By 2010 18 to 29 year olds will outnumber baby boomers and it’s become apparent in this election that our voice does matter.

The catalyst for this posting was an article I read in Fast Company four months ago titled “The Brand Called Obama”. The article was not about Obama as a presidential contender but instead focused on how he embraces social media. Obama has his greatest strength among the young group of 18 to 29 year olds, the same group that us advertises have coveted for ages. So how did he win them over? Easy – he found the best way to reach them, new media, and went directly to them with his “sales pitch”.

The Obama campaign website is extremely robust featuring constant updates, ringtones, videos, photos, etc. Early on, his campaign launched a social networking site giving Obama supporters all the tools they need to blog about issues, set up their own fundraising sites, and organize their own events. The McCain campaign caught on and launched their very own social networking site just last week. A Pew Report recently stated that Obama’s social networking site has 926,000 members compared to the tens of thousands of members for McCain. Is there enough time left for McCain to catch up?

It’s exciting that the 2008 candidates are embracing new media and creating the vehicles for conversation. The question is whether or not this will have an impact on the results of the 2008 election, but I guess we’ll just have to wait until November to find out.

Interested in learning more? There’s a great site that gives a real time view of the candidates in the online space.

 (Special thanks to Mickey for inspiring this post.)

After months of jabbing friends that were constantly “Twittering” I broke down and joined the vortex. It was a slow process. At first I was only following a few people, most of which were friends, and would sporadically send tweets but never really knew what to post. As time passed, I found myself hoping something funny or exciting would happen just so I could go Twitter about it. I started to get discouraged; my life was way too boring for Twitter!

I made the same mistake tons of other Twitter’ers are making. I joined Twitter thinking it was just another form of communication like instant messenger or text message. After spending some time on the site I realized there’s way more to Twitter than spamming people with your daily activities. For all those skeptical of Twitter, here’s what I got…

The greatest use I’ve found for Twitter is using it as a filter to let great news find me. With more and more companies joining Twitter you can cover pretty much all news of interest. Interested in the 08 campaign? Follow NPRPOLITICS. Want to keep up with the latest advertising trends? Check out ADAGE. Want to know what’s going on in your town this weekend? Follow your local hotspots. Instead of reading the paper in the morning, I sign on to Twitter. I don’t have to worry about skimming through content I’m not interested in. And if that’s not enough, it’s way better for the environment!

So try it out and let me know what you think. Follow me: carriehogan