Why Social Media Can’t Win Swing Votes

Adam Hanft is a regular blogger for CNN, AOL News, The Huffington Post, FastCompany, and The Daily Beast. He is also the co-author of Dictionary of the Future and is founder and CEO of the marketing and branding firm, Hanft Projects.

The 2012 election is supposedly set to showcase how well candidates understand and leverage the deep nuances of social media and the endless amounts of big data available. Political strategists believe they will identify what people really care about through dazzling algorithms, connect like-minded voters, and weave politicians into the social warp. Just like that, the magic will happen. Minds will be changed and politics will somehow be reshaped by this medium.

Or so the argument goes.

The reality is that Facebook, where President Barack Obama and Presidential Republican nominee, Mitt Romney are battling it out for fans and attention, is in the midst of a struggle. In fact, you may have noticed that a funny thing happened smack in the middle of this era-defining digital presidential campaign: Facebook's stock got slaughtered.

It got slaughtered because their growth in advertising revenue looks more like Greece and less like Google. Since Facebook is a proxy for the role of social media in the 2012 campaign, we need to look under the hood to determine the real value of social media in politics.

How useful can Facebook advertising really be to the presidential candidates and other public figures? On the day I wrote this column, the Facebook ads that appeared in a vertical parade on my wall included:

• For the president, from Michele: "Let Barack know you're with him. Sign his birthday card now!" (Note that the First Lady is a victim of the profligate use of the exclamation mark.)
• From Romney: "Click like to stand with Mitt." (Wow, that's convincing.)

Get the point? Not exactly a stature-raising platform. These postage stamps of presence will work — at best — to activate some partisan followers on both sides. But no one who isn't at least somewhat invested in a candidate will be moved by one of these ads. The candidates' Facebook page can be used to identify those willing to volunteer, to get out the vote, and to do phone-banking.

Not to say that isn't important. Energizing the base is important in an election that is more static than it is dynamic. A recent poll shows that 90% of the public already knows everything they need to about President Obama, and 69% feel that way about Romney.

But that remaining 10% — which could swing the election — is pivotal. And they need something dramatic to move them. Facebook's shrimpy real estate isn't conducive to operatic marketing in the way that traditional television is. An emotional TV commercial — like Reagan's classic "Morning in America," which was brilliantly dissected in Drew Westen's book "The Political Brain" for its ability to tap into deep neural associations and metaphors — packs a permanent punch and creates an affinity that a superficial "like" can't equal.

Another real issue with Facebook advertising is that it's integrated into the overall Facebook experience. And the gestalt of that experience is largely soft and squishy. Do you really want to put rough, negative messages in that environment? I don't think so.

So Facebook has some utility for collecting and organizing fans, and raising some money. It's important, yes, but not the promised land of creating and shaping candidate brands. What about the other social media sites? YouTube has social qualities, and a candidate might want to promote their telecom regulatory policies on the "Call Me Maybe" video page. Blue State Digital, the firm behind much of Obama's 2008 campaign, proudly notes on their website that, "Over the course of the campaign, users spent more than 14 million hours watching more than 1,000 Obama campaign-related videos on YouTube. All told, the campaign's videos garnered more than 50 million views and 1.2 billion minutes of view time."

But how many of those were confirmed Obama supporters and died-in-the-wool haters? I don't think many undecideds go to YouTube to gather the information that will help them make up their minds.

Twitter is even less effective as a medium for shifting opinions. It's largely an echo chamber. Only a few masochists and those with low blood pressure follow those they disagree with, which is essentially the point made by Eli Parisier in "The Filter Bubble" and Nicholas Car in "The Shallows."

Pinterest doesn't even accept advertising, and while candidates will use it, it's more a statement of their with -it-ness than anything that will have a material impact. Ann Romney was first on Pinterest, and when Michelle Obama finally joined in June, Gawker noted that Anne Romney was "dominating" the platform. However, The First Lady has passed Mrs. Romney by with 37,220 followers versus 9,897.

These are tiny, meaningless numbers, although each decision on which pinboards to follow is politically freighted. The Romneys were clearly willing to become target practice for Letterman/Leno/O"Brien when their strategists decided that of the 11 "boards" Mrs. Romney is following, one of them should belong, unsurprisingly, to Kraft Recipes. Michelle Obama keeps her favorite pinboards limited to safe Democratic causes, but if she chooses to broaden out, there is no shortage of arugula options.

So where does this leave us? The Internet and social media are incredibly powerful for raising money; for connecting policy positions with those who care; for whipping the base into a froth, and giving them tools — blogs, tumblrs, tweets — to spread the word. That's important and I'm not minimizing it.

But when it comes to the mega-business of persuading people to change their minds, or re-consider a candidate or a belief system they had otherwise rejected, social media still has a lot of convincing to do.

Thumbnail image courtesy of iStockphoto, pagadesign