Learning From The Candidate’s Digital Strategies

December 15, 2015      Tom Belford

OK, I admit to being a Democrat of Carter-era vintage, and I cringe at the current line-up of Republican presidential candidates. But I have to acknowledge, as Neanderthal as their politics are, most of them do know their way around digital media.

If you’re a digital fundraiser of any political stripe, it would behoove you to watch and learn.

Here is a great assessment of the leading GOP candidates and their digital strategies — what each is doing right (or wrong) with takeaways from each. The digital rankings from this author are:

1. Don Trump — the Twitter king. It helps to be willing and eager to say anything, at any time, uncensored, via social media!

2. Ben Carson — the frontrunner on Facebook (over 4 million followers, compared to Hillary’s 1.5 million and Trump’s 3.8 million). Excellent at lead generation.

3. Ted Cruz — good use of crowdsourcing.

4. Carly Fiorina — really answers questions on social media.

5. Marco Rubio — good use of Twitter

6. Jeb Bush — “social media presence tepid at best”, says the author. Sounds like the rest of his campaign.

Very illuminating article. Plenty of takeaways here for digital fundraisers.

Tom

P.S. While we’re on the subject, here’s an interesting brief report from Pew Research, More Americans are using social media to connect with politicians. Cause for concern: “26% say that the information they get via a politician’s social networking site is more reliable than what they get from traditional news organizations.” Uh oh!