Virginia Congressional Campaign Facebook Breakdown (Part 3)

Today, I broke down the Facebook accounts of the congressional candidates in Virginia’s 6^th, 7^th and 8^th districts. Don’t forget to read part one (VA-1, VA-2) and part two (VA-3, VA-4, VA-5) of my Facebook analysis.  If you have any suggestions, additions or corrections, please leave a comment and I will update my analysis.

* = 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 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 7^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)

Tune in tomorrow for the last installment of Virginia Congressional Campaign Facebook Breakdown.