The goal for us was to make sure that we were providing people information on all of these different social networks so that if they never came directly to our website or signed up for our e-mail list, they still knew that the campaign was reaching out to them.
The treatments for each of these social networks may be different. It may be that sending out three bulletins a week on MySpace might be all that the folks on MySpace want. But if you've signed up for the Barack Obama Twitter feed, you want information from us at least once a day.
I think that a challenge for organizations moving forward is to figure out how much information supporters want and where they want that information. Do they want it on their phone? Do they want it from their Facebook account? Do they want it on e-mail?
Let's say Barack is appearing on a late-night TV show. If you send it by e-mail, by the time people check their e-mail, the show could be over. Different types of announcements now warrant different types of communications.
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Is text-messaging geared to a certain niche?
It obviously skews younger. But 262 million Americans are using mobile phones. That's roughly 84% of the total population. It's one of the fastest-growing industries in the U.S.
And with the decline of TV viewership audiences, I think it's a must for campaigns to be using mobile technology. It's the only device that's truly with people for 15 to 24 hours a day.
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kate.linthicum@latimes.com
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