#john laschinger

[politicsofsocial]

Expectations. That is what will win or lose a debate, the expectations that people have of you going into them.

John Laschinger

[politicsofsocial]

How Social Translates to Results

This past Thursday (November 13th) I had the privilege to be in the audience at a presentation given by John Laschinger. For those of you who do not know, John is one of the leading political campaign organizers in Canada and has been in the industry for over 30 years. In his presentation, John shared some insights into how he uses social media, and how its use has been effective in his own experiences.

Most recently, John Laschinger was the campaign director for Olivia Chow's mayoral race against the likes of John Tory and the infamous Rob Ford. While his social media campaign, particularly on Twitter and Facebook, was by far the effective (garnering Chow hundreds of thousands of likes and followers vs. a few thousand on the competition's end) they still lost out on election day. The real question is why?

John seemed to think that though social media is a great way to create buzz and share content that typical journalists may not necessarily find "newsworthy" , the amount of interaction and engagement that you have with your follower base does not always correlate with votes.This was especially prevalent in this campaign were Chow used social media to connect mostly with younger voters, who engaged with her heavily over social media but did not actually go out and vote.

One of the real issues with using social platforms as campaigning tools then would be to somehow link engagement to real votes. One suggestion, which is the same one often given to encourage younger people to vote in general, is to offer an option where people can choose to vote online. While we may not be at a point just yet where this is possible, it is certainly in the cards for the future. So what do you guys think? Is social media a viable campaigning tool? And what about offering online voting (i.e. through Twitter links)? Let me know!