Winning the Twitter Primary

Posted by Bill on Sep 22, 2009 in MeshBlog | 0 comments

I took a look today at the number of Twitter followers for each of the top three candidates in Tennessee’s hotly contested race for the Republican nomination in the 3rd Congressional District. The numbers are interesting. Former Tennessee Republican Party Chairman Robin Smith (@robints) had, as of this morning, 925 followers, giving her a more than 4-1 advantage over Bradley County Sheriff Tim Gobble (@timgobble), who had 225 And Gobble has a 4-1 advantage over Chattanooga lawyer Chuck Fleischmann (@chuck4congress), who had 61.

(Another four Republican candidates in the race have 70 Twitter followers, combined, as Joe Lance reports, and on the Democrat side, the main candidate has 247, while an independent candidate has 250.)

I haven’t yet compared lists of Twitter followers, but even in the unlikely scenario that there is no overlap among the Twitter followers of Gobble, Fleischmann and the four lesser candidates bit all of the followers of the six-pack all also follow Smith on Twitter, then Smith has at least 569 unique Twitter followers, which is still more than Gobble and Fleischmann combined. It’s early in the race, but that’s a healthy lead.

Smith did start the race with an advantage: She had built a sizable Twitter following while serving as TN GOP chairman, which she maintained as she transitioned to running for Congress. Still, the Gobble and Fleischmann campaigns can’t be happy with their numbers.

Fleischmann’s Twitter output has been fairly sparse, while Gobble’s tend to read like canned press statements and campaign-generated ad copy – both candidates’ tweets offer few links to articles or to other people on Twitter, instead, their use of Twitter is mostly one-way messaging rather than participation in the online conversation. Smith’s tweets, on the other hand, convey Smith’s political passion, positions and personality as much as is possible in a 140-character message – and are stuffed with links to interesting articles and replies to other people on Twitter. She uses Twitter both to release news and to participate in the online political conversation.

Fleischmann is considered by many “experts” to be Smith’s biggest obstacle to winning the nomination, primarily because he has money and the quiet backing of Chattanooga’s more moderate Republican faction. But money can’t buy love, as the Beatles so eloquently put it, and a politician builds a Twitter following not with money or press-release posts, but with personality and passion.

Twitter is a perfect tool for a politician who runs on gut instinct and who shoots first and asks questions later, but a trap for politicians who are using a pre-social media communications playbook, who play it too close to the vest, who use Twitter solely as a press release outlet, or who expect their money will buy them first place.

I haven’t been to any campaign events in TN-3, and don’t know what level of efforts the candidates are making to gain Twitter followers, but based on how each of the three has used Twitter so far, and their results so far, I predict that the next time I check on the numbers a few months from now, Smith’s lead will have grown substantially.

Gobble might be able to close the gap – a couple of his tweets today showed some spark that suggests he might be getting better at using the medium to its maximum effect.

As for Fleischmann, I have no idea. I have seen some novice candidates with money and establishment backing play it safe, not wanting to make a mistake before they have bought name recognition.

For such candidates, something like Twitter is often viewed as risky rather than as a powerful tool, something they gotta have because everyone has it, but nothing more, and the results generally aren’t impressive.