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“I listened to you and in the process I found my own voice”, just words?

February 27th, 2008 by pierreloic

Hillary Clinton delivered her best line after winning the New Hampshire primary 6 weeks ago when she declared to a crowd of supporters “I listened to you and in the process I found my own voice”. This may be remembered as Hillary Clinton tragic missed opportunity in her presidential run, when she stated what she ought to do to be successful but failed to deliver: be herself.

Social media offer a wonderful lens to observe the Clinton campaign and where her failures and opportunities crystallize.

Clinton’s performance on social media has the most disappointing among presidential contenders from both parties. Unlike John McCain who has not even attempted to make strives on new media, resulting in a very limited performance, the Clinton campaign did invest time and energy to build her online presence. According to the data gathered on Traackr, her results are nothing short of appalling:

- her popularity on social media is about 1/4th of Obama’s.

- her buzz, defined by Traackr as the ability to get other people to talk about you, is even more worrisome as she does worse than John McCain by a margin of 1:2 in her ability to start discussions among users on social media, and by a margin of 1:10 with Obama! What does this mean? Simply that her messages fall flat with the online community.

- Perhaps worst news of all for Mrs. Clinton is the fact that negative publicity on the web supersedes messages of support by a margin of almost 2:1, portraying Hillary Clinton as a polarizing figure, generating more hatred than love.

Why such disappointing performance? Here are some of the things that the Clinton campaign did wrong to contribute to such poor showing:

- Demonstration of an absolute lack of understanding of social media, the social rules that govern them, and even some of the most rudimentary aspects, like tagging. Social media have been used by Hillary Clinton as a broadcast channel rather than a means to engage people in the political debate. You don’t need to know much about MySpace, YouTube or Facebook to know that users don’t like getting information shoved down their throat.

- Her messages are overly crafted by communication “experts” and driven by poll results. We wish that Hillary Clinton had “found [her] own voice” but it seems that pollsters have driven the Clinton campaign into a wall by reinventing their candidate with every new debate, poll result, and primary. The result is a candidate that voters have trouble relating to because of a perceived lack of authenticity. This comes especially visible on social media as transparency is a core expectation of the community.

- The campaign failed to see signs of trouble and to change course. Maybe the most unforgiving mistakes of all is the fact that social media gave Mrs. Clinton early signs of these problems she is experiencing now in her campaign and her team failed to act upon the information they at hand to see that an overly manufactured candidate with too many faces would not fly with voters.

What can the Clinton camp do now to change the dynamic of the race?

As much as social media have made visible the main flaws of the Clinton presidential run and they could be the only way left to save her campaign. With time running out, only social media offer Mrs. Clinton an opportunity to act fast and decisively.

Here are the few steps she could take:

- Forget about polls and communication consultants and rebuild her character on genuineness

- Publish material online to corroborate Clinton’s image

- Reach out to influential users and web pundits to relay her message. And yes, it means exposing oneself to critic but if the message rings true, the community will be supportive

- Last but not least, create a SWAT team to work on this online campaign free to run with the ball, with no interference or oversight by any PR or communication firm.

Voters are eager to see Mrs. Clinton shine on this campaign and there is no better place to start than with a group of independent-minded voters right in Barack Obama’s backyard.

Speed is of the essence here and Clinton’s communication specialists and pollsters ought to step aside and let social media savvy experts lead the charge.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 12:47 pm and is filed under Influence in Politics, MarCom 2.0, We Search, We Score, We Rant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • David

    You’ve highlighted Ms. Clinton’s problems in using social media to her advantage, but I believe the problem runs deeper than her inability to use the communication tools available. Rather, there is a lack of a core message running throughout her campaign, and by implication, in what she stands for.
    Mitt Romney’s experience is relevant. He has proven executive skills,whether it be managing the Olympics or governing Massachusetts, themes that resonate with Ms. Clinton’s emphasis on knowing how to get things done “on day one”. Yet there persisted a lingering doubt as to what he stood for, ultimately leading to his stepping down. In the minds of many voters, he was perceived as saying whatever was expedient given the predispositions of the audience he was addressing. Ms. Clinton’s most egregious (and unfortunately very public) demonstration of the same flaw came during the debates concerning the question of driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, where she flip-flopped on that question.
    Add to this the fact that Ms. Clinton is a divisive figure on the national scale. To many, myself included, choosing her as the Democrat’s nominee would be tantamount to handing the election to the Republicans, an option that must be avoided.
    True enough, Mr. Obama’s message is largely without substance, based as it is on “change” without details as to what that means. Nevertheless, similar approaches have worked in the past, Jimmy Carter’s successful bid for the White House being perhaps the most telling. It remains to be seen if, once in the White House, Mr. Obama can give substance to the promise of change that voters so clearly want and respond to.
    At its heart, the Democratic race comes down to choosing between a very competent technocrat who knows the in’s and out’s of Washington, and an inspirational outsider who promises to take us to a different, and emotionally appealing, destination.
    The question of how these very different messages are communicated (whether through social media, public appearances, the press, or word of mouth) is of secondary importance compared to the content of the message itself.

  • http://traackr.com pierreloic

    Thanks for your insights, David. By no means do we suggest that the content of the message is secondary to the media platform communicating it. We happen to specialize in social media and have studied their impact on the presidential campaign, so what you read here is an analysis of a broad issue from our particular viewpoint.

    I would say though that social media offers an interesting magnifying lens where issues become very visible very fast. Your comparison between Romney and Clinton is quite accurate when it comes to the lack of consistency of their messages; in both cases, their performance on social media (or lack thereof) reflected these issues very early on.

    Can social media solve these challenges by themselves? Certainly not; if nothing else, they serve as a fairly reliable barometer and a motivation factor for candidates to tackle problems as they get highlighted.

    Also, let’s not overlook the fact that only 20% of voters cast a decisive vote in the general election (that is independent votes in swing states). The success of both Barack Obama and John McCain has everything to do with reaching out to these voters, and in the case of Obama, his strategy with social media is tightly related to his achievements.