How Social Media Marketing Won The Election | Get Fact Up #55

I’m sure you’ve had an earful by now, but let's recap. It’s a dramatic time on the world stage with Donald Trump rising to presidency. It seems as if not only the polls, but every single mainstream media outlet got it wrong. Hillary Clinton was rejected by America in favour of the reality television and real estate tycoon, Donald Trump.

Now before we get started, I just want to say that I think Donald Trump is... um… a bit of a d**khead. Let’s be honest. But that said, his campaign has become a marketing case study for the record books.

Trump's victory may have been a surprise to the mainstream media, but astute online marketers may have suspected this outcome early on.

The biggest clue? Social media presence.

Throughout his campaigning, trump relied on a very simple social strategy - a clear and strong message, delivered consistently using all the modern online tools available.

The Trump campaign acted like today’s successful startups and relied on inbound content marketing instead of the old outbound marketing methods of buying ads, email lists and praying for leads.

Inbound marketing focuses on creating quality content that pulls people towards your company and product, social media is the perfect platform for this. Trump relied on this proven methodology to carry his campaign in the digital age.

We’ve been saying for some time is that there is serious power in the usage of Facebook Live. Live video is something that is becoming invaluable to digital marketing, brand awareness and content creation, and it’s only early days.

Both Clinton and Trump jumped onto this platform in order to push their agendas, but it was Trump who used it much more prolifically.

He was going live up to five times a day in his efforts to bypass the mainstream media and get his message out there. Before long, he was receiving far more positive comments, views and ‘likes’ out of it than poor, ol’ Hillary.

Trump also had a clear lead when it came to social media followers, raking in millions more than Hillary. Trump currently has a total of 28 million connections spanning Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

This gave him a platform to connect with prospective voters and, as he has been quoted saying, “a method of fighting back” to the negative press coverage his campaign was battling against.

Using google trends, we can see the most obvious difference in the candidate's online presence.

Interest in Trump, literally trumped Clinton by a long shot over the last 12 months of the election. Not to mention each of these spikes show that there was a clear favourite after each of the debates and other controversial events.

Through Trumps social media marketing, and of course, with the aid of some provocative sound bites, he ended up generating $5 billion dollars worth of free media coverage over the course of his campaign.

Now, we all know that this is an extraordinary case but there is a great deal for brands to learn from Trump’s social media success. Essentially, it boils down to this: A strong core message, and tireless consistency.

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