Complete Virginia Congressional Campaign Facebook Breakdown

Continuing with my review of the social media campaigns of Virginia’s congressional candidates, I broke down Facebook this week. I received some very good feedback on “Virginia’s Congressional Campaign Twitter Breakdown” and I would appreciate any suggestions or corrections to my analysis of Facebook.  Here is the complete breakdown.

* = Incumbent

Red = Republican

Blue = Democrat

Black = Independent/Libertarian

Post Quality = Mixture of Content (Articles, Photos, Videos, Campaign Updates, etc.)

Tabs = Anything that goes beyond the standard wall, info, photos and discussion tabs

Virginia’s 1^st District:

Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA) also has a government official page, which has been liked by 2,321 users.

Analysis:

Wittman and his Democratic challenger Krystal Ball take very different approaches to their Facebook pages.  Wittman mixes in a lot of different content and makes sure that he has something posted each day.  While Ball puts a heavy emphasis on her page being used for group discussion, which she also responds to.  Ball writes in her description box, “Please feel that this is YOUR page to debate and discuss. I look forward to hearing your views.” While I think that Ball has embraced the “social” aspect of Facebook far better than Wittman, the content that she posts is weak, as it is tends to be centered almost around events and fundraising.  Both candidates have received a lot of positive feedback.

Winner: Wittman (Very Close Though)

Virginia’s 2^nd District

Analysis:

Rep. Glenn Nye (D-VA) does not have an actual Facebook page (He has a page but doesn’t use it).  His page consists of a picture of him, his Wikipedia article and a box at the top saying, “If you have a passion for Glenn Nye, sign up and we’ll let you know when we’re ready for your help.  Nye has pulled the reverse of what many politicians do; he has Twitter account, but no Facebook.  This page has no postings and I highly doubt it makes anyone want to “like” his page.  Very strange.

Republican challenger Scott Rigell has a lot of “likes”, but his quality is down.  Rigell has gotten away from mixing up his post content and now posts almost exclusively about his offline events.  Informing your supporters about what you did the day before is always a good strategy, but it should not be the only thing you post.  Rigell receives a lot of comments and “likes” on everything he posts.

As an independent candidate, Kenny Golden faces many of the same struggles online as he faces offline, including name recognition.  Scott Rigell is huge name in Virginia because he has a legitimate shot at unseating Rep. Glenn Nye, which has led to a lot of “likes” of his page.  Golden also switches between 1^st and 3^rd person, but does not note when it is staff or himself speaking.

Winner: Rigell

Virginia’s 3^rd District

-Republican Chuck Smith has a group rather than a page.

-Libertarian James Quigley doesn’t have his Facebook linked to his campaign website.

Analysis:

Both Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) and James Quigley’s postings are dominated by press releases/newsletters.  Scott’s press releases do not include a description or a modification of the title to make it more interesting.  Quigley’s newsletters at least look presentable.  Neither of these candidates posts with any regularity, which also hurts their presence on Facebook.

Chuck Smith’s Facebook content is a mirror image of his tweets.  Smith’s posts are almost all inspirational quotes, “Let us remember that we, each of us, are a grateful people endowed with pride and spirit, in an America that has met every challenge with courage and faith, and because we did, America prevailed. Let this place, this time and this moment mark our faith, as Virginians, as Americans and as a nation possessed of the breathtaking strength of freedom and unity. We are united by freedom, standing resolute and firm in an America, ‘a shining city on a hill.’”  Outside of the rare “like,” Smith hasn’t received positive feedback from his supporters, yet he continues to do same thing.

Winner: Quigley

Virginia’s 4^th District

Analysis:

Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA) has the best Facebook page so far.  He mixes in different content (events, photos, articles, donation information) and posts multiple times a day.  However, a lot of his postings are directly from HootSuite, which creates the occasional sloppy post.  I’m not a fan of Twitter applications that post directly to Facebook because the wording that is used on Twitter is completely different than the one used on Facebook.  While Forbes has the best page so far, he still lacks innovation.

Dr. Wynne LeGrow’s (D) page has very average content.  He mostly posts events and pictures from the events.  While this is not a terrible strategy, it should not be a candidate’s only strategy.

Winner: Forbes

Virginia’s 5^th District

-Independent candidate Jeff Clark does not have a Facebook page.

Analysis:

This is more of what I was expecting on Facebook.  It is clear that both Republican candidate Robert Hurt and incumbent Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA) understand that Facebook is an important tool for a campaign.  Both incorporate a variety of different content, including events, photos, articles and videos.  Both also do a good job with custom titles for their posts.  However, Perriello squeaks past Hurt because he is a bit more innovative.  On June 26^th, he asked his supporters to donate their status to his campaign, which is something out of the ordinary (even though we saw Bob McDonnell do it in 2009).

Winner: Perriello

Virginia’s 6^th District

-Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) page does not mention anything about his campaign.  The link on his campaign website directs people to his private profile.  Because Goodlatte’s page does not include any information about his campaign, I’m not going to analyze his page.

Analysis:

Libertarian candidate Stuart Bain has the strongest Facebook page in the 6^th district.  Bain mainly uses his page to give updates about events or post pictures.  Bain also gives his Facebook supporters clear calls to action.  Bain’s picture has “Please help me reach 1000 likes Please click below to suggest to friends” with an arrow pointing to the “Suggest to Friends” button.   On July 4th, his staff (they denote when staff is posting) posted, “Cafe Press sent Julian Smith a Stuart Bain rEVOLution t-shirt and he showed it on his V-Log … Challenge to all supporters to get Stuart Bain campaign plugs on various social and mainstream media outlets.” Bain and his staff give their Facebook supporters clear calls to action that aren’t the usual “Please Donate To My Campaign.”  Web activists want to help the campaign, but they don’t want to be treated like an ATM.

Center Party candidate Jeff Vanke has good content on his page, but he has only posted four times.

Winner: Bain

Virginia’s 7^th District

-Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) does not use his page to talk about his campaign, so I will not be analyzing his page.

Analysis:

Independent candidate Floyd Bayne does not have a Facebook page, but rather runs his Facebook campaign through his profile.  This is severely limits his abilities on Facebook and makes it very difficult to follow his campaign.  The one positive thing I will say about Bayne is he responds to every comment and post on his wall.

Democrat Rick Waugh uses his Facebook page to post about his offline events and the occasional article related to his campaign.  Waugh needs to use the description box on his wall to describe his candidacy not “Vote: November 2, 2010.”

Winner: Waugh

Virginia’s 8^th District:

-Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) does not post about his campaign, so like Goodlatte and Cantor I won’t analyze his page.

Analysis:

I wasn’t sure if I was going to see a Facebook splash page in Virginia.  Republican candidate Patrick Murray has a Welcome! (splash page), tell a friend and join my list tabs.  He routinely posts multiple times a day about events information and articles related to the campaign.  Murray also provides his volunteers with calls to action both online and offline.

Libertarian Matt Mosley’s Facebook page is a joke.  He has only posted four times, and they all came on the same day.  Enough said.

Winner: Murray (By A Lot)

Virginia’s 9^th District

-Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) does not use his Facebook page to talk about his campaign, so I will not analyze it.

Analysis:

Even if I were to analyze Boucher’s page it wouldn’t hold up against Republican Morgan Griffith’s.  Griffith’s page consists mainly of tweets from the campaign trail and photos from events.  Griffith uses the Selective Tweets application, which takes very tweet with the #fb attached and posts it directly to his page.  While I’m not a fan of this strategy, his supporters seem to enjoy the constant stream of information that the application allows, which has led to a lot of interaction with his posts.

Winner: Griffith

Virginia’s 10^th District

-Update: Barnett has several instances of responding to comments from his supporters.  Thank you for the comment.

-Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) does not use his Facebook page to talk about his campaign, so I won’t be analyzing it, which is unfortunate because it is really strong.  I recommend taking a look.

Analysis:

Democrat Jeff Barnett has an average to above average page in terms of content and frequency.  It is clear that Barnett makes a point of posting at least once a day, whether it be an article about the campaign, a press release or an update from the campaign trail.  However, Barnett’s is weak in the titles and descriptions that he uses for his posts.  There should be no reason that “For Immediate Release” is part of a title on Facebook, that just shows laziness.

Winner: Barnett

Virginia’s 11^th District

Analysis:

Just as with Twitter, Virginia’s two best Facebook pages are in VA-11.  Both Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) and RepublicanKeith Fimian have really good content, with a mix of links, videos, events, photos and calls to action.  Both have a splash page asking supporters to join their respective teams and a contribute tab.  However, just as on Twitter, Fimian squeaks past Connolly.  Fimian’s page incorporates the Yard Sign feature, which we also saw on the 2009 McDonnell for Governor campaign.  The titles and descriptions of Fimian’s posts also help him edge Connolly on Facebook.

Winner: Fimian

What I Saw:

-Facebook is much closer than Twitter. Republicans have the best page in six districts, Democrats three and Independents two.

-Besides a select few candidates, I was largely disappointed in the Facebook pages of Virginia’s candidates.  I had hoped that even though a candidate neglected Twitter, they would understand the importance of Facebook.

-The best page goes to Republican Keith Fimian. The worst goes to Libertarian Matt Mosley.

I hope that this breakdown helped people understand their candidates a little better because it definitely helped me.

–Chris Walling, Political Editor