Even the elderly woman in the Life­Call com­mer­cial knew she should rely on tech­nol­ogy when she fell and couldn’t get up. It’s dis­parag­ing to have val­i­da­tion yet once again that an appar­ent cos­mic vor­tex con­tin­ues to usurp the minds of many and pro­hibit advance­ment. Today in one local online news out­let the story is With social media, local politi­cians skep­ti­cal.

There are five com­pelling rea­sons a polit­i­cal can­di­date, just like a can­di­date for any other job, would use social media that imme­di­ately come to mind.

First, it pro­vides reach oth­er­wise unat­tain­able. Think of the peo­ple you missed being able to have a pierogi with at that bazaar or those babies you weren’t able to kiss. How much would it cost in main­stream media buys to reach every­one you couldn’t shake hands with in person?

Sec­ond, it shows con­stituents you under­stand how to com­mu­ni­cate in today’s dig­i­tal world. A large seg­ment of the vot­ing pop­u­la­tion want a leader who is mod­ern and isn’t Flint­stonesque (that includes me by the way). I stopped buy­ing news in print years ago so if that’s where you are I’m not see­ing you. A diver­si­fied strat­egy to reach as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble means more votes. Some are here, some are there, you need to be everywhere…

Third, it pro­vides an addi­tional and very effec­tive real time method to mea­sure pub­lic opin­ion. The ana­lyt­ics avail­able should be very attrac­tive to some­one run­ning a cam­paign — if they care about pub­lic opin­ion. It allows you to be in charge of tweak­ing your rhetoric mes­sage. Not see­ing enough response from a par­tic­u­lar con­stituency? Engage them pur­pose­fully with con­tent impor­tant to them and then mea­sure the result to ensure you have per­suaded them and they sup­port you.

Fourth, the fact is that social media is “media”. It’s inde­pen­dent media that is 100% con­trolled by the con­tent cre­ator and pro­vides imme­di­ate access to con­stituents. If I were a can­di­date I would be work­ing dili­gently with my cam­paign man­ager to drive my mes­sage to as wide­spread an audi­ence as pos­si­ble, not cross­ing my fin­gers wait­ing for cov­er­age by tra­di­tional media with lit­tle or no con­trol over con­tent or frequency.

Last but not least, it’s FREE. Regard­less of one’s polit­i­cal party per­sua­sion, the value of social media in the last pres­i­den­tial cam­paign can hardly be denied. On a smaller local level it can be emu­lated through the use of social media on a $0. bud­get. It would be great if the pub­lic didn’t have to dole out money to elect a good local leader, wouldn’t it? I know I would respect one who fig­ured out how to serve before solicit.

Social media cam­paigns can be exe­cuted any­where there’s a zip code, so even a may­oral can­di­date in a small town can do it. Can­di­dates for large major elec­tions have a cam­paign man­ager savvy enough to hire some­one with social media cam­paign man­age­ment expe­ri­ence. Politi­cians run­ning local cam­paigns don’t need live CNN.com streamed town­hall meet­ings linked to Face­book chats to effec­tively engage. Can­di­dates for small elec­tions should enlist the help of some­one with a his­tory of using social media suc­cess­fully for mar­ket­ing to get set up and take a les­son from them on how to nav­i­gate and update.

A good cam­paign man­ager helps with the time man­age­ment aspect of daily updates, which in all real­ity need not take more than 15 min­utes to be effec­tive once the pro­files are set up (though per­son­ally, I would have a very robust social media cam­paign with a ded­i­cated manager/volunteer if it were mine).

I respect pub­lic offi­cials who pro­mote and engage in open com­mu­ni­ca­tion, even if it is man­aged by a staffer. If I were an elected leader I would give main­stream media plenty of com­pe­ti­tion by con­tin­u­ing to use it post elec­tion to man­age my com­mu­ni­ca­tion with constituents.

If you were run­ning for pub­lic office would you use social media? Do you fol­low an elected pub­lic offi­cial who social media in an exem­plary way?