Have you been nourishing dreams of having a successful career in either politics or marketing and outreach? But are unsure of where to begin. Political marketing jobs can move you out of the private sector and into, perhaps, an even grander arena. While you have likely heard this political marketing jobs claim before and can certainly work out rough parameters of the industry through its title the specifics may still be proving elusive.

So what is political marketing?

Political marketing jobs have been around since the 1960 Nixon, Kennedy election. The political marketing definition says that political marketing is anything outside of general consulting on political matters. Now what does this mean? Great political campaign marketers can guarantee the campaigns they work for the prowess to attract new faces both in person and to join RSS and news feeds for email and Facebook. Social media works. Anybody can know Kevin Bacon within seven degrees of separation.

Twenty first century political campaigns have come a long way since the advent of television campaign ads. They have grown drastically more elaborate since even the George W. Bush presidential runs in 2000 and 2004. Asking around the political scuttlebutt, you will undoubtedly find many answers to the question of what has changed the climate of campaigning most. However, the issue that is likely to come up most is the exchange of information.

While commercials, cold calls, and flyers are still all great ways of communicating with constituents they are by no means the only way. In the United States, this was proven best in the 2008 and 2012 Barack Obama presidential campaigns. His 2008 landslide victory was owed in large part to his effective social media and email campaigns that inspired a grass roots movement. Now, 10% of political campaign donors say they make their donations on the go by using either website links posted to social media or texting their donations in from cell phones. Twice as many people say that they use those same social networks to follow their favorite politicians. As of November 2012 over ten percent of people said they used Facebook as their political news outlet.

What does this mean for political marketing jobs?

With information as undeniable as this the presence of social media in political campaigns cannot be understated. That being said political marketing jobs cannot risk not to recruit professionals with private sector marketing experience in social media.

To tap into constituents and potential voters, political strategists use not only traditional methods of campaigning, but new and social media as well. Adopting the multi-channel marketing technique and applying that technique to political campaigning has become one of the most effective ways to gain voters and win elections. To learn more, read this.