According to ClickZ, a recent report  by research firm PQ Media on political ad spending reveals that direct email accounted for roughly 80 percent of the $40 million spent online by political advertisers leading up to the current midterm elections. This strategy makes perfect sense since political marketers can leverage geotargeting in their direct marketing efforts. Indeed, direct email marketing is an effective tool and she be used as part of any integrated marketing plan, but what about social media?

I have been blogging about social media for a little over 3 months now and I have noticed that there aren’t many bloggers talking about the need for politicians to use social media as a channel to communicate their marketing messages.  David Wilson, author of the popular Social Media Optimization blog titles one of his postings “Politicians Interested in Social Media” but cites that many politicians talk about social media but never seem to execute a social media marketing strategy.  In another post, David also states “Just as corporations need to create and execute a social medial marketing plan, so do politicians running for office.” I completely agree with David. As social media is almost mainstream, it’s imperative for politicians to penetrate this exponentially growing channel.  In today’s politics, social media probably won’t have too much of an impact on the results of an election; but I anticipate that it will be a tremendous opportunity for future incumbents to tap into a new demographic.

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