Social Marketing and Sarah Palin

There is a really interesting strategy being played out on Facebook and Twitter by Sarah Palin that Politico wrote about this weekend. Regardless of what you think of her political views, Palin’s social media strategy is worth looking at.

Think back to earlier this summer when the national health care debate was all about the so-called “death panels.” The conversation started in a large part because of two widely-publicized Palin Facebook posts.

The posts were immediately rebuked by Democrats and Palin’s response was very interesting. Instead of holding a press conference or sending out a press release, Palin posted her response on Facebook. The post, simply titled “concerning the ‘death panels,’” went up shortly before midnight on a Wednesday night. By late Thursday morning, a write up of her statement was on the homepage of dozens of national and local newspapers. The post also quickly became one of the most mentioned topics within the political blogosphere.

With 850,000 friends on Facebook and 140,000 Twitter followers Sarah Palin has established herself as of one of the most powerful social media brands in politics. And she is doing it without going through traditional media channels, which is something that a lot of small and medium sized companies are trying to do.

Think about her reaction to the firestorm he “death panels” posts created. Palin did not call a press conference or send out a press release in response, where she could not control the message. Instead she communicated directly with her “customers” through another Facebook post which resulted in the mainstream media going with her message. That is a very interesting tactic. Could this sort of tactic work for a consumer brand?

In short yes. Imagine a company that has had some bad press. Instead of holding a press conference or sending out a press release the company created a video which they put on YouTube, wrote about the issue on their Facebook page (and the video also) and then Tweeted about it. Now the company controls the message that the mainstream media will pick up and use. That is called Reputation Management 2.0 Palin style.