With the GOP nominee looking more and more likely to be Mitt Romney, it’s worth looking at the other GOP candidates and where they might have gone wrong when it comes to using this new-fangled thing called the Internet.
“If you’re on the fence it’s an easy way to take someone off your list,” Brandyourself.com CEO and co-founder Patrick Ambron said of voters seeing negative search results for candidates. There’s generally a spike in searches right around each election day, showcasing just how important it is for candidates to have relevant, accurate content accessible online.
For Rick Santorum this scenario has been a nightmare thanks to sex columnist Dan Savage. Savage changed the definition of “santorum” to mean something nasty and that definition ruled Santorum’s search results for years.
“The best thing you can do to control your search results is to bury it,” Ambron said, explaining how Santorum making a stink and trying to get search results removed backfired. Instead, Santorum should have created other websites ± a Facebook page, a Twitterfeed, a personal website — to bump Savage’s site off his front page. “He’s not making enough of his own content,” Ambron said. “That would help him start displacing some of those negative things on the front page.”
Ambron also pointed out a very basic web rule that Newt Gingrich failed to follow. “Everybody should be buying every domain name possible for their names,” Ambron said, expressing surprise that a progressive group, not Gingrich, owned NewtGingrich.com.
Going forward, Mitt Romney‘s campaign could use the web savvier campaigns of Ron Paul and President Obama as a guide.
“The Romney campaign has taken efforts, it seems like they get that it’s important, but none of them have really been as proactive,” Ambron said. “To not put that as a priority can end up hurting you.”
