Is social networking having an impact?

Over the last few months I have been doing hands on research to see what affect social networking can have on a candidate running for election.

I approached a friend, who decided to run for office for the first time and offered to manage her website and establish social networking sites.

Some positives for the experiment and negatives for the candidate:

• She was relatively unknown in city, small business women who had a few book keeping accounts and worked part time.
• She had never run for office before.
• She was running against another first timer, but his family was well known in the city.
• She was running as a Republican in what was predicted to be an election which would be dominated by the Democratic Party. The results are now history…

She already had a website so I:

• updated the format and added widgets to make it sticky (provide a reason for people to return)
• Added a poll to involve guests
• We placed recent updates on the main page to alert visitors of changes
• Included pictures of events

I also created a social networking site on Facebook and created a Twitter Account. The sites were updated at least three times a week to keep them fresh and current.

The results were amazing. Although she lost as a result of the state wide democratic sweep her district had one of the closest races for state representative. All three republican candidates lost the election to their democratic competition in her city. Here is how the results played out: District 22: 30 point spread, District 77: 11 point spread, District 79: 49 point spread. Yes you guessed it my candidate was in district 77 and the only candidate with a website and incorporating social networking tools.

My experiment demonstrated that when you add social networking tools to what you are doing there will be an impact on the results. It is easier for people to find, research, and stay connected with you and what you are doing.