From time to time, team members will share their views stimulated from a piece by an industry thought leader. Here, one of our Digital marketing strategist, Kim Figor, discusses the importance of understanding how social media is impacted by external factors and the role demographics plays.
Many advertisers have been making predictions for over a year on how social media will be impacted by the presidential elections and how the elections will influence social media. I too have been watching these trends closely for the past year. One of the best articles I have seen is Clinton v Trump: Why the 2016 Presidential Election will turn Social Media into a War Zone, by Erwen Zhu, Student at University of California, Berkeley as it talks directly about the cause as opposed to only the results.
In his article, Erwen Zhu breaks down the demographics behind social media users and compared them to 2012 while pointing out how these demographics are different from 2012 and what that will mean for social media and political campaigns in 2016. When considering what appear to be clear-cut differences in the demographics between Clinton and Trump, I truly appreciate the significance Zhu put on these dissimilarities.
Why? Over the last several weeks, I’m experiencing drastic changes in social media performance, mostly in Facebook. Although I was prepared for some change in performance, honestly, the degree to which this happened on some campaigns took me by surprise. In a couple weeks, look for another article by me where I will give some tips and how to prepare for any external factor that can impact your campaign success.
