Presidential Candidate Social Media Analysis #11: Sen. John McCain (R)

Social Media Analysis: Sen. John McCain (R)

Sen. John McCain has the following:

• Website: http://www.johnmccain.com OR http://www.exploremccain.com
• YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/johnmccaindotcom
• MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/johnmccain
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/person.php?id=2307258706
• Eventful: http://eventful.com/performers/P0-001-000016098-5/demand
• Huddlez.com: http://www.huddlez.com/hotdiscussions.jsp?s=1187115252203078
• Blog: http://www.johnmccain.com/Blog/ AND/OR http://mccainblogette.com/index.shtml (read below for more on this!)

Website: The McCain campaign site has some surprises in store. First of all from a design perspective, they’ve gone with a black and white and shades of grey motif which actually looks pretty good! It’s a clean and easy to navigate site – like most of the others this campaign has an action center which they are calling “McCain Space”, there’s a big red contribute button (several as a matter of fact) and a lot of video on the site. The campaign has actually done a good job of incorporating video that is quick to load and well placed. They’ve done a mix of YouTube and internal video. The press section is by far the best I’ve seen so far with a good mix of information including campaign photos, a spot for the media to join and news. Unfortunately they are leading with a story from Sept. 15th, and their news roll is below that – small mistake, but one that they should rectify. The issues section also provides a great mix of text and video. Nice touch!

From the home page there is information on social media sites: Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and eventful.

There is also a blog, where I got quite the surprise! Just several days ago John McCain’s daughter launched her blog called “McCainBlogette.com” which, while not part of the Senator’s presidential campaign, IS following the campaign from a different point of view. So there is the main campaign blog site where staffers are dumping in video and news items (not much of a blog) and now there is the daughter’s “non-official” blog. Read more on both of these below!
Overall this site is strong – the layout is clean and easy to follow and there is a good mix of video. The downside? The social media are present on the home page, but once you leave the homepage they are gone. Also this campaign is trying to get people to stay on their site (like many of the campaigns) so followers can create their own site at the McCain Space – but again, why would someone do that? None of these are being found in the search engines. What’s the point? (But…more on this point of view at the end of the series!)

YouTube: The campaign has done a great job of tying together the main website and the YouTube site. It’s clear they belong together. Still, not the YouTube I’d like to see – less advertising and more one-on-one conversation – that whole straight talk thing that McCain is pushing could work very well here with some more direct and shorter pieces. Back off on the polish a bit and go more edgy. Not much depth here at all – and no real push for a profile and groups to really capitalize on YouTube. 1,644 subscribers.

MySpace: Don’t bother clicking on the MySpace icon from the home page of the McCain website – it doesn’t work! It takes the user to the home page for MySpace, not the MCCAIN MySpace site. Oops! This site is also tied very nicely to the campaign site. Good continuity. Overall there are a lot of different videos and a link to Eventful. The most recent MySpace blog entry is from August! The most action this site is getting is from the “friends” – doesn’t seem that there is much updating going on here. 39,159 Friends

Facebook: The Facebook account for the Campaign requires that people log in – I guess the folks at the campaign haven’t set up the public search feature yet. Basic information here. They have incorporated the newsvine application, are listing groups and have photos up. Not much else – doesn’t look like they have created an official Facebook group either. 11,576 Supporters

Eventful: The McCain campaign is running a “Demand” through Eventful. Currently the Candidate is demanded by 2,649 people in over 200 places. I wonder if he’ll make them all.

Huddlez: A social grouping site for discussion. Doesn’t look like much is going on here – only a few people and the posts were from August. Not sure if this is even worth linking to.

Search Results: An initial search on Google for “Mcain” (yep, I typed it wrong) revealed a sponsored link at the top for the John McCain Campaign! Nicely done folks! There is was also a paid ad for the Fred Thompson campaign. Looks like that’s where the Thompson campaign sees a threat! A correctly spelled search on Google resulted in top organic results for the campaign site, WikiPedia.com, the senate site, and news results. The MySpace site was listed at #7. Sponsored Ads were purchased here as well by the campaign. Over at Yahoo! the campaign site comes up on top, then the senate site, WikiPedia.com, news items, the McCain PAC: Straight Talk America, and MySpace at #9. The campaign has also purchased sponsored listings here. At Live, it’s a different story. Live hasn’t indexed the candidate websites homepage – or at least isn’t listing it. The first sites are the senate site, then the food company (which is mixed in on the others as well, just not third!), WikiPedia.com, then the exploratory committee site for McCain, (which is now a mirror image of the main site) and then a deep link to multimedia for the candidate site – but not a direct link to the home page! The campaign has also purchased a sponsored link here too. Someone is on the ball at the McCain campaign!

Depending on which option you click, you get a different part of the site – either the splash page or the home page.

Blog: So there are two blogs. The official candidate blog which is really a video show case with little notes interspersed. Of course, the comments are always the fun things to read! Overall though, this blog is ho-hum. Not being picked up by the search engines, opportunity really missed. As to the daughter’s blog, it is too soon to tell, but from the beginnings there are a few things that are missing – no RSS feed (whoops! but there is no RSS on dad’s either) and no ability to comment, so it’s more of a reporting then a blog, really. There are three contributors to it, and it will be interesting to see how it progresses and what type of visibility it gains. Already a quick search revealed several different bloggers blogging about the blogettes (um…did I just do that?). I suppose we will have to check back in on it – at the moment there are only a few postings and they are about parties…not political ones, but rather fundraising ones…so I guess one could argue that they are political. Here’s an interesting one to watch. [Spoiler – perhaps this is a nod to the Romney campaign and their blog “Five Brothers”? More on that in the Romney analysis!]

Recommendations: Interesting mix of pros and cons for the McCain Campaign. From a search perspective they are clearly leaving nothing to chance and are using CPC – which IMHO is a good way to go. The site is clean and easy to navigate and clearly communicates his message. There is continuity among the social networking sites the campaign is using which also ties things together. At the same time, the campaign is not fully leveraging the opportunities for social search. Every site should be linked from every other site – and this is not happening consistently. Also, because they are choosing to keep things within the action center they are loosing opportunity for greater online visibility – this certainly isn’t the only candidate to do this, however. Overall a good site. They are focusing on only some of the social media, which I think is a good strategy, however they aren’t leveraging each one nearly enough to its fullest potential. More could be done and more needs to be done if this candidate is to increase his presence online.