As a social media wonk and a political wonk, I thought it’d be interesting to fire up the Crowdly platform to bring a unique data driven perspective into the trends of each brands faithful. There’s a lot to be said for polls, and there’s no shortage of them out there, but with turnout of the base at least as important as swaying the last few percent of undecideds, gauging enthusiasm and fan-to-friend influence happening within the fan communities provides a fascinating window to what moves the base and what each campaign might expect on election day.
We’re able to gauge that enthusiasm and influence on a pretty granular level, and preparing a longer post that delves into that in the detail it deserves. In the mean time, I’m sharing the overall Advocate Retention score for each candidate. This important number looks at the most influential 5% of fans that interacted in the previous week, and gauges whether or not they’ve re-engaged this week. Knowing that a core minority drive almost all communities, the behavior of these superfans is a very predictive indicator on performance of a community to influence behavior of fans and friends of fans.
In the snapshot given, the Obama community is outperforming the Romney community 42% to 27%, which is a decent trend up for Mr. Obama from previous snapshots, and about a straight line for Mr. Romney.
More to come, but as a teaser, despite the Obama campaign’s touted prowess on social media, we were generally surprised by some areas of real parity in general performance, though there were some stark differences as well. This breakdown is a bit of a departuire for us, so let us know if you find this interesting or not, and any particular insight about each community you think would be valuable to highlight.