Can Charlie Crist Catch Up with Rick Scott on Twitter?

I’ve been critical of team Crist’s efforts on Twitter over the months, watching as they’ve squandered their chances to build and maintain a dialog with voters during the run-up to the primary. But in July, activity on social media picked up for Crist:

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Click to enlarge.  Ironic colors courtesy of Excel.

About mid-July the activity on Crist’s Twitter mentions started picking up, albeit raggedly. By the end of July, thanks to a slowdown in governor Scott’s mentions, Crist had pulled almost even with Scott.

To be clear, much of Crist’s relative gains are due to Scott’s slowdown; Scott could kick it back up and leave Crist behind.  But Crist has also been able to boost his mentions back into the 1000-1500 a day range, so there’s a chance for him to move up as well and to start to dominate the discussion on Twitter.

Will Crist do that? With Nan Rich continuing to be a distant second in both polls and social media, it’s clear that there’s no sense of urgency for Crist.  But this opportunity may not come around again …

 

Florida’s 2014 Gubernatorial Race on Twitter, June 2014 — Crist dawdles while Scott races ahead

As we’re getting closer to the August primary, we can see that twitter conversations about the three main candidates are continuing:

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But they’re not generating any excitement, that’s for sure, especially for Charlie Crist.  In months previous, Crist has repeatedly broken through the 1K-per-day mark and often well beyond; his mentions staying below 1K in June seems to indicate a lack of building enthusiasm.

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Florida’s Legislative Season Heats Up The Gubernatorial Race In April

With Florida’s legislative season underway in April, the Twitter buzz about the gubernatorial candidates picked up quite a bit, and most of the pick-up occurred in Rick Scott’s mentions:

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Click to enlarge

At the same time bills were getting passed and the discussion turned from theoretical to actual, Rick Scott’s sentiment also rose significantly:

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This suggests to me that discussion of the work of being governor is better than discussion of the politics of being governor for Scott.  It’s been my (unscientific) observation that Scott’s team tries to keep focus on the day-in-day-out aspects of being governor.  Maybe the flurry of new laws will cement that practical focus for him.  And maybe all Scott has to do is keep looking executive, rather than political, to prevail in November.

Still, I’m hesitant to read too much into all this until everyone goes home from Tallahassee and the discussion returns to the race itself.  The first couple of days in May show the spike at the end of April was a bit of an anomaly, so we will have to wait a while to see what the new normal is.

It would be nice to think that the Crist campaign is prepared to pounce on Scott in social media.  But as I’ve said before, the campaign is not very strong socially. Not much has changed in April, so I will just say those criticisms still stand: inconsistent level of effort, no real strategy towards content, etc. The legislative session gives him a reason (maybe not a great reason) to lay low now, but if he doesn’t come guns ablazin’ afterwards he’s putting his candidacy at risk.  God knows his “give me money because I need money” emails aren’t going to win this for him…

Crist Still Struggling on Twitter in March, 2014

With March in the books, let’s look at how Florida’s gubernatorial candidates faired on Twitter:

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Click to enlarge

The pattern that established itself at the end of February is holding up — Rick Scott is dominating on Twitter, with only occasional bursts of conversation about Charlie Crist.  And Nan Rich is still not getting much love from the twitterati.

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Why the Crist Campaign Isn’t Winning on Social Media or the Web

I expected to start this month’s update on the Florida gubernatorial race with how February was the month that Charlie Crist finally engaged on social media. That’s how it started to look at the beginning of the month.  And, indeed, the execution of the campaign in other places is picking up: hardly a day goes by without an email from the campaign (kind of uninspiring emails, but at least they’re trying); there are more and better posts on Facebook.  

But with February in the history books, it looks like the Crist campaign is still trying to find its new media footing.  The only thing that saves them, at this point, is that the primary looks to be a non-event, and it’s still 8 months out to the general election.

Let’s start with the activity on Twitter:

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The month started out strong for Crist, with his mentions on Twitter consistently exceeding those of Scott.  But by mid-month, the Crist presence on Twitter wilted, while towards the end of the month Scott’s mentions shot up.  You can try to spin the mentions as positive or negative for either candidate, if you like, but the trend is clear: towards the end of the month Crist was fading from the conversation.

Because of their respective follower counts on Twitter (44K for Scott vs. 16K for Crist), even pulling even with Scott in mentions wouldn’t even things up; for Crist to be heard as often as Scott he needs to have nearly triple the mentions.

In Facebook, Crist is also making a weaker effort than Scott.  Scott averages two updates a day to Facebook compared to Crist’s one — the same level of effort Nan Rich is putting into Facebook.  As with Twitter, the key to Facebook is frequency; you need to be making constant updates for people to notice you.

The lower frequency of Facebook posts has a double whammy effect: there are few posts to be seen, and it wins Crist fewer followers. Just like on Twitter, Crist has about half of the followers Scott does (40K to 90K).  Senator Rich has about 19K followers, for reference.

Finally, although this is a bit beyond the world of social media, let’s compare what you see if you decide to hit the campaign web sites for each candidate.  First Scott’s:

Click to enlarge, although you'd do better to go to the website itself

Click to enlarge, although you’d do better to go to the website itself

Some things I’ll point out here: The design of the site is great, just really good execution.  A nice, responsive design (make your browser wider and narrower and see what happens). Second, notice all the photos of Scott? Only one, at the end, is of just him.  Scott is always engaged with other people.

OK, and now Charlie Crist’s:

Click to enlarge, but you pretty much get the point here.

Click to enlarge, but you pretty much get the point here.

There is so much wrong here that I just don’t know where to begin.  Is the Crist campaign’s slogan Charlie Crist, TL;DR ?  Will nobody pose in a picture with Charlie Crist? Do they just have one talented middle school kid running their web site who doesn’t have much time for the campaign now that soccer practice has started?

Compare this, even, to his 2006 campaign web site:

Click to enlarge,=

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An 8 year old site looks amazingly better than his current one.

I just have to ask … where the hell are all these great, experienced political geniuses the campaign’s brought on board?  Not on Twitter, on Facebook, nor on the web.  Right now, the Crist campaign is at the level of a really talented city council candidate.  If this is any indication of what’s going on inside of the campaign, it’s going to be a long, painful 8 months for Florida Democrats with a denouement of a slasher flick.