There are multiple aspects to creating a successful social media marketing strategy. Setting SMART Goals, tracking meaningful metrics, understanding your audience, and researching your competition just to name a few. But, perhaps one of the most important steps is performing a digital audit of your current and potential accounts. This step seems to be one the Joe Biden election campaign failed to fully review before starting a new campaign slogan of “Todos Con Biden” (All with Biden) to target Latino voters.
Political campaigns, just like any marketing campaign, need to target a specific audience and then utilize available digital channels to create content and disseminate information. In the excitement of rolling out the new campaign slogan the Biden team forgot to audit available social media handles and website URLs. The Trump campaign team was quick to take advantage of the oversite and immediately purchased the todosconbiden.com URL and even created the @TodosConBiden Twitter handle. Instead of a website that should have showed a well drafted political message promoting Joe Biden, the link displays a message of “Opps, Joe se olvido’ de los Latinos” and the translation, “Opps, Joe forgot about Latinos” and several links to the Trump website. The @TodosConBiden Twitter handle simply shows negative videos of Biden’s track record with Latinos and messages linking back to the Trump organization. The reason for pointing this out isn’t to make the reader aware of the current political tension in our country, its to emphasize the importance of making sure your digital team is properly aligned with the rest of your organization. 
As pointed out, the Biden team failed to properly audit all of its digital channels and as a result suffered an embarrassing and costly incident to its brand. In a race where most voters are watching politics on their smartphones and tablets it’s a massive error to overlook its digital operations. In response to the Biden team making the blunder and cutting back on their digital spending Zac Moffatt, a Republican strategist stated, “You are spending at least a third to half your life on your mobile phone, and they’re deciding they don’t need to have a message for you there”. It doesn’t take a Masters in Digital Marketing to recognize reducing mobile marketing isn’t a smart strategy when the largest percentage of your audience is using those platforms.
Again, this isn’t to criticize a political candidate, its meant as a warning to properly align an organizations internal teams and properly audit existing and potential social media channels. The audit is designed to identify what’s working and what isn’t working, confirm what platforms the audience is using, and look for impostor accounts that may be using your business name or image. These basic steps are essential to the social media marketing strategy and can have damaging impacts if skipped over. In the example of the Biden team it cost them an entire marketing campaign that had already spent time and money, and a loss of several polling points in a competition where every vote or point matters. So when utilizing the 8 easy steps of social media marketing strategy, be sure not to skip any steps because it could have a lasting impact!
References:
Goldmacher, Shane. (2019, September 30). Joe Biden’s Digital Ads are Disappearing. Not a Good Sign, Strategists Say. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/30/us/politics/joe-biden-ads.html
Scott, Rachel. Steakin, Will. (2019, October 23). Trump Campaign Scoops Up Biden Latino Web Address, Trolls His Voter Outreach. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-campaign-scoops-bidens-latino-voter-web-address/story?id=66483595
Campisi, Jessica. (2019, October 24). Trump Campaign Trolls Biden by Purchasing His Latino Voter Website. https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/467293-trump-campaign-trolls-biden-by-purchasing-his-latino-voter-web-address
LePage, Evan. Newberry, Christina. (2019, March 13). How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy in 8 Easy Steps https://blog.hootsuite.com/how-to-create-a-social-media-marketing-plan/
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