WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th February, 2020) US presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg is paying social media users in California up to $2,500 every month to promote his campaign, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
The campaign is hiring more than 500 personnel to work 20 to 30 hours a week to promote Bloomberg via daily social-media posts and weekly text messages, the report, citing campaign documents, said.
The unorthodox plan provides a potential template for a nationwide strategy that could elevate social media use in politics campaigns to a new level. Previously, campaigns simply encouraged aides to promote their candidates on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, the report said.
Publicly available job postings for the positions require applicants to provide their social-media handles for review and state that staffers may be asked to undertake more traditional field-organizing work like phone banking, the report added.
Helping organize the effort is Outvote, an app that enables users to send pre-written texts, post campaign materials to social media and send data back to campaigns, according to the report.
Bloomberg, who is self-funding his campaign with his multi-billion-dollar fortune, has already spent more than $300 million on television, radio and social media advertisements, according to media reports that suggest he plans to spend up to $2 billion to win the US presidency.
