Social Media and the RNC

It’s official: Twitter is THE place for advertisers of every shape and size. We’ve long suspected it’s true and last night’s Republican National Convention just seals the deal.

Obama has utilized social media marketing since his first campaign back in 2008, and many suspect that’s the reason he was able to defeat John McCain and the implacable Alaskan so handily; Mitt Romney won’t go so gentle into that good night. He’s been spreading his campaign over both Facebook and Twitter, he doesn’t have the saturation of Obama, and evidence suggests he gaffed by buying a large quantity of followers, but at least he’s trying.

The Romney campaign made history this week when they purchased a national trending topic on Twitter, the first presidential campaign to ever do so. #RomneyRyan2012 appeared as a trending topic Thursday night, the night Romney finally spoke at the RNC. His campaign also live-Tweeted the event, posting snippets of the speeches and additional commentary.

What were the results? From a pure numbers standpoint, it looks like it was a rousing success. There were tens of thousands of Tweets by the middle of last night and there are more every second. Keep in mind that Tweets means unique Tweets, there were also an abundance of reTweets and other shares, so it’s safe to say that the message achieved a high level of saturation…but what kind of message was it?

You can check out the hashtag for yourself, but here is a sampling of the top 10 from the time of this writing:

–I’m sure Obama cringes when he sees ads like this! “America Bows to Nobody!”

–I wonder if after last night’s performance @MittRomney will take away#ClintEastwood‘s pension as well.

–So are we going to unite now and get #RomneyRyan2012 elected? YES!

And, not eloquent perhaps, but unarguably succinct:
–@BarackObama Pack ya s***

The majority of Tweets are actually positive, and the majority of negative Tweets are making fun of Clint “Dirty Harry” Eastwood’s invisible chair bit (which is currently going viral as a meme). So overall, the experiment was a grand-slam for #RomneyRyan2012.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Should I sponsor a Tweet for my own business or event?” Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is Twitter, the most powerful social network in the world, and could blow your reputation clean off, you’ve got yo ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky?

Well, do ya, punk?

Original article about Twitter at the RNC posted on Wikimotive’s blog under the title Twitter and the Republican National Convention