Emotional Women...here we go again...

By now you've probably already seen the "emotional" Hillary Clinton piece. It's been on all the news channels this evening -- even the BBC ran it.

Reacting to a question about "how she does it" (in other words, gets through all of the grind), she seemed to answer honestly...and...OMG...showed....

EMOTION.

Yep.

There it is folks.

EMOTION.

Actually, my take on it is that she showed how deeply she cares about all of this.

But...

Rival John Edwards saw it differently. Mr. "I care about you, and your family and am the one who will get you health care" responded with the following statement:

I think what we need in a commander-in-chief is strength and resolve, and presidential campaigns are tough business, but being president of the United States is also tough business,"

Of course the media isn't helping either. Here we go...

ABC News: Clinton Gets Emotional on Campaign Trail and
Can Clinton's Emotions Get the Best of Her? N.Y. Senator's Recent Displays of Emotion Have Political Analysts Buzzing
CBS News: The Woman Who Elicited Clinton's Emotion
NBC News: Hillary shows her soft side (Andrea Mitchell noted that Clinton "was clearly showing the strain and was right on the edge")
FOX News: Clinton Dismisses Claims of Being Too Emotional
NYTimes: Clinton Talks about Strains of Campaign

Many thanks to the folks over at Think Progress who point out the interesting fact that when Romney chokes up it's "a genuine moment" or when Pres. Bush chokes up it's "an extraordinary display of emotion" or when Robert Gates, Sec. of Defense choked up he was bringing a "human side".

But when a women chokes up ... she's too emotional to be president or she is just calculating.

God I hope this doesn't turn into a Howard Dean "Scream" moment -- you would have thought the media would have learned from that.

And frankly as an "overly emotional" woman myself, I cringe at this coverage. For heavens sake, when did being emotional mean a woman isn't able to lead? Being emotional means you CARE.

Good luck Hillary. It certainly will be interesting to see how this one pans out. I've got some tissues if you need 'em.

Presidential Candidate Social Media Analysis: Update - Sen. Hillary Clinton

Real quick observation here on the website for the Clinton Campaign. The Hillary Hub site has launched a new "Fact Hub" to provide information and facts on issues that crop up. Interesting. Here's the campaign using the web to respond to issues which makes sense. It's also about control. It allows the campaign to put out the information in a way that they can control, rather than leaving it up to others in the blogosphere or elsewhere to manipulate and use.

Hmmm....

Here's my question then. What is more powerful? Controlling the message or allowing others to run with the message? It's the same line marketers are walking everywhere. What does it mean to release control of your brand to others?

At the same time, I noticed something interesting at the HillaryHub site. I'd do a screenshot, but I don't have good image software on my laptop (still at the conference). So, you'll just have to deal with words...not images.

At the bottom of the site it states, "Paid for by Hillary Clinton for President". Ok. That's good. But below that it states:

Hillary Clinton for President is not responsible for the content of any external websites.

Um. So is "hillary hub" an external website? It's not the same domain as the main candidate website at HillaryClinton.com.

So if Facts.Hillaryhub.com is an EXTERNAL website....then who is responsible for these facts? But if it's not considered external...why do you need the disclaimer anyway?

I'm confused. More so than normal.

Presidential Candidate Social Media Analysis #3: Sen. Hillary Clinton (D)

Social Media Analysis: Sen. Hillary Clinton (D)


Sen. Hillary Clinton has the following:

1. Website: http://www.hillaryclinton.com/
2. YouTube: http://youtube.com/hillaryclinton
3. MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/hillaryclinton
4. Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=570885455
5. EONS: http://community.eons.com/members/profile/hillaryclinton
6. FlickR: n/a
7. Mobile: Text “Join” to 77007
8. Blog: http://www.hillaryclinton.com/blog/

She has an email newsletter you can sign up for on the website. doesn’t look like she’s touting a book though.

Let's go a bit deeper, shall we?

Website: I’m just going to quote my comments from the Brownback analysis here... “We start with the splash page designed to get people to sign up for the email info BEFORE we even read about the issues. Stupid. A collage of pictures is NOT going to get me to sign up for things for my email. Information will.”

Having said that, there is really nothing more to say except WOW! I cannot believe the focus of this website. Call to action and involvement right up front. “8 things you can do for Hillary”. Nicely done. Allows people to set up groups, email their friends, and help fundraise. Very community involved. No news on the main site, but available through http://www.hillaryhub.com/. The RSS feed is there for the news. I’m surprised though that there isn’t an RSS feed on the main site to alert people to site updates. HillaryHub also wasn’t found in the search engines on a search for Clinton. This would be a GREAT one to buy the sponsored ads for! Great link to what is going on...and the news includes a blog listing too. Also call to action regarding safe withdrawal of our troops right up front. Action oriented. Great stuff! So where are the social media links? Need to scroll a little to find them and they are listed as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and EONS!! Yep...we have our first Eons sighting. Target market much? Eons, the social networking site for 50+ is a GREAT place to be reaching out. While both MySpace and Facebook are growing in older users, Eons is the branded site for Boomers. Nice touch! And...the Clinton site is also doing the text message sign up for news. Overall the site is easy to navigate with many ways for people to get involved! Well done!

YouTube: Mix of different videos – really playing up the experience card with the clip from the CNN debate about visiting leaders of other countries. No personal message here. Too bad. Would really like to see that. 5,052 subscribers as of today.

MySpace: Another well structured, clean and neat MySpace site. No music, but there is a video scroll (with links to MySpace TV), lots of banner ads to grab and post on your own sites, and linking back to the campaign website (now there’s a thought!). Not the same power or call to action here as on the website…hmmm…why not? Social media is about linking together, so why not have more of an aggressive call to action here that drives people the same way the website does. Just post the top 8 things you can do. What about a news items too? I had higher expectations for the MySpace site given how great the website was. Oops! 127399 friends.

Facebook: Same problem for Hillary that Brownback’s campaign had…they linked directly to the Facebook page…and not the PUBLIC page…there’s that login screen of doom. Bummer. Actually Bummer is my whole reaction to the Facebook site. With the amount of traffic that Facebook has seen over the past several months, I would have thought there would be a much more aggressive focus here – again, high expectations set by the website I guess. Nothing happening here at all! No newsvine link, only one link out to the main site, no calls to action, no connection to You Tube…under posted items there are links to videos at least. Not taking advantage of the groups either. Overall pretty poor showing on Facebook. 33,017 Supporters as of today

Eons: Pretty basic fair here, although there are more links to sign up and take action than at MySpace, where the emphasis was on placing a banner, these links ask you to tell America why you support Hillary (why wasn’t this one on MySpace or Facebook in some form?), add the mobile alerts, send a message of support (this one was on the MySpace page) and Women for Hillary. Her online folks must think that the majority of people on Eons are female…hmmm… based on the exploration of the “friends” looks like they are right…lots of women there. There is also a blog feed. 122 friends so far.

Flickr: Nothing official that I can find. There is a Clinton for 2008 group of photos from March. Do I think this is bad? Well if you are going to have the account, you should keep it going. If not, delete it. The Clinton campaign has a lot going on at the website around photos, and I haven’t really seen that Flickr is that useful so I wouldn’t sweat not having this one, but the campaign may want to shut down the one that hasn’t been updated.

Mobile: so I joined the Text Messaging from the Clinton site. Very easy to do...now awaiting my first text message.

Blog: What I really like about the Clinton blog is that the individuals who are posting are part of the campaign in different ways – and they are posting lots of good information. Again, though, no messages written by Hillary. An email she sent out was posted on the blog – I wonder why a blog post isn’t listed in an email? Come on people! Think! Hillary could write an AMAZING blog posting and then what could you do with that in the email and on the website, etc.? Still relying on email a lot, and that is fine, but mix it up a bit. There are links to a bunch of RSS feed readers – didn’t include netvibes I’m sorry to see. Overall not too bad, but certainly again, not the dynamic I would have expected based on the website.

Search Results: Searching for “Clinton” on the major search engines is very interesting. Sen. Clinton has the challenge of competing against her husbands online legacy, so it was interesting, indeed to see what popped up at Google. News was the first item – with a picture of Barak Obama! Gee whiz! Anyway, her campaign site was top in organic search, and the WikiPedia.com entry for Bill Clinton came next, with the Wiki entry for Hillary Rodham Clinton after that, slightly indented underneath Bill. Hmmm…a bit of sexism from WikiPedia.com?? or is it just the Google algorithm? You decide! The Senate site for Clinton was next and then a mix of Community Colleges and other things. No MySpace or social networking. Sponsored ads? The Clinton foundation was top, and some other items listed, and what ho! a sponsored ad for John McCain. I wonder if the Clinton campaign has purchased sponsored ads for the McCain search? I guess we will find out later. Over at Live, news tops the list, with the Clinton Senate site first, the Wiki entries (again, with Hillary indented underneath Bill…not liking that at all!) and then the campaign site. Her MySpace page shows up a bit further down. Sponsored ads? Nothing out of the ordinary…looks like all the fun happens at Google! And at Yahoo! the results are even more interesting. #1 = the Wiki entry for Bill (nope…no Hillary underneath!), #2 = Clinton’s senate website, #3 = White House biography of Bill Clinton, #4 = the Clinton Foundation, #5 = the Wiki Entry for Hillary Clinton…and where is the Campaign site? Rank #8! There is no MySpace either. Sponsored ads abound, but nothing out of the ordinary. Wow! Might want to have your web folks get busy on the Yahoo listings there – or at least buy a sponsored ad at the top! Searching on her full name the results are better however.

Recommendations: So my overall recommendation for the Clinton Campaign is to do some organic search work and consider some sponsored ads over at Yahoo! at least. Not everyone is going search on “Hillary Clinton”. The website ROCKS! Well done – but then everything begins to fall apart. Certainly not capitalizing on the social media tools the way they could be and it would be so very easy. Those 8 call to action items should be on EVERY social site. The fact that they aren’t aggressively going after the Facebook applications stuns me. They need to do more to really use the social media to make progress. Further along than the others I’ve reviewed so far, but still a long way to go to meet the potential. Great site. So-so social media.