Why should John McCain be more aggressive on social media? To help pick Clinton over Obama
How can social media help candidates at this stage in the race and what should be each candidate’s strategy? Over the next few days, the Traackr team will analyze the performance of and discuss strategic options open to each candidate still running, one-at-a-time. We’ll start today with the main winner from Super Tuesday: John McCain.
To say that communicating over social media has not been John McCain’s forte would be an understatement: his popularity on social media amounts to about 1/20th of Obama’s!
At this point, with Mitt Romney out of the race (another under performer on social media), McCain could well secure the nomination without changing course. However, the stakes for him may be a little different and he could have a chance to influence the Democratic race to his advantage by helping Hillary Clinton against Obama.
Why would he do that? The reason is simple: Clinton offers better odds to John McCain for the general election as she is more likely to mobilize the conservative base of the Republicans against her, than Obama would.
Social media actually reflect this antagonistic reaction to Clinton: she is the only presidential contender for whom negative communication on social platforms is higher than messages of support.
Besides, John McCain competes in part with Barack Obama for the same votes among independents and Obama has proven to be more successful gaining support from these voters than McCain, partly by using to his advantage new media platforms. Traackr considers that in the presidential campaign, only Obama and Paul have demonstrated they understand the power of social media and have managed to use its tool set effectively.
Even if we accept that McCain has a vested interest in running against Clinton instead of Obama, how could he influence the outcome of the Democratic race?
As we just mentioned, John McCain and Barack Obama both appeal to independents, but McCain’s message and media presence hasn’t been tailored to younger demographics. If John McCain were to make even limited effort on social media to reach out to this constituency, he could well strip away some of these young votes that Obama heavily relies on to win a very tight race.Such a move by McCain can only play to his advantage. He could well sway the Democratic nomination by targeting the right audience in the right states. Even if he were unsuccessful blocking Obama from the nomination, gaining experience with the new media will be a critical factor for the general election and the Traackr team doesn’t believe that John McCain will be able to win the presidency without making a convincing effort with his social media presence.
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Tags: election campaign, influential, marketing buzz, viral marketing
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