The battle for the White House has been nothing short of entertaining, controversial, and opinionated, as “#Debate” clearly shows. People are tweeting about everything; from criticizing Donald Trump’s recently-released video, the split-view policies between him and his running mate, the active encouragement to fact-check, Hillary’s shoulder shimmy, or even giving us the beloved, red sweater-wearing Ken Bone.
As Donald Trump mentioned, “Twitter is an important tool to reach your fans.” I may be paraphrasing, but he’s right: Twitter has become an important tool, not only during this election year, but in our society.
While most of us wouldn’t considerate the social platform as a reliable, news source, it has become one of the most accurate news providers with a community of users that will fact-check tweets to ensure accuracy.
Why should the presidential debate be any different? With “he said,” “she said,” and two candidates that have been highly active on Twitter, supporters have ensured that these presidential hopefuls stay true to their words.
Even brands are getting in on the action, with Excedrin promoting their own “#DebateHeadache” to help promote their headache medicine as this is “not an ordinary debate…” the headache expert tweets.
As each debate comes to an end, the question of who won arises at the end of the night. While the answer may be biased, the same can’t be said for the number of tweets sent out in favor of the candidates. During the last debate, pro-Trump bots tweeted approximately 576,178 times, coming out to a third of all pro-Trump tweets that night, according to a study done at the University of Oxford. Hillary had a number of bots backing her up as well, tweeting only 136,639 times.
Though the debate did have a record breaking 17 million tweets, 23% of those were from automated bots.
Don’t know where to catch the final debate tonight? A majority of Media outlets will be live streaming the event for us “Cord-Cutters”; CBS, MSNBC, Buzzfeed News, Huffington Post, Yahoo, and even Hulu (the next day) will be some of the sources streaming the event.
As Live tweeting has become more of the norm, it has allowed Live streaming to surpass On Demand services as it permits consumers to stay up-to-date, while giving them a “you heard it first” feel that directly correlates with a “#LiveTweet.” The evolution of live streaming has grown enormously within the past year due to popularity of Facebook Live, Twitter integrating Periscope, Snapchat Stories, and other services. This opens a great avenue for brands that are looking to directly interact with their fan base with real-time answers, poll running, and exclusive offers.
Gary Vaynerchuk, Social Media Mogul, has become a great example of live streaming implementation as he hosts a regular show that is streamed on Facebook Live and allows for users to ask him questions and interact in real time. This effort has allowed him to grow his engagement and follower count by the trifold.
Will you be live tweeting tonight? Here’s are 3 things to be on the lookout for:
- The “Rigged” Election claim that Trump has claimed, stating that there is collusion between Hillary and the media to swing the election her way.
- Chris Wallace, the Fox News personality, will be Moderating the last debate and can make way for some aggressive follow-up question to both sides.
- Malik Obama, Obama’s half-brother and Trump supporter, has been said to be a guest in the crowd tonight.
Be sure to follow the #debate tonight to see what Twitter has to say about these candidates and let us know what your favorite debate moment was.