Following Massachusetts’ special election, pundits are busy discussing what Scott Brown’s defeat of Martha Coakley will mean for national politics. In the meantime, I thought it might be helpful to conduct a postmortem on each candidate’s online campaign.
It’s clear that both candidates realized the importance of social media to help them connect with potential voters and spread their messages far and wide. Both launched user-friendly websites laden with social media buttons linking to active Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter sites, and both used these sites to call people to action in a variety of ways.
A side-by-side comparison of their websites reveals that each candidate used their respective web properties to encourage votes, increase campaign contributions and foster active participation in campaign calling. However, there were a few differences I noticed right away.
For one, Brown employed other new media to call would-be voters to action. On both his website and Twitter page he asks his audience to text him directly. I did not find a similar call to action on Coakley’s site.
Brown also employs a pop-up ad on his main website that directs potential voters to click on one button for information about local polling stations and another for information about how one can make calls on behalf of the campaign.
Coakley’s campaign website:
Brown’s campaign website:
Another key difference I discovered was that Coakley’s campaign launched a very active blog with updates every day and in some cases more often. Brown, on the other hand, did not have a blog (at least not one that I could find after multiple searches). He did, however, have a streaming Twitter feed on his campaign website.
Next, I reviewed each candidates social media accounts. Across Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube, it was apparent that both candidates updated their sites every day and actively engaged in dialogue with fans and followers, but there was a clear difference in the size of the respective audiences. Brown garnered many more followers than Coakley. For example, Coakley’s Facebook fan base at the time of this posting is 18,585, whereas Brown’s fan base is markedly higher at 129,194.
This pattern was also repeated on Twitter: Coakley has 3,915 followers at the time of this posting. By contrast, Brown has more than triple that count with 11,543.
Coakley’s Twitter page:
Brown’s Twitter page:
While these numbers infer the outcome of the election, it should be noted that for an election that was won by Brown 52 percent to 47 percent, Brown’s online fans are disproportionately higher. Therefore, Brown’s online campaign yielded a disproportionately higher likelihood of getting messages out to a much broader group of people.
One other distinction to note is Brown’s use of a “Voter Bomb” strategy. This appears to be a term coined by his team to encourage others to get their friends and family to vote and share the news online.
ScottBrownMA: The Voter Bomb, how many of your friends will join you tomorrow? http://bit.ly/4IrVLf #masen #41stVote
This kind of personally branded movement, which is ideal for social media, appears to be absent from the Coakley campaign.
Conclusion
Both Coakley and Brown had strong online campaigns: Each had a user-friendly, actionable website with links to a variety of popular social media sites; they updated their respective sites often; and they engaged in a dialogue with potential voters according to social media best practices. However, Brown’s online strategy, overall, was more effective. He provided more calls to action, demonstrated greater creativity and ultimately attracted a much larger online audience. While there is no way to say for sure to what extent his online marketing presence contributed to his victory, it certainly played a key role.
