socialbakers study: 2012 social media campaign of mitt romney

7/30/2019 Socialbakers Study: 2012 Social Media Campaign of Mitt Romney

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SOCIALBAKERS STUDY:

2012 Social Media Campaign of Mitt Romney

INTRODUCTION

The 2012 Presidential election confirmed the vital role of social media in politics. During theRepublican primaries, seven of the Republican candidates were battling it out on social media to

raise awareness and support for their respective political campaigns. The battle didn’t end there.

During the general election campaigns, both candidates executed highly strategic social media

strategies to increased fan growth, engagement rates, share ratio, and more.

This case study will focus on the social media strategy and campaign of the Republican candidate,

Mitt Romney. The Former Governor of Massachusetts followed in his father’s footsteps by

maintaining a similar political timeline becoming governor in 2003 and this year’s Republican

Presidential candidate. After raising millions of dollars, Romney began a successful Presidential

campaign, complete with an international trip to meet heads of state and giving various local

speeches to gain support for his party. In order for Romney to tackle the difficult task of running

against an incumbent, Barack Obama, he strategically implemented a digital and social media

team within his campaign agency, Romney For President.





BASIC FACTS: MITT ROMNEY’S SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN

Beginning in January of 2012 Romney had more than 1.4 million Fans and 219,000 Followers.

During the Republican primaries, Romney’s social media efforts were focused onmaintaining support amongst his key supporters and resonating his political positions.

On May 29th, Romney garnered the majority of Republican delegates,thus making him the unofficial Republican nominee.

Upon becoming the official GOP candidate, there was a sharp increase in campaign funding.

Romney For President hired Zac Moffatt as Digital Director and allocated additional

spending towards digital and social media.

Once Romney garnered the GOP nomination, he faced the challenge of combatingObama’s already established social media presence.

In June, Obama had more than 27 million Fans while Romney had roughly 2.16million.





THE CHALLENGES: GENERAL ELECTION

As previously mentioned, the largest challenge the Romney campaign faced was combating

Obama’s established social media community. Due to the fact that Obama was able to reach a

much larger audience on social media, Romney’s digital team wanted to ensure high levels of

engagement were maintained while simultaneously generating Fan growth.

A second challenge Romney’s team faced on Facebook was that the majority of Facebook users

visit the platform primarily to connect with friends or family. Additionally, Facebook users spend an

average of 20 minutes on the site each day, which creates a “deadline” aspect to social mediacampaigning. Therefore, from the beginning of the campaign, it was essential to determine how to

get Fans to interact with Romney’s content.

Additionally, once Romney secured the GOP nomination, his digital campaign team recruited 120

new members and the digital media budget increased exponentially - all of which happened in a

matter of a few weeks. This signified that an ad hoc team was formed and needed to quickly ramp

up Romney’s social and digital campaigns.





SOCIAL MEDIA PLANNING AND STRATEGY

From the very beginning, Romney’s digital media team believed it was critical to maintain highlevels of engagement as their fan base continued to grow. Although they firmly believed that fangrowth was important to social media success, Romney’s Digital Director, Zac Moffatt subscribedto the belief that “you can buy Fans but you can’t buy engagement.” Therefore, maintaining highengagement was the foundation for determining all of Romney’s tactics and strategies on socialmedia.

Romney’s digital media strategy team needed to determine the right tone and whether to use thefirst or third person on Facebook and Twitter. It was concluded that the first person would be mosteffective on both platforms to convey the same speech style that Romney was using for histraditional campaign messages. Romney For President determined that Twitter would be usedmainly for quotes from Romney and for increasing buildup around events, while Facebook wouldbe mainly used for encouraging supporters to share Romney’s content with Friends and for posting content after an event.





THE PLAN

From the very beginning, Romney’s digital media team believed it was critical to maintain highlevels of engagement as their fan base continued to grow. Although they firmly believed that fangrowth was important to social media success, Romney’s Digital Director, Zac Moffatt subscribedto the belief that “you can buy Fans but you can’t buy engagement.” Therefore, maintaining highengagement was the foundation for determining all of Romney’s tactics and strategies on socialmedia.





THE OUTCOMES: FACEBOOK

Increased the number of Fans from 1.8 million at the end of May to 11.5 millionat the end of October.

Romney attracted significantly more Fans than Obama from July to October. At the end of August Romney had more than 4 times more new Fans than Obama.

Romney outperformed Obama from June through October in terms of the number of Fan interactions.

Romney had extremely high engagement rates, significantly higher than Obama’s.Romney’s engagement rate in August was an amazing 3.085%.

Increased website traffic

Facebook consistently acted as a platform to recruit more volunteers.





THE OUTCOMES: TWITTER

Increased the number of Followers from 525,000 at the end of May to 1.65 million at theend of October.

Romney had significantly higher engagement rates throughout the campaign than Obama.However, Obama consistently had higher Fan growth rates.

This was a reflection of Romney For President’s belief that Twitter efforts should focus onincreasing quality and engaged Followers instead of solely net growth.

Used for real-time engagement with their Fans and to identify trends that Facebook didn’tcatch.

Increased website traffic.

Twitter was used especially for increasing the visibility of local events via the use of hashtags.





POST-ELECTION ANALYSIS AND SUMMARY

Overall, Romney performed extremely well on social media. To counteract the large disadvantageof facing Obama’s large and established social media communities, Romney focused on

maintaining high engagement rates to coincide with healthy fan growth. Romney For Presidenttracked all of their social media efforts by creating their own key performance indicators, the mostimportant being a metric that focused on engagement. Analysis of these metrics not onlyincreased social media performance, but it also gave valuable feedback about the performanceand effectiveness of Romney’s political campaign.

KEY POLITICAL ISSUES: RESOLVED VIA SOCIAL MEDIA

Increase awareness about Romney’s political campaign

and his political position on key issues

Increase website traffic

Engage with supporters in real-time

Expand the reach of posted content

Increase visibility and promotion of events via localized content

Successfully recruit volunteers

Target content to promote the Romney cause in swing states

Please don't hesitate to contact us at [email protected] for more details about our

online products and to find out how we can help drive your social media performance.

“The 2012 Presidential election was critical for illustrating the power of

social media in politics. The challenges of facing an incumbent are difficult

to overcome, and social media is no exception, said Zac Moffatt, Digital

Director at Romney For America. Therefore, the Romney campaign

focused its efforts on increasing fan growth, but most importantly

maintaining extremely high levels of fan engagement. When it comes topolitical elections, engagement is the key metric for overcoming critical

issues that make or break a political campaign.”

Zac Moffatt

Digital Director at Romney For America

mailto:[email protected]




socialbakers study: 2012 social media campaign of mitt romney

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