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[Rentahamster]

Amidst lots of news about mistakes that were made by either campaign, here's a story that highlights a newish technique that was proven effective during the campaign.

(Read the whole thing) https://www.wired.com/2016/11/faceb...not-just-fake-news/?google_editors_picks=true

Here’s How Facebook Actually Won Trump the Presidency​

MARK ZUCKERBERG IS trying hard to convince voters that Facebook had no nefarious role in this election. But according to President-elect Donald Trump’s digital director Brad Parscale, the social media giant was massively influential—not because it was tipping the scales with fake news, but because it helped generate the bulk of the campaign’s $250 million in online fundraising.

“Our biggest incubator that allowed us to generate that money was Facebook,” says Parscale, who has been working for the campaign since before Trump officially announced his candidacy a year and a half ago. Over the course of the election cycle, Trump’s campaign funneled $90 million to Parscale’s San Antonio-based firm, most of which went toward digital advertising. And Parscale says more of that ad money went to Facebook than to any other platform.

“Facebook and Twitter were the reason we won this thing,” he says. “Twitter for Mr. Trump. And Facebook for fundraising.”

They—and we—have pointed to online echo chambers and the proliferation of fake news as the building blocks of Trump’s victory. But the answer may be much simpler. Of course Facebook was hugely influential in the presidential election, in large part because Trump’s campaign embraced Facebook as a key advertising channel in a way that no presidential campaign has before—not even Clinton’s.

“I think the Trump campaign did that extremely well,” says Andrew Bleeker, president of Bully Pulpit Interactive, which helped lead Hillary Clinton’s digital marketing efforts. “They spent a higher percentage of their spending on digital than we did.”

Key strategy here -

Facebook proved to be a powerful way for Trump’s team to hone the campaign’s message with the kind of enormous sample sizes you can’t get with traditional polling. “They have an advantage of a platform that has users that are conditioned to click and engage and give you feedback,” says Gary Coby, director of advertising at the Republican National Committee, who worked on Trump’s campaign. “Their platform’s built to inform you about what people like and dislike.”

Coby’s team took full advantage of the ability to perform massive tests with its ads. On any given day, Coby says, the campaign was running 40,000 to 50,000 variants of its ads, testing how they performed in different formats, with subtitles and without, and static versus video, among other small differences. On the day of the third presidential debate in October, the team ran 175,000 variations. Coby calls this approach “A/B testing on steroids.” The more variations the team was able to produce, Coby says, the higher the likelihood that its ads would actually be served to Facebook users.

“Every ad network and platform wants to serve the ad that’s going to get the most engagement,” Coby says. “The more you’re testing, the more opportunity you have to find the best setup.”

Trump's Twitter strategy that allowed him to get billions of dollars worth of free coverage from the media -

Social media was Trump’s primary communication channel. It wasn’t a platform for broadcasting pre-planned messages but for interacting with supporters and starting new conversations—however controversial those conversations often were. Bleeker says one of the biggest lessons he’s learned from this election cycle is that social media is increasingly going to be part of any candidate’s so-called “earned media strategy”—that is, the coverage a candidate gets for free in the press. The President-elect has shown he can turn a news cycle in 140 characters or less; in a recent 60 Minutes interview, he said he plans to continue using Twitter as president.

“He’s going to tell his side of the story from the digital bully pulpit,” Lira says.

I am reminded of a few things from that article. One is the recent thread by aorange999 about his experience with the Clinton campaign. Thread is here -

I was on stage at Javits Center the night Hillary lost

Take this excerpt:

Issues were tested on digital and broadcast platforms using localized targeting, I'm not sure about specifics. They would ad spend lots of $$ and then run polling against the ad spend and no needles were moved, when they went personality i.e. Trump is a horrible person, they polled better.

It makes me think about what their specific methodology was, and how it gave them bad data. Perhaps too much reliance on broadcast? Clinton did spend a lot more over the airwaves than Trump did.

The Wired article is also an interesting companion piece to this analysis of Trump's overall spending vs Clinton's.

2016: Trump paid 63% less per electoral vote than Clinton; $5 per popular vote

 

[TheSpoiler]

Target adverts hit people who are not only within your range, but also on the fence. Hitting them with news stories and propagan- I mean, blog posts from your website is going to start swaying people.

With how controversial his Twitter was, people would just overly share his shit and commentate on it, making sure it was constantly in the public's eye. You may not agree with what he says, but his fans will fight tooth and nail in the comments section and get even more riled up.

Clinton didn't use social media the right way. Felt like she backed off when people made fun of her trying to be hip before the primaries.

 

[Future]

As shitty as trump is, he does know how to market shit and what avenues to use. Part of being an businessman entertainer I'd imagine

 

[Rentahamster]

Target adverts hit people who are not only within your range, but also on the fence. Hitting them with news stories and propagan- I mean, blog posts from your website is going to start swaying people.

With how controversial his Twitter was, people would just overly share his shit and commentate on it, making sure it was constantly in the public's eye. You may not agree with what he says, but his fans will fight tooth and nail in the comments section and get even more riled up.

Clinton didn't use social media the right way. Felt like she backed off when people made fun of her trying to be hip before the primaries.

Yep. Remember this thread?

#Trumpyourself - Is this going to backfire enormously for Hillary?

Something I said in that thread -

The Clinton campaign really likes to put Trump's name out there. They shouldn't.

peeps really need to abandon the idea that any publicity is good publicity, it isn't

It usually is though. The Streisand Effect wouldn't be as big a thing if that wasn't the case. Trump got 2 billion worth of free media and he used that to his advantage. People keep taking the troll bait, not realizing that it plays right into Trump's strategy.

 

[WiiredShawn]

All the more reason we need to push for people to have "digital literacy" education. They need to understand how these processes work, and they need to be able to evaluate whether information is legit or not.

 

[sleverfunk]

Facebook definitely had a role in it.
Just like how duterte won here in ph.
Everyone would believe everything news headlines without knowing that it was satire.