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/