisis communications, 24%
• I don’t view Twitter as a valid tool for crisis communications, 14%
• My opinion has remained unchanged, 12%
• I have no opinion one way or another, 4%
• It has lowered my opinion, 0%

“Twitter is rapidly outgrowing its reputation as primarily a source of inane drivel, but a few holdouts remain even among social media fans. What do you see as the biggest limitations on Twitter for serious conversation and crisis communications? Are they fixable? ” –Mary Ellen Slayter

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