I was doing a little housecleaning on my Twitter account… as I climb toward 1,800 followers, I thought I’d weed out some of those I follow in a quest to get under 600, so I could brag that I had three times as many followers as I follow, instead of my old standard of twice as many (the ways being one of the Twitterati can mess with your head is truly embarrassing)… and I ran across @JonHuntsman.
So I did what I do with others I’m unsure of — I checked to see what his last Tweet was. And I was startled to see that it was this:
As you can see, that was transmitted at 1:56 p.m. on Jan. 15.
OK, now, remember the sequence of events on that day…
The State‘s endorsement ran that morning.
Around 9 p.m. that night, the news broke that he was dropping out of the primary.
So… it was widely known that he was dropping out only about seven hours after he — or perhaps I should say his campaign — was Tweeting out how pleased he was by The State‘s endorsement.
Yeah, a guy who’s going to drop out can still be appreciative — maybe even especially appreciative — of kind words. But why would he bother Tweeting it? Especially when he’s not much of a Tweeter to start with (his last Tweet before that was five days old).
Of course, I’ve been told there were people in his SC campaign who didn’t know he was dropping out until after media had contacted them. A confusing time.
But I thought this was a mildly interesting footnote.
Oh, and yeah, I’ll be dropping him from my “follow” list.
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“Yeah, a guy who’s going to drop out can still be appreciative — maybe even especially appreciative — of kind words. But why would he bother Tweeting it? Especially when he’s not much of a Tweeter to start with (his last Tweet before that was five days old).”
I know ive only been in the blogging/politics thing for like 10 minutes but the end of the campaign just boggles the mind.
People spend months sometimes years pushing towards a goal. They tout how they have the best solutions to the countries problems and vow to lead their area to proseperity.
Then then the election happens. Either way win or lose their online presence drops to a tiny portion of what it was prior to election day.
I understand that winners have to actually do the job now. They can’t knock on doors and tkae a straw poll prior to each meeting.
The runners up can still be a very big part of the process though. Especially on a local level. They could still use their mailing list connections to provide solutions and educate the citizens of the community. Instead it seems they drop into obscurity.
I can only assume that they will later pop back up to in the election cycle with their motivational, can do message.
BTW I mocked twitter but am absolutely enamored now with it now. The hash tag system is great for broadcasting to a certain focus group. I can reach my intended audience with ease and In a non spam way.
The 160 character limit makes it almost a game to fit your message in and address it to the right peeps.
Its still hard work getting a blog going (especially one with a niche audience) but free exposure is wonderful. Especially when other folks pick up your feed and retweet to a broader audience that I could normally get eyes on.
Brad, that night in SC there were about 900 people on the “South Carolina for Huntsman” Facebook page. The week before, we had conducted a “social media brainstorming session” in order to help the then 300 folks increase Huntsman’s profile in SC. After the campaign re-tweeted about the session, we magically went from 300 to 900 “likes” in one night. It was a crazy week of social media, to say the least. The social media campaign consultant participated on a superfluous level – mainly observing, from a “studied” standpoint, Grassroots in action on Facebook.
People all over the country were desperate for SC to help elevate Huntsman so that he could make it to their state. No one knew what the hell was happening in SC. There was nothing- nothing- on the ground. No one coordinated volunteers. Everyone felt helpless. We listened to Facebook users talk about their passion for Huntsman with tears running down our cheeks. Operatives got pissed off at us. The campaign humored us. And all the while, in the back of our minds, we knew there was no money and no hope. Things on the page simmered down to watch mode.
When the State endorsed Huntsman that night, the page went wild again. Maybe this was the hope we had been waiting for. Maybe this would change the course. Even the “unpaid?” campaign folks thought it was significant and “tweetable”.
Well, the next morning brought the final say. The final Facebook post was made to Huntsman’s main page. No posts since. No tweets since. Now, even “posts from others” on the facebook page are prohibited. There is absolutely no method to communicate with the campaign unless you are with the “establishment”. The girls have taken up the social media front as the person in charge of Huntsman’s “social” presence laid down. Media presence is pretty heavy now but the “social” side is silent.
900 users doesn’t seem like a lot in Presidential social media terms. It was actually fairly pitiful. But those 900 had at least 90% “talking about it” stats and “total reach” was phenomenal. We were ready to take the momentum to the next step ourselves.
Folks were ready to fly in to help – on their own dime. Campaign events were set up. People were making their own yard signs, bumper stickers, flyers, etc. Folks were standing on the street in Charleston passing out the flyers. Infographics, cover photos, etc. were prepared and shared. It was as much fun and patriotic a situation as I have ever personally experienced. Folks were taking matters into their own hands – out of the operatives control – even though we were sure the operatives were just as frustrated as we were.
I don’t know if no one knows the account passwords, no one cares, or if there is some other reason why all official Huntsman social media was cut off that night. Wish someone would finally investigate what actually went on in SC with the campaign and what actually went down in those few weeks… it is “case study” worthy, IMO.