US presidential candidates on Facebook (December 2011)
What would happen if you measured the influence, engagement, and popularity of the US presidential candidates by looking at just Facebook? Although you would only be considering public information on the world's largest social network, you would still be getting a skewed look of the 2012 presidential race.
Still, the data is quite interesting: Socialbakers tracked more than 10 million Facebook Pages and Facebook Places, as well as billions of individual user interactions to see what drives the success for all eight Democratic and Republican presidential political candidates on Facebook. The social media analytics company tracked interactions between December 1, 2011, and December 31, 2011, to see which candidates are leading, and which are lagging.
"Politicians and brands have a tremendous opportunity to go beyond counting the number of 'fans' or 'likes' – they must pay attention to why people are talking about them and what they care about," Socialbakers CEO Jan Rezab said in a statement. "Fan and community engagement is the key to success. Politicians today can measure public information about Facebook user engagement to make more intelligent decisions about what to post, when to post and how to best stimulate conversation."
The company looked at various metrics, including viral reach (the total reach for each candidate when people Like and comment, multiplied by the average number of friends per Facebook user to provide a comparable number) and person-to-person interaction (all debates, comments, conversations to each other's posts on candidate's page). Here is a quick rundown of key findings, if the above infographic is just too much for you:
- Ron Paul has the highest overall viral reach, followed by Mitt Romney and Rick Perry.
- Ron Paul leads with 59,554 "people talking about" him this past week (second to Obama).
- Rick Perry has the most engaging single-post amongst all candidates, followed by Jon Huntsman and Newt Gingrich.
- Obama's most engaging post was a family portrait, yet had the lowest overall engagement rate (number of Likes and comments per post divided by a candidate’s number of fans) when compared to the other candidates.
- Ron Paul increased engagement rate by 69 percent, followed by a near tie between Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich, with a 58-percent increase and 57-percent increase respectively.
- Rick Santorum decreased engagement rate by -7 percent.
- Michelle Bachmann leads in person-to-person interactions among Facebook users, followed by Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman.
- Obama leads with 50 percent of the total interactions. Ron Paul leads the Republican Party with 19 percent, which is 2x and 3x higher than Mitt Romney and Rick Perry.
- Obama is leading with the most number of fans at 24 million, followed by Mitt Romney at 1.3 million, Ron Paul with 672,483, and Michelle Bachmann with 460,336.
- Rick Santorum has the fastest-growing fan base throughout the last 30 days (23-percent growth) surpassing Jon Huntsman's growth (18-percent growth).
As we get closer and closer to election day (November 6, 2012), there will be many different changes. Is the Facebook aspect of the candidates something you'd like me to keep an eye on?