Social Media: Our Most Powerful Election Tool

Back in the days BSN (Before Social Networking), political candidates needed millions of dollars for their campaigns. They needed funding for TV and radio commercials, postage/mailings, flyers and more. The only way they could get the word out to people was by old-fashioned footwork and using snail-mail, hiring kids to distribute flyers and more.

Social networking has changed the playing field drastically. You could even say it has leveled that proverbial playing field forever. With one brief post or tweet, a politician’s message can reach thousands of citizens. For free.

The “community organizing” Left created the entire medium. Young Mark Zuckerberg originally started Facebook as a means to attract girls in college but he quickly realized the power his invention and has been using it as a political leverage ever since. President Obama regularly tweets and as a way to reach out to the young people in America, including this recent instant classic:

“Health reform—still a BFD, and now it’s on a t-shirt:OFA.BO/z7FP8M
—
Barack Obama (@BarackObama) March 24, 2012”

The Right, busy working and raising families, was slower to discover the importance of social networking–but during the SB-1070 debacle in Arizona, Governor Jan Brewer was able to gain nationwide support through social networking; her Facebook page grew from a few thousand people to almost 500,000 in a very short time.

Two of our strongest Conservative voices are Ari David and Stephen Kruiser.

Stephen is a twitter expert, social network and new media guru who has lent his expertise to corporate and political clients and speaks regularly about new media to numerous organizations across the country. Currently Stephen appears regularly on the Fox News show Redeye and hosts Kruiser Control on PJTV.com. He can also be heard on the weekly podcast Planet Kruiser.

Ari David is an entertainment industry professional and former political candidate who utilizes new media platforms. Ari has extensive expertise using Facebook as a social networking and online presence platform. He used new media to promote events while working in entertainment promotion at the Friars Club in Beverly Hills. As co-producer of the Original Panic Disorder Comedy Show, Ari helped make it one of the top comedy shows in the Los Angeles area.
Together, Kruiser and David have created a new company to help all of us take full advantage of the most powerful tools available to us via social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and others.

Their company is called Victory New Media Solutions and it was created as a way to get not only our Conservative candidates but also all of US into the political game 100%.

For me personally, although I’m very consistent about taking care of my two Facebook pages, I honestly sometimes forget about my Twitter account. I felt bad about neglecting it because Twitter is currently one of the best, fastest ways to get our message to thousands of people. So I recently tried Victory New Media Solution’s service and my underutilized Twitter account grew from 500 followers to over 3,000 in just a few weeks and it is continuing to flourish. (@PolitiChickAM)

I recently spoke to Ari David about his company and the importance of social networking.

A-M: Ari, not too long ago the only networking-type tool regular Americans had was e-mail. How are social networks like Facebook and Twitter changing the game regarding small business and politics?

AD: No blogger, business or political candidate should be without a strong and professional social media presence. It used to be that when promoting or getting people to think about something we could rely on binary promotion or public relations but now that we live in an online world of true information democratization and have to accept that our customer bases are much more informed, we now have to use social media tools to build trust and start conversations. I get my clients to think in these terms and instead of talking to or at their customers, to start talking with and listening to them. I want my clients to truly engage their customers. The bottom line is that social media tools are nothing more than tools to build trust. I am most enthusiastic about seeing my clients grasp this and prosper from it.

A-M: How did you and Stephen Kruiser create your company?

AD: Stephen and I started Victory New Media Solutions because of our own experiences. Both of us are entertainers and we both struggled with the realities of that business which is always getting noticed. Using Facebook and Twitter we overcame many of the problems people in the entertainment business have from getting noticed to getting message out to our fan bases. Stephen in fact wound up becoming a regular on the Fox News show Redeye because they found him on Twitter.

When I ran for Congress in 2010, I raised the majority of the money for my campaign on Facebook. After that, we both decided that we had something special to provide to people who needed to use social media the way we both did and that’s how the company was born. We started the company because helping people use social media is something we are both good at and we love doing it.

A-M: So what’s your ultimate goal?

AD: Our goal is to provide customers with a high quality service that increases their Twitter follower numbers and trains them on how to use social media most effectively what their situation is. People are overloaded by information about how to use web sites and computers so we seek to simplify everything where we can and have the customer focus on what is truly important which is facilitating and optimizing basic person to person conversations between a person and their customers that others get to witness on social media sites. That’s the essence of it.

A-M: How is Victory New Media more effective than advertising in a newspaper or periodical? How can someone’s tweets make a difference?

AD: To reach a customer in the past, one would advertise to them. In the world we live in now, too many potential customers are way too savvy to just believe some message or spin coming at them. Instead a customer either wants or needs to be listened to or to hear word of mouth reviews from someone they trust. Social media gives people the opportunity to spread word of mouth and gain trust by interacting in a conversation. When you see how someone interacts with other potential clients online and they do it well, you trust them and are more likely to amplify this to people that trust you.

The disadvantage about this is that it can take a little longer but the upside is infinitely better. The upside is that in the social media driven world, one can establish real trust with people, which goes way beyond brand loyalty. That’s what we want to get for our clients, real trust for them from their customer or fan bases.

A-M: What type of responses have you had so far?

AD: Overwhelming positive response! People are so intimidated by the rapid changes that the Internet world goes through that they are really excited when they find out about us. What we do to distinguish ourselves from other people who do what we do is we focus on authenticity. We are not a technology company and we don’t try to pretend or act that we are smarter than our customers. What we do is tell them that we know things about social media because we use it every day and we simplify as much as we can for them. The customer is overwhelmed by what they need to get done and don’t need another level of complication added to their existing workloads so we try to make things easier for them. The reaction our customers give us for this approach is thank God!

If you, your business or someone you know wants to build your social networking pages and reach as many people as possible this election season, please check out the Conservative-based Victory New Media Solutions and let’s get the word out there as much as possible!