Mitt Romney’s social-media guru does not quantify success in his candidate’s number of Facebook followers, but by their level of activity. Despite a recent Pew report that pegs President Obama as winning the battle for digital audiences, Zac Moffatt, the head of the Romney campaign’s digital operation, says that the Republican candidate is ahead of Obama in terms of building an engaged and dedicated online following.
The raw numbers lean Obama’s way. He has more than 27 million “likes” on his Facebook page, for example, versus fewer than 5 million for Romney. But according to Moffatt, Romney’s followers are more likely to share information, post, and spread the word about their candidate. He cites June 28, the day of the Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act as an example. On that day, he says, the Romney campaign saw activity in the form of comments or sharing from 27 percent of their list of followers, compared to 1.7 percent for Obama. “That’s how I’d define success for us,” Moffatt says.
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This is a tough sell. Obama’s campaign team is legendary for its online prowess and its data-driven digital outreach. The Obama campaign appears to have raised the bar yet again, with the release of a mobile app that integrates digital outreach with the door-to-door shoe-leather efforts of volunteers, providing canvassers with voter-registration lists, neighborhood maps, campaign talking points, and a fundraising interface.
According to Moffatt, the release of this app so late in the game points to the challenges of leveraging digital assets in the real world.
“The Obama folks knew they were going to be running for president three years ago,” he said. “It took them 100 days to build out this app that does all these pieces. You should look at that as realistic of how difficult it is to build a multipurpose, integrated app.”
The Romney campaign “still has millions of doors being hit every month, whether or not we have an app,” Moffatt says. “That just reduces some of the barriers, but it’s not going to stop us from doing what we do every day.”
Read more at National Review
