Electronic Minutemen Fire a New Shot Heard 'Round the World

Social Media gives the Power of the Pen to Everyone

Social Media has become an important tool in American Politics. In an increasingly super-charged political atmosphere, a campaign's social media strategy can make or break a candidate. The Brown verses Coakley campaign for Senator Ted Kennedy's seat is a watershed example of how social media impacts the outcome of a race. We can learn a lot from how these campaigns used Social Media, how effective their use was, and the ultimate impact Social Media had on the outcome.

Both candidates used the most popular social media tools: Flickr, Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter. Both campaigns appear to have understood how the tools work and what they had to offer. However, what is clear is that understanding how to use the tool and how to leverage the tool effectively in a campaign are very different things and the Brown campaign had the advantage and won the election.

Flickr

Flickr allows for the storage of photo albums with the feature that people can see the photos and write comments on them. Flickr has become the new way of sharing pictures with friends, family, and strangers all over the world. Both the Brown and Coakley campaigns uses this tool to show themselves with the common people.

Brown

Statistics for Brown's use of Flickr:

• Uploaded – 137 pictures no galleries.
  
• Comments from people – 18
  

At a high level, Brown's team appeared to use Flickr as a repository of pictures. It did not appear that the pictures were well and there were not very many pictures. However, one thing that they were able to do is to get comments on pictures, which indicates there was an active community reviewing their pages. This is a critical issue in Social Media - active communities.

Coakley

Statistics for Coakley's use of Flickr:

• Uploaded – 6,648 pictures in several galleries
  
• No comments from people.
  

Coakley's team seemed to have a good understanding of how to use Flickr. The pages were very well organized and easy to navigate, which was important due to the significant number of pictures. Despite this, there were No comments and therefore no active community.

YouTube

YouTube has become as well known as TV in today's society. As such, as certain as candidates must have media spots on television and radio, they must also have media spots on YouTube. Evaluating Brown and Coakley's YouTube results give us a interesting picture of how Social Media impacts a campaign. In order to understand YouTube statistics, a few terms need to be defined:

• Number of Videos – Number of videos loaded by the campaign into their YouTube channel.
  
• Comments – Number of comments from people on the channel
  
• Followers – Number of people registered to automatically receive updates when new videos are uploaded to the channel.
  
• Channel Views – Number of times the channel has been visited by people.
  
• Upload Views – Number of times a video has been seen on the channel.
  
• Ratings – Number of people that have left ratings of the channel.
  

YouTube Statistics for Both Campaigns

		Number of Videos		Comments	Followers	Channel Views	Upload views	Ratings
Brown		59		935	1,037	135,353	1,368,575	518
Coakley		71		2	115	13,944	158,734	336

With regard to the Number of Videos uploaded to the respective channels, Coakley used YouTube more than Brown with 71 videos compared to Brown's 59. But just as with Flickr tool, more does not appear to mean better. In this campaign, the number of Channel Views and Upload Views are overwhelming in favor of Brown with nearly ten times more views than Coakley. The key statistics are the nearly ten times the number of followers and the significant number of comments compared to Coakley. This demonstrably shows that Brown had an active YouTube community. Coakley, again, did not appear to have a community at all.

Brown

Clearly, the Brown campaign built a community within YouTube and promoted the site with comments and downloads that created a buzz around the candidate. Another interesting technique that Brown's team used was automatically play one of the videos when the channel was clicked. This increased the Uploaded Views dramatically, which moved the video to the front of the search list on YouTube and other search engines.

Coakley

As with Flickr, Coakley appeared to have the content, but her team was not successful in building the community. It's not clear whether they didn't understood the need for community or didn't understand how to build one. Either way, with very few followers and very few comments, there was no vibrance in the community. Rather than a vibrant community, the YouTube channel appears to have just been a storage area for videos.

Facebook

Facebook is currently the undisputed king of Social Media. However, it only recently surpassed MySpace in usage and there are many competing Social Media sites coming on line everyday each with a unique set of features that attract new ways of interaction. Understanding each tool how it is used and how it can be leveraged to get your message out and get your vote out is critically important.

Brown

Brown had over 150,000 fan page followers, 2,223 links, 212 discussion threads, and over 948 fan pictures including some not too flattering photos of his earlier modeling career. But the important thing was that there where a significant number of photos indicating a vibrant, active community. This leads to an important consideration in Social Media communities. Brown's campaign appeared to have a kind of "wild west" mentality and it appears that they did not control, or couldn't control, the community as much as Coakley appears to have done. Additionally, the famous thumbs up "likes" icon and comments on each post was always in the multiple thousands, which is further evidence of a very active community. His following was significant, active and as a result evangelized the candidate, promoting his ideas and encouraging others watching the community to get out the vote.

Coakley

Coakley had only an 1/8^th of the number of followers Brown had. Comments and "likes" never exceded a couple of hundred and thus the community portrayed an unenthused, flat, and perhaps censured group. Coakley's message was very controlled, and with no real excitement or activity in the community there was no evangelizing. The key difference was the amount of participation allowed. Brown did not appear to censure his following, which appears to be a key factor in the vibrance his community had especially in comparison to Coakley.

Twitter

Twitter has become extremely popular over the last year with companies, state and local governments, news stations, and even some local bakeries finding useful ways to use Twitter to share information with their communities. The candidates did not ignore Twitter in their campaigns and appear to have used it to promote their message. Consider the following statistics:

		Posts	Followers		Friends	Lists
Brown		735	17,630		2,759	809
Coakley		600	4,241		2,774	355

Brown

Brown's use of Twitter was consistent with his overall Social Media strategy and his campaign was able to build a vibrant Twitter community. More importantly, it is also clear that the strategy crossed the tool boundary. In other words, Brown's community wasn't limited to one Social Media venue. It becomes clear that a Social Media strategy transcends the tools.

Coakley

Coakley's team appears to have understood how to use Twitter and used it effectively. They promoted their message with a good, steady stream of tweets and with a reasonable following. What starts to become clear in analyzing their use of Twitter is that there was a lack of cross tool promotion. Perhaps this was a result of the lack of community to promote with or it might be have been the result of a disjointed Social Media strategy that focussed on each tool independently. In other words, it is not effective to have a Facebook strategy, a Twitter strategy, or a Flickr strategy unless there is a overriding Social Media strategy that help promote community across the spectrum of tool choices. Viral social marketing depends on empowering the community to infect others with excitement for your message.

Ning

Brown used another popular social media site called Ning. Ning allows users to create their own social media network, and gives them controls, tools, and forums that they can customize and control. Brown's Ning network was very active and geared toward his foot soldiers. His team used Ning to coordinate the rest of his social media activities. Talking points, event coordination, blog posts etc... were all found on Brown's Ning site. The user's on his Ning network where the most commonly commented posters on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

Personal Web sites

Most campaign managers focus on the website for the campaign. This is still a key important aspect to the social media campaign, but it should not be the only focus. This most evident when you look at the numbers from Alexa. (Alexa gives many different statistics about website page hits, time online etc..)

 
As you can see in the pageview hits Brown's website that he more than doubled the number of page hits over Coakley. Not only was Brown's peak in Page hits higher it started it climb much earlier. But this only shows part of the story. The most interesting part of the website story is the amount of time people spent on each site.

 
The graph shows that Brown's campaign made adjustments to their site so that people did not spend as much time on the site. You would think that this would be bad, but it shows that his information was easier to get to from the typical user. I attribute this to summation of information being on his website and real-time dynamic data being on his social network accounts. This is evident when you look at the "clickstream" of Brown's website. The highest linked from site to his website was Facebook. He drove traffic effectively from Facebook to his website. For Coakley it was Google.

Another statistic that tells the story is the number of page views per user. At first thought you would think the higher the number the better. You want constituents on your website longer right?

 
Both websites matched pretty closely until mid December. Then Coakley's pagviews per user increased while Brown's decreased. Again considering that Brown had almost double the number of pageviews overall. This shows that the actual number of users was approximately 50% higher. Why the change? Information was easier to get to on fewer pages with Brown's compared to Coakley's website. And Brown was driving more traffic to his dynamic and active pages on Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook.

Summary

Brown may not have won because of his social media strategy, but his campaign strategy included effective use of social media tools. Coakley also used social media but her campaign used the tools as individual tools. And despite clearly understanding how to use the tools the strategy did not create or drive a community. Where there was some community, it appeared restricted and flat. On the other hand, Brown's community seemed to be more of a wild west, anything goes type of community. The people spoke in his forums and comments where authentic, or appeared to be. Understanding the balance of controlling the message while giving the community its voice is the way to propagate the message and increase involvement and vitality in an active community.