Social media has played a massive role in recent US politics and its influence will continue to increase over time. Although this trend permeates social networking, blogger outreach programs, and even more traditional banner ads across both of these mediums, the use of Twitter is particularly fascinating. For example, the number one position on Twitterholic.com, which tracks the most popular Twitter profiles, has belonged to Barack Obama for the past month and half.

In terms of demographic, social media is no longer something that is skewed towards the younger demographic who have traditionally had lower voter turn-outs. It now extends to the many layers of the voting demographic and even has an influence on mainstream media, which proves that it is targeting people outside of social media’s traditional reach. Indeed, social media has the capability of seeding public sentiment in real time into web properties that people visit on a daily basis, and these are typically sites that people visit more often than news sites. Personally, I believe there will be a growing and consistent trend between successful politicians and those that focus on strong internet and social media strategies.

The UK’s use of social media sites runs in parallel to the US so unique cultural differences will rarely make a difference. Indeed, it would be foolish of UK politicians not to adopt similar strategies or what’s more, create ambitious strategies that could set the trend for future US campaigns.