3 Things to Watch as the Digital Side of the U.S. Presidential Campaigns Unfold | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it
From hbr.org - July 16, 2016 3:08 AM

For the 2008 presidential race, Barack Obama hired one of Facebook’s early employees, Chris Hughes, to drive the campaign’s technology strategy. Hughes created social tools that saved the campaign millions of dollars and months of grassroots community building, some of which are described in the book Barack, Inc.


Back then however, Hughes’s contribution helped mobilize a relatively small portion of volunteers, those already familiar with social media — mainly young people and early adopters. It’s hard to remember this considering today’s widespread adoption, but the first iPhone only launched in 2007, a few months prior to the start of the campaign; and Facebook had only about 100 million users then, many of them university students.


Today, three out of four American voters have both a smartphone and a Facebook account. How will technology impact the outcome of the 2016 presidential election? In this article, I review three critical aspects to watch: marketing, operations, and profiling....