Presidential Candidate Social Media Analysis #4: Sen. Chris Dodd (D)
- Website: http://www.chrisdodd.com/
- YouTube: http://youtube.com/senatordodd
- UStream.TV: http://ustream.tv/senatordodd
- MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/senatordodd
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/person.php?id=2873715532
- EONS: n/a
- FlickR: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisdodd
- Mobile: n/a
- Twitter: http://twitter.com/chrisdodd
- Blog: http://www.hillaryclinton.com/blog/
He’s got the email to sign up for. No book that I can tell.
Let's go a bit deeper, shall we?
Website: So we enter the website without having to go through a splash page (Yippee!) Right up front though is a great big call to become part of the “Dodd Squad”. So I signed up. Will see how that goes. There is a call to volunteer and even intern with the Senator. The site is pretty straight forward and very easy to navigate – just four main sections (one of which is the blog) with the fifth being “contribute now”. Not a lot of content overall on the home page…hmmmm…may explain a lot as to why the organic search isn’t working so well! General information on policies…and his White Hair. Um…ok. There’s the Dodd Education Plan with a video, and a sign up to get campaign info…and the main navigation has disappeared. Lost much? There’s a media page and...Oh THERE’S the YouTube link! That’s how we get to see his ads. His event schedule is posted for all to see which is a nice feature. Overall though…no depth, and NO links to any social media other than the buried link for YouTube. Wait…hold on a sec…OOPS! I missed it! So by the sign up email area there are three tabs. They blend really well. Anyway, when I clicked on the “connect” tab there it was! Or there they were – the Social Media links: MySpace, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and UStream.TV. So here is our first TWITTER sighting! Oh! And at the bottom of the event page in the far right hand corner is the RSS symbol.
I had read something about the “Dodd Pod” but can’t find it on the site anywhere. Too bad.
YouTube: Mix of different videos – playing that silly “White Hair” commercial that they aired for the YouTube debate. Um. Ok. Done now. Funny once. Not so much anymore. Something new please! They do link back to their website. 616 subscribers as of today.
UStream.TV: Interesting site that allows for video. Looks like someone posted a page here for Dodd, and there are quite a few videos, similar to YouTube. Only 2 subscribers. Not sure if there is value here to splitting resources on both of these, however – especially with one that is not very well known. Could prove interesting in the future though, so while it pretty much duplicates YouTube content, I give the Sen. and his campaign credit for using something else.
MySpace: Again, a clean site that shows some personality, but doesn’t really take advantage of the fun you can have with a MySpace environment. No music, but there is a pull in of a MySpace Video of the Senator from his announcement when he filed papers to run. Banners and things you can put on your site…and What Ho! There’s the Dodd Pod!! And here’s the link, even though it doesn’t seem worthy to showcase on the main page of the website: http://www.chrisdodd.com/doddpod . I thought for sure I could listen to snippets of his play list, but no, it’s just a listing…um…now here’s a thought to the Dodd Campaign – pull in the audio player at MySpace and put in your TOP Dodd Pod song so we can hear it! If you are going to try to have fun, then really have fun. Remember social media is about connection. 8658 Friends
Facebook: So here’s another one who can’t seem to figure out that you can link to a “public” page on Facebook. Click on the link and we get the login screen of doom. Anyway, once logged in, we got nothing. It wasn’t even worth the effort to log in, frankly. On the plus side, they do link out to their MySpace and YouTube sites. But um. That’s kinda it. No aps, no nothing. YAWN. 1,199 supporters.
Sen. Dodd does have several groups out there rooting for him AND a Senator Dodd Network. However, I’m not seeing clear evidence that these are created by the campaign as official sites, nor do they seem to be exploiting the opportunity at all. Too bad. I had my hopes up for a minute.
Eons: No information on Eons. Missed opportunity!
Flickr: Basic images, kissing babies, barbeques, etc. Hmmm…wonder why no one (so far anyway) is using this to really push a message – like visuals that reflect policy. It’s easier to take pictures of BBQs I guess.
Mobile: Nothing on Mobile either, however with Twitter....well...at least they have some type of presence going on.
Twitter: Just “followed” Sen. Dodd. Nice mix of posts from both the Senator and the Staff. Most recent post is from 1 day ago. Will see how active this is and how useful. 50 followers, the Senator is following 21 people.
Blog: Ahh lots of video in this blog…almost like a VLOG with text added! Looks like there are several people who are blogging here, but no comments are enabled. That pretty much defeats the whole purpose of a blog! By the way, it occurs to me that I would really like to know who the bloggers are for real. It would be great for the campaigns to list who their staff bloggers are with a picture and their role in the campaign. That would make it feel real and make up for the fact that the candidates themselves are doing little to no blogging of their own. I like the use of both text and video here. There is an RSS feed for the blog.
Search Results: Searching on “Dodd” in Google results in news items first, then the Senator’s official Senate site, then the Dodd Camera site (I didn’t even know there were Dodd Cameras!), then the WikiPedia.com entry for Chris Dodd and then at #4, the official campaign site. Shortly after that was the MySpace and the YouTube sites for the Senator. No sponsored ads that are campaign related, just one for art. Over at Yahoo! there are similar results. The senate site comes first, then WikiPedia.com, then MySpace, the senate site again, and at #6 and #7, the campaign website. Lot’s of sponsored ads here, but none are campaign related. Live Search reveals WikiPedia.com as number one, then the campaign site, then the senate site with MySpace after that. I wonder how many of the candidates are using a “WikiPedia.com” strategy? No sponsored ads at all here. What does this reveal? Well, natural search is mediocre especially at Google. Not even a good result on the blog search. Tsk. Tsk.
Recommendations: In the words of Tim Gunn, “I’m under whelmed”. There is some interesting things going on here. The Dodd campaign is using many different social media. However, “using” is really not a descriptive enough word. Using is too action-oriented. Facebook and MySpace, which should be updated every day and really used to network and reach out to people, are stagnant. Twitter is probably the most active along with the Blog; however, there doesn’t seem to be much connection. I think the big issue is how the main site showcases the social media. When I found them, I was “DUH!”, but it took me a bit to discover the links. I’m still puzzling over that. I’m so surprised that a campaign like Dodd’s, which is not receiving much media attention…unless maybe he were to dye his hair blue or something, isn’t being more aggressive online with the social media. Overall assessment: average website, poor showing on organic search and some mediocre effort on the social media sites, but certainly not using them to even a basic advantage at all.
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