I am paraphrasing a quote attributed to former House Speaker Tip O’Neill who said “All politics is local.” Given how technology has collapsed time and space, it is accurate to say then that all politics is social, as in the social communities that have common interests shared on the web in many forms. With a couple of keystrokes these interests can be inspired, appeased, and heard. Their message can spread around the world in the format that most powerfully communicates their message. So it is with this foundation and a decade in politics and more than a decade in the private sector world of communications I’ve come to the following key elements of social media.

1. Social media is like grassroots organizations
2. Little issues can spread like wildfire if ignored
3. Political skills are required to understand the implications of social media on a corporation and its interested communities
4. Corporations should develop their own communities of interest that are active in social media beyond that of their own corporate site
5. Understanding social media requires openness within a corporate culture
6. Corporate functions such as customer relations, call centers, sales and service departments, research, and product development can potentially benefit from and contribute to social media, so coordination is critical.

These characteristics and situations are part of what goes on in political and public policy campaigns. This is why I believe experience in those areas is especially helpful to corporations seeking to understand and participate in social media.

This also gets into the issue a bit of who owns social media and a thread of that conversation is at Mitch Joel’s blog Twist Image.

Paul Dunay of Buzz Marketing for Technology has a post on the political war room angle of social media.

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