Social Media in Campaign 2010

• Ben Smith, POLITICO, moderator
• Mindy Finn, EngageDC
• Adam Conner, Facebook
• Sam Arora, Democrat for Delegate (MD)
• Philip de Vellis, Murphy Putnam Media
• Matthew Hindman, The George Washington University

Honestly, I didn’t find the discuss as enligtening as Google’s panel on the state of online advertising–I find social media to be a nebulous field–but I did come away with a few take-aways. Mainly, do start a Facebook and Twitter page (is there anything else?) for your candidate. Do so, before someone outside of your campaign does. And learn the differences between a Facebook profile, a Facebook page, and a Facebook group; they are very different animals with very different administrative options.

Here are the others:

• One can’t talk about social media and politics w/o mentioning Sarah Palin.
• Instead of focusing on traditional media outlets, some misguided candidates obsess over Google Realtime and no-name blogs.
• It’s important to have the political candidate manage at least some of his or her own social media updates.
• “Everyone loves authenticity until they don’t.” Authenticity is a hairy matter in social media.
• Enterprising politicians can use Facebook friendship to engage their constituents.
• The median political candidate has 200 followers on Twitter and 1,500 friends on Facebook.

Oh, and I thoroughly enjoyed that Facebook and GWU choose to use Livestream for this event. As an aside, I was pleased to find the service also worked on my Android phone while on 3G.