TAMPA, Fla. / Just as social media has opened a dialogue between businesses and consumers, experts say its value is apparent that survival in politics hinges on the needs and perceptions of their constituents. 

And social media, like it or hate it, has had a profound impact on the midterm elections, experts say.

Nevada U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle’s Facebook page has 108,000 fans, a comprehensive biography about her life and legislative career and links to donate to her campaign.

Sharron Angle boosts 8,000 Twitter followers and thousands of fans in Facebook groups like “Dump Harry Reid.” Her page provides interactive games and serves as headquarters for status updates on her campaign efforts.

Her opponent Harry Reid has a Facebook page, but his page has less than 15,000 fans and no real content. His page is an empty forum, a once ideal place to discuss his humble upbringing and his direct impact on Nevada. Reid’s campaign posts daily updates, but nothing to grab a voter's attention.

The latest Rasmussen poll shows Angle up by 3 points.  The poll, of course, does not attribute social media for the lead. 

What is clear across the board, is those candidates that fail to be socialable on social media are missing a valuable outreach tool, especially among the younger demographic.

"I'm still amazed daily, however, that so many campaigns haven't gotten their act together in terms of new media," opines Sarah Granger, a new media entrepreneur and writer, in an article this month.  "It can only hurt them not to do so. The smart candidate uses all of the tools at his or her disposal."

Social media is such an important tool; take the senate race in Kentucky. Rand Paul’s Facebook page has 84,000 fans and shows videos, pictures of him trick-or-treating with his kids and talking with constituents. His twitter page has 8,700 followers, even after he switched to a new username.

His opponent Jack Conway only has 9,000 Facebook fans and 2,500 twitter followers, but he updates several times throughout the day. His postings consist of pleas for votes, reminders to tell others to vote and updates on issues from the campaign trail.

Polls show Paul winning by double digits. Rasmussen has him up by 12 and Real Clear Politics showing Paul up by an average of 11 points.

What's clear is that social media and the Internet are playing greater roles in shaping elections and election successes.  Another tool, says one expert, are online political press releases.  These online press releases appear like articles and are search engine optimized for certain key words.

"Online press releases are an invaluable tool because they contain a lot of information but don't appear to be propoganda," says Glenn Selig, founder of PR NewsChannel (prnewschannel.com), the press release distribution company, which writes and distributes political press releases.  "They're really powerful and are under-utilized.  The magic is also in how the press release or article is written."

When it comes to social media, the more people a candidate can reach, the better that candidate can do in the election. Outlets like Facebook and Twitter allow the candidate to craft a message then send it to as many people as they can assemble. Candidates spend less money on social media than they ever did on buying registered voter lists spend thousands designing and distributing direct-mail ads.  

Now that November 2 approaches, there’s not much more the candidates can do than just sit back and tweet while the results start to come in.

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