• If you have a lot of followers it means
  • you’re campaign posts a lot.
  • you’ve pushed your social media at your events.
  • you may have even hired someone to tweet for you (more about that later).
  • you might have been really popular in high school.
• If you have a lot of followers it does not mean
  • that you are going to win the election or even leading in the polls.
  • that you can ignore comments and questions over social media.
  • that you can quit posting.
  • that people are actually listening to you.

Here’s a sampling of the candidates in Arkansas’ Third Congressional District, the number of twitter followers last night and their showing in the most recent Talk Business poll.  Of course most these have many more facebook fans.

• Mike Moore – 151 – 8%
• Cecile Bledsoe – 142 – 17%
• Doug Matay0 – 94 – 2%
• Steve Womack – 92 – 21%
• David Whitaker – 87 – Democrat, not in poll
• Bernie Skoch -72 – 5%
• Steve Lowry -31 -4%
• Gunner Delay – 54 – 16%

So, absolutely no corelation between twitter followers and poll numbers.

Many marketing web sites discuss social media marketing via YouTube, but I really think that a lot of times YouTube all by itself is not a social media. Now, I’m not saying YouTube is not a great marketing tool or communications channel, but it’s not really a social media until you get social with it. With social media you have to converse and conversing on YouTube is easy in the comments and a little bit harder with video replies, but there are a lot of YouTube channels and videos that aren’t exactly socialable.

In honor of Ben Ponder’s abundance of videos, I’m posting a video of his “On Being a Christian Plumber.”

I’ve seen a couple of now you see them, now you don’t comments on a few candidates Facebook page this week.  The quick deletions of comments on candidate’s pages begs the question of what is your intent with social media– are you joining/creating a conversation or pushing your message down another channel? Many people will say that it just depends on the comment, but I really don’t see campaigns engaging on twitter either (where campaigns can’t remove comments/questions directed at them — do a twitter search for a campaigns username like @griffincongress to see).

The one thing that always is very clear on social media is authenticity. It’s very clear is they they being real or selling their campaign slogan. When comments are deleted and questions are ignored, then the conversation is violated, the authenticity disappears. Likewise, when the campaign responds to twitter questions and comments on posts on their page the conversation is enhanced and authenticity is reinforced.

• Most obvious we’ve moved the blog up to the front page and eliminated the blog page. When we started campaign twit we weren’t sure if there was enough to blog about Arkansas candidates use of online tools and social media, but obviously there is. The rest of the content is still on the home page just further down.
• We’ve started tracking tweets from candidates in the Arkansas State House of Representatives and Arkansas State Senate.  Right now we have a widget for each of these groups at the bottom of the home page as well as two new lists on twitter. We’ll build a page for each of these groups soon. If you know of another candidate in these races that we aren’t listing, please send us their twitter username because our list is leaning a little to the right.
• We’ve added party affiliation to the headings above the tweet to give additional context to the tweets. We’ve had several requests for this addition to make it easier to follow one party or the other (but we did think about having a poll for each candidate to let you see if you could guess their party affiliation by their tweets).
• We tweaked the design a little and modified the page content background color. I suspect we are not done tweaking the design.

That’s all the update on Campaign Twit itself for now. We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled comments and critiques soon. If you see something that needs fixing or that you would change, let us know.

According to ABC News Facebook users click like almost twice as much as they click “become a fan.” Facebook says changing the button will make users more comfortable with linking up with a brand and will streamline the site.

So before the end of a campaign, you might be able to “like” your favorite politician’s Facebook page as well, too.

The real question is how do you find those followers? Here’s some ideas.

• Say something, say anything- If you don’t tweet, people won’t follow you.
• Say something interesting that your followers will retweet so their friends can see it and follow you.
• Twitter search – Do a search for cities in your area and follow those people who are active in your area.
• Go out and follow those people that follow others  you know in your area of interest (regionally or topically). Use a site like friend or follow to follow people who actually participate and follow others.
• Find a hashtag for your subject and follow everyone who participates in the conversation around that hashtag.
• Finally- In the real world.  People you meet at events, at your HQ, when going door to door and they want to get involved. Ask them to follow your or friend you.

Unless you know exactly when your followers are online, it might be a better idea to spread your tweets out a bit. It is a good idea to tweet during high usage times (weekdays 8-9 a.m., 11:30 a.m. – 1 p.m., 4-5 p.m.), but twitter usage is more spread out since it’s made to be mobile. There are several web sites out there that let you schedule tweets so you don’t have to be on a computer when you want to tweet.

Some people even suggest you might want to send the same tweet out more than once.  Guy Kawasaki, a venture capitalist who founded Alltop and has over 220,000 twitter followers, broadcasts every tweet four times a day to let all of his followers who are connected at different times of the day see his tweets.

I’m not sure I 100 percent agree that you should tweet everything four times, but twitter is not a completely asynchronous medium. Most twitter clients have a limit to the number of tweets they will pull in at once due to twitter’s limit on api calls and once you follow more than a couple of hundred people you only end up pulling in the last hour or two’s worth of tweets for those you follow during active hours (non-sleep).

At times reading Griffin’s twitter feed is like watching PBS during their fundraising drive–Thanks to a donor in Scott for $50. A Vietnam Veteran from Conway just donated $25.

After the Griffin campaign John Adams is the second most active twitterer in the 2nd district campaign. Adams is more conversational on twitter than Griffin. He shares links, retweets and carries on a conversation with conservative political blogger Jason Tolbert.

After the top two the rest of the candidates are tweeting once or twice a day mentioning their most recent campaign event or commenting on a issue trying to rally more some supporters to their side.

I’m asking because I noticed a comment on a facebook wall that implied being a fan of a candidates page implied an endorsement. I guess that really brings in another question, too. Does following on twitter have a different meaning that being a fan of a facebook page? I don’t really know, that’s why I’m asking. Let’s create a fictitious scenario and see what you think.

Arkansas 1st congressional district candidate, Jason Doe, has a facebook page and a twitter page which he uses to disseminate his views on issues, invite people to events and even responds to voters requests.  President Obama  has great interest in who wins Arkansas’ First Congressional District and so is following Candidate Doe on twitter and is a fan of Doe’s facebook page.

How does Candidate Doe interpret Obama’s actions? How do the voters of the 1st congressional district  read it? If becoming a facebook fan is construed as an endorsement then Doe’s campaign may be in trouble since less than 40 percent of Arkansas’s first congressional district voted for Obama in 2008.