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This is the beginning of a series about candidates use of social media for the 2012 presidential race.
Herman Cain’s Current Social Media Stats:
Facebook: 398,840 likes
Twitter: 173,272 followers
Google + 28,725According to TwitterSentiment.com there’s an estimated 63% current negative sentiment towards “Herman Cain”.
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2012 Republican Presidential hopeful, Herman Cain, has had an uphill battle throughout the election season. This week, he got hit with yet another sexual scandal, which revealed a supposed 13-year affair with Georgia businesswoman, Ginger White. The controversy and media allegations have caused a major drop in his approval ratings. Cain has also revealed that he is now reassessing his entire campaign, causing many to believe he is about to call it quits.
So what’s the social media strategy during a major PR disaster like Cain’s and how has he and his team leveraged online tools to get America’s attention thus far? I spoke to his Director of New Media, Michael Johnson:
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“The biggest thing is that Herman Cain is a real person, and people online see that. The biggest goal that we have is trying to connect Herman Cain with people and people with Herman Cain on a more personal level.”
On the 9-9-9 Movie Trailer that has accumulated over 100,000 YouTube views over the past 2 days:
“This is something that I had been pushing for a while now, trying to get people more integrated with our policy statements. There’s been lots of questions online about what 9-9-9 is. So my overall goal was to try and explain it in the best way possible, and that’s through an animated short on YouTube… that was easily dissectible.”
How has Cain’s team decided to use social media to respond to the sexual scandals and allegations?
“We have somewhat with our Google advertising and some posts we’ve done in the past. It’s a delicate balance between combatting people and staying above the fray, and just trying to empower people as much as possible. One thing that I’ve really noticed about our supporters online over the past couple of weeks is that you throw enough dirt, people start to feel dirty. That’s terrible to say, but that’s really what our supporters feel like at this point. There heads are hung low in some respects and they’re angry. It’s our responsibility as a campaign to say we’re still in this, Herman Cain is still the person you supported to begin with. You don’t have to feel dirty and just watch your clothes every once in a while and kind of show things from that perspective.”
Who’s managing the feeds- Cain or the team?
“I do communicate with him about stuff. He’ll send me recommendations, I’ll send him recommendations. He’ll say reweet this, I saw this… he is definitely involved in that perspective. Even with Facebook, when we passed 200,000 likes we had a video up from an iPhone just right then, thanking people, so he was definitely involved from a social perspective. With Google+ trying to connect with people using hangouts and things of that nature over the next couple of weeks.”
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