Ever since Obama set the trend by using social media for his online fundraisingcampaign
in 2008 there has been a surge of politicians using the Internet for
fundraising. The 2012 elections is about to take the internet by storm.
President Obama “announced” is re-election bid via digital video that
reached 13 million of his supporters and tied up with none other than
Facebook to hold a town hall meeting to answer questions from both in
person and “online attendees”.
Having learned their lesson since 2008, rivals and contenders have
hopped on to the social media wagon. The benefits of taking your
political fundraising campaign online stare at you in the face; you can
reach a wider audience in a cost effective way, engage more discussions
and field more questions than possible with in-person meetings and
political rally’s. Yet, most importantly, fundraise for your campaign
online and monitor progress by tracking the number of followers online.
Politicians now understand that rallying support to get them elected is
not just visiting small towns in middle America for fundraising but also
becoming savvy with social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter
that has most of the country’s young and old hooked!
An article in the Associated Press by Beth Fouhy is calling this
“Welcome to the Social Network, the presidential campaign edition”.
While this is great news for politicians and supporters alike, taking
your political fundraising campaign online also makes you vulnerable to
an uncomfortable level of transparency. Get ready to be inundated with
more rhetoric as the presidential elections gain momentum online.
I bet no one thought that limiting your message to only 140
characters would actually be sought after by politicians, huh? With
little or no control over messages that are distributed via social
media, the slightest slip-up could work against the campaign. And with
the world of politics being murky as it is, there will be a lot of
controversy and mudslinging to watch out for with very few avenues for
damage control.
Also, the next presidential election campaign will see those that
have used online fundraising tools before get more sophisticated as they
use new tools and innovative online fundraising ideas for political fundraising;
and there will be a many new and first-time online fundraising users
who will leverage social media to get their message out to voters. With
the presidential elections just around the corner, there will be many
more political fundraisers to watch out for.It seems like ‘Viral Fever’
will be inevitable this upcoming presidential election!
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