Mitt Romney - Social media mastermind or misfit

Does Mitt Romney have what it takes to be a the authority when it comes to social media? We won't know until after the elections.

One thing that Romney doesn't lack is money and you can tell that he is throwing all he can at having a social presence.

As of last September Romney had spent $900,000 with digital marketing firm Target Victory alone. This was double any other competitor at the time. To show how much he might need to spend, Obama's re-election campaign and the Democratic party have spent $5 million. Money isn't the only thing that Mitt is doing to make sure that he is the authority.

Mitt recently hired the legendary Eric Fehrnstrom. Many believe that Eric is one of the greatest assets the Romney campaign has to bolster his social presence . GOP strategist Mike Murphy was quoted in the Boston Globe saying, "I think he's the secret weapon."




So what has all of this spending bought him?
Here is the latest stats as far as I could collect:

Facebook: 1.5 million fans
Twitter: 350,000
YouTube: 5.1 million views, with 75 videos created and 5K subscribers.
Flickr
Tout


MyMitt.com

Mitt's most notable social asset is his myMitt.com community. The idea of myMitt was stolen out of the playbook of Barack Obama but it is working for Mitt. Mitt has raised over $1.5 million from the site without even advertising it or pushing people to it. The site is hidden in his site mittromney.com. When you log in, user can customize their portal with features such as exclusive emails and messages from the campaign, fundraising pages that contain a user's unique profile and fundraising goals, social share features for family, friends and other contacts as well as a specific action items such as making phone calls for the campaign. The best thing of all is that this can be done on a computer, smart phone or tablet. It is unclear why the Romney campaign isn't trying to leverage the site but at this point, they are leaving it as a hidden gem.

Mitt's strategy in short

Mitt has spent a lot of money on developing a presence but hasn't done much to leverage the power of social media. Up to this point Mitt Romney has only used Facebook, Twitter, etc. as means to push content, not to interact. Maybe with the new consultant, things will change.

Results

Even though the data might be old, it shows that Mitt is dominating the social world compared to his Republican counterparts. If Romney makes it past the primaries, he will not be up against the same competition. Barack Obama pioneered many of the techniques Romney is using and so it will be interesting to see how he would stack up against a more formidable opponent.

How does this translate to your business?
1st, you can't count your eggs before they hatch. Romney could have a billion friends, yes I just dropped the b word, but it doesn't mean anything unless he gets them to act. Time will only tell if his social media strategy can get him to the White House.

2nd, Money can buy social media presence. You don't just get friends that follow you, you have to have reasons for people to follow you and that takes time and money.

3rd, Going viral can be good and bad... check out this post


Lastly
Thanks to all of the following sites for helping provide the content for this post.

http://articles.cnn.com/2011-10-25/tech/tech_web_mitt-romney-social-network_1_obama-supporters-obama-campaign-social-network?_s=PM:TECH

http://techpresident.com/news/21587/game-candidates-twitter-obsession-hurting-america

http://www.tednguyenusa.com/team-romney-misses-a-tweet-how-a-well-oiled-machine-has-failed-to-tap-into-social-media/

http://soshable.com/social-media-political-campaigns/

http://www.politickerusa.com/blog/2012/01/07/what-we-tweet-about-when-we-tweet-about-politics/

http://mittromneycentral.com/category/social-media/

How to become an Outlier!

I really am not trying to turn my blog into a book report blog but I did wanted to post on another book that I have been thinking a lot about, Outliers the story of success.

First, this book is no average book, I loved reading it and would recommend it to everyone and anyone. The book does a phenomenal job of analyzing what the factors are that help create an outlier.

Lke my last post, this is not a book summary post but my thoughts regarding the topic.

Outliers are formed just as much by the external environment than their God given talent internally. With that being said, lets first look at the internal talents.

Everyone has talents and everyone has developed those talents to different degrees. Potentially, I might have the same God given talent as someone else but because of my focus on that talent, I far exceed the mastery of that talent than the other person. Everyone has a spectrum in which they are able to develop their talents. In the same sense, I might not have as much innate talent as someone else but because I work at it and maximize my spectrum, I am actually better at the talent than that other person.

The first important step in becoming an outlier is understanding how wide of a spectrum you have in a given talent and then choosing which talents you are going to maximize versus those that you will not. I think the most important part of this process is to understand the spectrum you have with a talent rather than just understanding which talents you have.

The next thing is the external environment. You might have all of the talent in the world to become a great basketball player but if you don't live in a place where people play basketball, you will never become a great basketball player. On the flip side, if you have all of the talent in the world and you don't utilize the fact that you are in an environment that allows you to develop that talent, you will never become a great basketball player. Millions of people have talents, it is the few that have the right external environment that become great!

So what does this mean to any young person hoping to make a name for themselves? First, understand your talents and your faults and maximize your talents. Second, America is a country where you can seek out your environment so once you identify your talent, do EVERY thing you can to put yourself in an environment that is going to help maximize your talent. This is the way to game the system and become an outlier.

This book gives case after case where people had to have both external and internal stimuli to become outliers. If you want to become an outlier, read the book and focus on both external and internal stimuli!