Move Over Facebook, YouTube is Poised to Become the Main Social Media Platform for Political Communication

Given the significant changes in the way people are spending their viewing time and the scandals that damaged Facebook’s reputation for delivering trustworthy news, YouTube is currently poised as the next major social media platform where political communication will be delivered and received.

Now ranked as the second largest search engine next to Google, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki also boasts that the latest viewership count shows YouTube has as many as 2 billion active users per month. The number represents 45% of the 4.40 billion total of Internet users present throughout the globe.

In addition, a recent Pew Research Center study shows that this year (2019), 73% of U.S. adults who participated in the survey, identified themselves as YouTube users, which outnumbered the 69% who prefer to be identified as Facebook users.

That is why early in October 2019, political campaign teams were quick to respond when the Google-owned, video-sharing social media platform announced the activation of a nascent reservation tool called “Instant Reserve.” In anticipation of the forthcoming 2020 nationwide elections, the reservation tool will allow political campaigners to strategically book slots on YouTube channels in advance. That is considering that voting activities are set to commence by as early as February, especially in critical voting states like Iowa, Ohio, and South Carolina.

Campaign teams can choose advertising slots according to their budget and based on demographics of targeted political audience; as well as customize their reach in a geolocation in a timely manner.

What YouTube Provides as Support for Political Institutions

Making YouTube even more desirable as a social media platform in which to put forward political communication, are the optimization features available to YouTube users.

Reference to political institutions include not only the presidential aspirants of political parties, but also those seeking for public office in the local and state levels. Institutions also include advocates of political issues as a means of conveying issues and concerns needing reforms; or even activists looking to draw support from social media audience in their stand against social injustices.

The YouTube Welcome Module – This segment is designed to help video uploaders to immediately pique the interest of their target audience by way of a trailer video. The clip automatically plays to briefly introduce the channel, its advocacies, and to highlight the key takeaways of the video presentation.

Tools for Enhancing Viewer Experience – To keep an audience interested in what a YouTube channel offers, viewer experience can be enhanced by adding text overlays of annotations. Moreover, presentations on complex issues can include links to the video uploader’s official website, where audience can access supplementary information.

Tools for Engaging Audience – The audience engagement feature takes into consideration that a significant number of voters in the U.S. do not have the luxury of time to attend town hall meetings. This can be addressed through the use of Google’s Hangout multi-way communication app, which will allow several YouTube viewers to engage in a video dialogue, live streamed via the YoutTube channel.

YouTube’s viewership statistics though indicates that the path to reaching the top of the search pages of YouTube is very crowded. That being the case, it would be wise to let social media marketing experts to help you; click here to find out how.