Barack Obama made waves with his use of social media during his 2008 Presidential run. It was a big story at the time - but it seems crazy to think that only 10% of voters accessed social media to learn about candidates that year. Now, social media has become a mainstay for every aspiring presidential candidate. With each election cycle, a bigger and bigger portion of campaign staff is focused on digital and social. At TrackMaven, we’ve been tracking all of the current presidential candidates on social media and have found some interesting trends that non-political marketers can learn from.
In this post, we’ll take a look at Facebook and Twitter. In future posts, we’ll look at other channels, and dive deeper as the candidate pool narrows. Most of this post will focus on the differences among the Republican candidates, because the crowded field (relative to the Democrats) makes for a very rich data set.
Facebook is not only a platform to engage supporters, it’s a highly effective way to raise funds. The chart below compares the Facebook follower counts relative to the average engagement per Facebook post, normalized per 1,000 followers.
The first thing that jumps out is the fact that each of the current Republican front-runners (Ben Carson and Donald Trump) independently have more Facebook fans than the 2 Democratic front-runners (Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders) combined! But audience size alone doesn’t make for an effective social media campaign, so it’s important to look at the impact that the content has.
Ben Carson holds the largest Facebook audience, and his campaigns have generated some of the most engaging Facebook content across all candidates. He has called Facebook his secret weapon for fundraising. Carson’s “I am a Christian” post was most impactful piece of content for all candidates in the past 90 days, with 1.4 Million interactions. But it also a meaningful impact on the race: The day after he posted it, he saw a 1% jump in the polls. Source: Real Clear Politics.
Donald Trump is a close 2nd in terms of audience size, with a much higher number of interactions per post per 1000 followers. However, this is in large part due to the fact that his campaign has 3rd lowest volume of output of all candidates. Given the loyalty of Trump’s followers, his campaign could probably post some more content.
Among the non-front-runners, Carly Fiorina’s content creates the most engagement on Facebook relative to her audience size. Most of her campaign’s top posts are video clips of Fiorina speaking in interviews or debates. But her low volume of content contributes to her low share of total interactions. As with Trump, the Fiorina campaign should publish more Facebook content
Rand Paul has the 3rd largest Facebook audience, but the lowest engagement relative to size (Interactions per post per 1K followers). Among other things, this is a function of his high volume of content: Paul has the most output, with nearly 700 posts over the past 90 days. Also, in much of the Paul campaign on Facebook, he reshares media coverage, which does not engage his audience as much as the 1st-person approach employed by Carson.
Another way to compare the social media impact is to look at share of conversation - the percentage of total interactions (likes, comments, shares) that each candidate gets over time. Looking at the Facebook data for Republicans over the past 90 days, you’ll see the conversation is dominated by 4 candidates: Carson, Trump, Huckabee, and Cruz. Most recently, Carson has taken share from Trump, with Cruz and Huckabee remaining fairly steady. Fiorina, Rubio and Paul have meaningful total interaction counts, while Christie, Pataki, Bush, Kasich, and Santorum barely register.
Looking at the engagement metrics closely, you’ll see that Facebook performs more strongly than Twitter, with most candidates getting 5-15 interactions per post per 1000 followers. Twitter content is averaging less than 1 interaction per post per 1000 followers. This ratio is consistent with the findings from our analysis of 8,800 brands in the Content Marketing Paradox Report. On Twitter, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have massive follower counts compared to all other candidates. But tweets from Bernie Sanders prove to be the most engaging relative to audience size.
Trump has the highest content output on Twitter, with 1624 tweets in the past 90 days. Amongst the Republicans, he dominates Share of Interactions, owning 75% of all interactions (Favorites Likes, Retweets, and comments) in the Republican field.
Between the Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton has nearly 5 times as many Twitter followers as Bernie Sanders. But Sanders tweets at a higher rate, and gets nearly 8 times the engagement per tweet, relative to follower size. As a result, Sanders wins the Share of Attention war. If the Clinton campaign wants to compete on Twitter, they should study Sanders’ strategy and learn from it.
After Trump and Clinton, Ben Carson and Marco Rubio have the largest Twitter followings. Carson’s campaign has stated that it doesn’t view Twitter as an effective medium to engage its audience — or raise funds. But besides the outliers of Sanders and Kasich, Carson has the highest engagement on average with his tweets. Maybe he should reconsider.
What can marketers learn from this data?
Even though most of us are marketing for brands, there is a lot of food for thought in this data. Some findings make for clear next steps; whereas others create interesting debates. Here are my three takeaways:
- Be authentic and personal, especially on Facebook. Ben Carson’s content is a stark contrast to Rand Paul’s, and the results speak for themselves. (See: “I am Christian” campaign)
- Determine the right level at which to post and set that as a baseline. Fiorina’s content is very good at engaging with its audience, but they aren’t posting enough. But like Rubio or Paul, make sure you aren’t clogging your audience with low-quality content that doesn’t resonate.
- Understand where you stand relative to your competition, on metrics beyond measuring audience size. Does your content engage your audience at a higher level than your peers? What topics and tone are create the most engagement? Donald Trump seems to get all the press, but he’s losing the share of conversation battle on Facebook. Does his campaign know it? What would you do if you discovered that a competitor was quietly stealing the conversation away from you?