Politicians at every level, from your local city council member to Congress to the President, have embraced at varying levels of participation and degree, social networking tools and marketing channels. End user participation and activity in these campaigns appear to more robust, especially at the local level. Local social media political activity perhaps may even be more active than at national levels -  according to TweetCongress, roughly 180 members of Congress (34%) have active Twitter accounts with Republicans out ranking Democrats by a ratio of two to one (2:1).

Despite the credit given to the Obama campaign team for essentially creating the template for the political social media marketing, I found this 2:1 ratio (with Republicans out ranking Democrats) most interesting!  In recently weeks, as part of our research into this market, I have review over a 100 Facebook pages and Twitter accounts as well as had conversations with the communications staff of a few dozen representatives leads me to insightful conclusions:

Most politicians (in both parties) feel that for 2009 merely having a presence (even at the most minimal level) is enough for now.

But is that really the case? It’s probably a matter of time or maybe a few lost seats and some Monday morning quarter backing before we see a little more parity between both parties and politicians making greater investments in the way of time and money into social media marketing!

So, at present, what does all this activity across the Political social networking landscape look like? What are some simple solutions to achieving greater effectiveness in this arena? Here are some social media pointers for politicians and their staff to be aware:

• Simply setting up a profile page and allowing the community on social networks to evolve without any thought leadership is not enough!
• The immediacy, easy access, and premium placed on just showing up within social networking sites cannot be overrated.
• All voter generated content is not valued equally and it is up to the politician to provide a framework and thought leadership to avoid having the content of their communities potentially devolve.
• Enabling and utilizing the notes feature on Facebook is one of the most overlooked and valuable tools for structuring and advancing community dialogue.
• Widgets and custom applications are not just for musicians and big brands. They have a very practical use within the context of politics.
• Social media marketing and outreach doesn’t have to expensive or time consuming, but it most be deliberate and well managed!

This post is really a first in a series of posts focused on social media and politics we hope to release over the next couple of weeks. We would love to get your feedback and insight and we help some of our clients in the (political) space improve the returns on their political social media outreach (and hopefully get elected).