Most bony expert fingers pointed at Jon Huntsman, a late entry into the race who hadn't picked up momentum, then showed poorly at the quadrennial Iowa grease-eating contest, country music festival and straw poll.
With the chips down, Huntsman went rogue, making a series of unconventional twitter posts attacking his competitors and causing a buzz in the online political world. This build-up will culminate in an in-person interview with Jake Tapper to air 8.21.2011 on ABC's This Week.
Let's examine the shift in Huntman's twitter strategy and see if it bled over to any other networks.
It started with a bang at 1:57 pm EST on August 14th with a tweet sent via twitter for iPhone. Huntsman was clearly separating himself from the presidential pack, but also some of the Republican base:
JonHuntsman: To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.Less than two hours later, after at least 360 retweets and a surge in followers, Jon tweeted an irreverent reference to little-known musician Captain Beefheart:
18 Aug
JonHuntsman: I wonder if a tweet where I admit how much I like Captain Beefheart will make the followers skyrocket even more! youtube.com/watch?v=HE32tc…
18 Aug
Rainn Wilson, who plays Dwight K. Schrute on The Office, chimed in:
Strangely, while Huntsman's tone changed dramatically on twitter, the only thing that's changed on his Facebook page is an increase in frequency of the posts. Maybe a disconnect between staffers who run each page?
Some tips to the person in charge of the campaign page:
rainnwilson: Wait. Yr a republican? RT “@JonHuntsman: To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.”Team Huntsman quickly responded, adding a (somewhat) clever Beach Boys reference:
18 Aug
JonHuntsman: .@RainnWilson I'm proud to be Republican, party of Lincoln, Teddy, Reagan. My q for you. Any relation to Brian Wilson?Prior to going on Piers Morgan's CNN show, Huntsman tweeted at the host. The tweet was more a jab at Christine "I'm not a witch" O'Donnell for her recent walk-off during a Morgan interview.
19 Aug
JonHuntsman: .@PiersMorgan - Looking forward to being on Monday's show. Will try and have as much fun as @ChristineOD did.Now, on the eve a major interview on ABC, Huntsman calls out Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry for their recent remarks on returning to $2 per-gallon gas and equating monetary policy with treason, respectively.
19 Aug
JonHuntsman: $2 gas? Treason? Bus tours? I tell @JakeTapper its time to get serious. Watch This Week tomorrow.Since roasting the other candidates, Jon has posted a link to his "join my campaign" page twice. These brought in 1,417 clicks to the site. How many conversions and donations he garnered is unknown, but the page has way too much going on to be effective. If your goal is to get people to donate, everything on the page should serve that end.
20 Aug
Strangely, while Huntsman's tone changed dramatically on twitter, the only thing that's changed on his Facebook page is an increase in frequency of the posts. Maybe a disconnect between staffers who run each page?
Some tips to the person in charge of the campaign page:
- Don't talk about the candidate in the third person. This breaks the social media spell, alienating your fans.
- Change the page type from "Politician" to "Public Figure". Functionality of both is identical, but people respond better to connotations of the latter.
- When quoting the candidate, you don't need to put the post in quotations; it's a given.
