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The 2016 US presidential election is still more than a year away, but the battle is already heating up on social media — with some unexpected results.
Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Jeb Bush and the rest of the 2016 hopefuls are busy duking it out on Twitter and Facebook, as well as newer platforms like Instagram, Snapchat and live-streaming tools Meerkat and Periscope. At stake is a lot more than just likes and views. By many accounts, social media helped Barack Obama tip the balance during the 2012 election. (His campaign spent 10 times as much on social media as did Mitt Romney’s, earning Obama twice as many Facebook Likes and 20 times as many Retweets). Political pundits are already predicting that social media may rival traditional ads for influence in this election cycle.
The result has been a social media frenzy, with candidates from all backgrounds eagerly jumping in and trying to get their messages out. The quest to stand out from the noise has led to some pretty creative experiments on the part of the 2016 presidential class. Sometimes they get it right. Sometimes they get it wrong. And sometimes the results are just surreal....
HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes, a Canadian, dissects US political social media efforts and finds some laughs.