Bill Engle, writing for the Palladium-Item, has an article on how candidates use social media, particularly in the local Richmond races. Chris Hardie, Democratic candidate for an at-large seat on the council, has a great deal of credibility on this subject. He has been a part of the Indiana social media landscape for years.
In another race, down in Bloomington, I think mayoral primary challenger John Hamilton is using social media effectively (even though my sympathies probably rest with incumbent Mark Kruzan who I got to know a bit when he was in the state legislature.) Hamilton has enlisted the aid of Thomas Cook who has been part of the state’s political social media scene for years. State senator Jim Banks is someone who, in my opinion, uses Twitter well.
Now, it may well be that my vision of “uses social media effectively” is just a synonym for “folks who hang out at my end of the social media ghetto.” But, with that caution in mind, I think social media like Facebook, Twitter, and blogs are most effective when you can see some of the candidate’s personality (or maybe just their staffers) shine through, warts and all. If all I see is, essentially, your campaign press releases coming out over Facebook, I’m going to start ignoring your social media presence.
Ryan Dvorak (sorry Ryan!) is an example of someone I think has transitioned from the former kind of presence to the latter. When he first got to the legislature, he had a blog where he offered some thoughts about what was going on day-to-day. That dried up after awhile — quite possibly because that sort of thing takes a lot of time, and maybe because it could be a political liability as your opponent picks through and lifts the stuff that can be cast in the least flattering light. Now that Rep. Dvorak is running for mayor, I’ve seen some Facebook activity, but nothing has jumped out as much more than safe press release quality stuff.
To be clear, I know nothing about winning elections. So, I’m sure there are qualified people who can advise candidates that interacting in a personal way over social media will ultimately cost you more votes than it will win; but, from my perspective, if you’re not going to communicate in a less packaged way, just stick to the traditional, one-to-many, media outlets like newspaper, radio, and television instead of the many-to-many outlets like Twitter, Facebook, and blogs.
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