Localspeak

Latino Social 2012 Campaign Digest: As Obama Speaks Out, Constituents Speak Up

9 February 2012

Latino voters are highly engaged in the 2012 Campaign universe of social media.

As Localspeak continues its Theme Mapping of Spanish social media posts for this installment of Social Latino 2012 Campaign, I came across an article in Social Media Today penned by Corey Murray stressing the importance of quality and influence —not just numbers—in measuring true social media ROI . Murray “nailed” it.

To wit, compare teen idol Justin Bieber’s 17 million Twitter followers to the 12.3 million of President Barack Obama. As Murray suggests, it is not simply gross numbers that determine “star power,” but the quality and distribution of the influence generated by the dissemination of your content. What creates measurable ROI “wins” includes where your content appears and whose eyes land on your blogs and tweets, in addition to your strategic distribution chain. So this week, in order to generate a Social Latino 2012 Campaign Digest for President Obama, Localspeak filtered our NetBase analytics tool, eliminating news media and professional forums to focus our attention solely on blogs, micro blogs, consumer forums and Twitter posts.

Tracking Obama’s sentiment trend for the week of January 28-February 7, the chart below shows three peak intervals: his Google+ Hangout video conference with voters, the release of data showing a decline in unemployment, and the release of an NBC poll predicting an Obama win by six points over Mitt Romney were elections to be held today. However, voters still showed concern over deepening world conflicts.

Theme Mapping charts below of Latino and Hispanic Spanish posts show issues of interest and concern amongst this voter constituency. Topping Latino concern are foreign policy and fear diplomacy might not work despite Obama’s pledge to seek non-military solutions to the escalating violence in Syria and other countries. Although Latinos generally support the U.S. embargo against Iran and bombing forays over Pakistan, the nuclear threats posed by these countries are of grave concern. While Latino supporters remain confident in Obama’s leadership and his ability to achieve diplomatic solutions in unstable regions, some fear the unbridled escalation of violence may portend a military solution: an unpopular option with Hispanic voters.

In 2009 Obama received 65% of the Latino vote. As he notably continues to court the Hispanic vote, the pressure is on to devise a viable trajectory for economic recovery and job creation, as well as ensuring passage of the Dream Act and housing guarantees.

Social Latino ROI for Obama received a huge boost as he initiated conversations with his constituency; his fielding questions during a live Google+ Hangout video conference, for example, in which he was lauded by Hispanics for commitment to dialogue directly with his constituencies. Irresistibly, one voter asked what one question the President was most frequently asked, to which Obama responded: ‘When are we going to legalize marijuana?’

Last week also saw its share of campaign theatrics with candidates “crooning.” Unlike Obama, as far as we know, none of his GOP rivals has been invited to appear on American Idol. The Obama “cool factor” is endearing among Latino voters but it still faces the challenge of such biting issues as social welfare, healthcare reform and the state of the economy, all which continue to plague his Latino constituency.