Showing posts with label Mike Gravel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mike Gravel. Show all posts

Sunday, September 02, 2007

Presidental Candidate Social Media Analysis #7: Sen. Mike Gravel (D)


Social Media Analysis: Sen. Mike Gravel (D)

Mike Gravel has the following:

Website: Fairly basic site, although there is NO SPLASH PAGE! What I like about this site is it is very easy to very quickly figure out gravel’s stand on many different issues, as they have clear statements right on the home page. They are also pulling in a lot of blog and news information that is very current. Big focus on YouTube at this site. It is very very easy to navigate and has few bells and whistles. Clear and straight to the point, much like the candidate himself.

Right at the top on the home page is a call to enter in your email address. When I did that, and clicked submit, it took me directly to their donation page! This is the first candidate website to do that.

There’s an RSS feed for the news items, prominent placement for the official YouTube site, and he has a podcast going. There are no readily apparent links to MySpace, Facebook or any other social media off of the home page. However, hidden under the tab “meet like minds” is a list of the different social media sites that Gravel is involved with. ActBlue, MeetUp, Google Groups, MySpace, Virb, Facebook, YouTube, DFA-Link and Second Life! This is the first candidate I’ve run across who is using Second Life.

ActBlue: Seems like a general site where individuals who have donated money to the campaign can interact with one another. You can see who is supporting the candidate and how much money he has raised within the space. So far, 54 supporters, $2,407.

MeetUp: This is the meeting organizer site that allows people to set up meetings and see who is coming to them. Looks like this group has been in existence since January and they are moderately active. It’s a good site to link to from the main candidate site and I’m surprised that others haven’t done the same.

Google Groups: The first candidate as far as I can tell that is using Google Groups – or at the very least, linking to it. A low use site, it looks like they are feeding in news items, but not much else is going on there. Too bad. Interesting idea to play with, but you need more people involved to make it worth while.

YouTube: Very ACTIVE YouTube site. Links to campaign videos – some of the most interesting and off the wall that are available for any candidate – and links to supporter videos too. One of the best YouTube sites not so focused on the rich TV ads, but more real and focused. More than likely this is due to the fact that the campaign doesn’t have a lot of money. But they get how to use YouTube. 2,686 subscribers

MySpace: Fairly basic MySpace site, although they do link back to the main site, have a focus on getting people to donate and there is the ability for people to cut and paste code onto their own site. There is also a YouTube pull in. Could they do more? Yep. Just not a lot going on here at all. 9471 Friends

Virb: Another social networking site. This one has a clean feel and one that is very easy to navigate. The campaign is using this space for some good general information about candidate, and pulling in a lot of the YouTube video. 42 friends.

DFA-Link: Used by Democracy for America. Only 24 supporters listed here, and very little action. Is it worth linking to? Probably not.

Facebook: Interesting Facebook site. On the surface, fairly normal, and yet, here’s a campaign actually trying to get people to join a group “Rock08” and actively encouraging participation there. They are also using several different applications: “Ask Me Something” and the NewsVine candidate supporter. The Ask Me Something is a clunky application. It looks like the campaign wants to use it so the candidate can ask people questions and get feedback. It’s just recently launched and it will be interesting to see how it goes. Newsvine is a great application – interesting that the Campaign hasn’t placed in on their Facebook! Two groups “Rock08” and “Mike Gravel 2008” are highlighted on this page – there are 2,834 people on the Mike Gravel 2008 group and 16 members of Rock08 (this one is fairly new from the looks of it). This has been the one candidate who has really pushed the group option and formalized it. There are links to MySpace and YouTube as well. 4,607 supporters.

SecondLife: There are some great screen shots of the campaign HQ within Second Life. Since I’m blogging from home…and not at work, I can only go by the screen shots, as I don’t have the system resources to buzz around second life. This is an interesting one to utilize and I would say that this is ahead of its time a bit – not enough people have access or interest in this space to really use it well. However, the campaign should get points for trying! I would say, that they could be publicizing this a lot more aggressively than they are. How? Given their reliance on YouTube, why not a YouTube from within Second Life? If you consider the importance of linking your social media together so each plays off of the other, then this makes a lot of sense.

Blog: There’s not a clear link to his blog on the site, and it looks more like it is being used as an information posting site more than anything else. So the information from the blog is populating the “news” column on the home page, but the word “blog” isn’t used. There could be a lot more here, and it is unfortunate given the candidates outspoken nature that they aren’t doing more with this. For example, there should be more direct postings by the candidate (although I’ve been pointing that out to all of them, haven’t I) and it should be clearer that this is a blog. I think the real issue is that this is more of a forum/discussion area and less of a blog format. Too many clicks to see the postings and responses is a bit of a challenge from a user perspective. It is current though, and that is a bonus.

Search Results: I’m impressed. I expected a much different result when I plugged in “Gravel” in the search bar at Google. First item up was the official campaign website. Next item was the campaign issues page and the third item was WikiPedia.com. It was after that that the stone and gravel sites came up! At Yahoo! there are sponsored ads for rocks, and the WikiPedia.com entry for stone first, but then the WikiPedia.com for the candidate and then the campaign site is listed. MySpace is #9 on the list. Over at Live there are similar results, with the WikiPedia.com entry for the stone first, then for the candidate second, then the candidate site and the MySpace and a YouTube entry as well.

Recommendations: Like many of the candidates, Gravel has some strong points and some weak points when it comes to using social media. The campaign is taking advantage of several different social media outlets, with perhaps their strongest showing in YouTube. They should be doing more cross-linking, and certainly moving the social media sites of Facebook and MySpace to their home page along with YouTube. They should also adjust their site to put more emphasis on the blog. Their SEO is really good and I’m impressed that with a name like “Gravel” they were able to get the top spots. The campaign probably cannot afford to do any CPC, so must really focus on viral and word of mouth – especially given the challenges he is having in getting into debates (but there, folks is a totally DIFFERENT blog posting!). Overall, some good things going on here. Strong YouTube/video but more needs to be done to connect them all. Put your limited resources into the properties with the highest coverage (i.e.: YouTube, MySpace and Facebook) and push those hard. Move away from the others because they are a waste of resources at the moment.

Posted by Elaine at 8:26 PM 1 comments

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