How Social Boston's At-Large Pols?

How social-media savvy are the seven candidates for the four at-large Boston City Council seats? Let's not ask how important that will be, keeping in mind that our wildly popular Major Tom Menino is not a 21st Century net geek. Yet he keeps winning.

I admit prejudice for social media. In my view, it can't hurt to encourage and enable two-way communication in ways voters know and use. Here we might note immediately at none of the seven seems to have any smartphone app. I bet some pols here will in a year or two.

Instead of my usual inventory of what pol's campaign websites have, I just pored over their relationship with social media. While I did not see who's on Google+ yet, I did scan for presence and links to Facebook, Flickr, RSS new feeds, Twitter and Youtube.

This table recaps what they have included. This may reflect more what their hired designers figured was important, but it's fair to think that any Councilor candidate should know and specify such details.

	Arroyo	Connolly	Dorcena	Flaherty	Murphy	Pressley	Ryan
Main site1	felixarroyo	connollyforboston	willdorcena	FB only	murphyfortreasurer	ayannapressley	seanryanforcitycouncil
buttons2	FB, R, T, Y	FB, F, T, Y	No	No	FB, F, R, T	FB, F, T	FB, T, Y
Twitter	FelixArroyo	johnrconnolly	willdorcena	mfflaherty	councilormurphy	AyannaPressley	ryanforboston
tweets (8/3)	998	133	29	735	222	903	282
followers	1,140	1,999	93	1,041	304	1,676	164
Facebook	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
friends or likes	2,032	4,887	1,010	398	1,575	4,005	212
links out	campaign	campaign	company	no	no	campaign	campaign, FB, T, Y
Youtube	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No	Yes
videos	26	4	—	—	—	—	25
length	c. 3-4 min.	1-6 min.	—	—	—	—	c. <2 min.
Flickr	No	Many, new and old, meet and greet	No	No	No	Many, old, with voters and pols	No

¹All campaign sites are .com. Also, see 8/11 update for Murphy's new URL.
²Buttons are easily accessible buttons or links upfront. FB=Facebook, F=Flickr, R=RSS feed, T=Twitter, and Y=Youtube.

Disclaimers: I try not to overtly support candidates I'll have on the Left Ahead podcast. While I tend to endorse, I try to keep things clean by not volunteering for or contributing to any such candidate. I have never worked for or with any of them. I also know and like these candidates. Finally, Murphy and I live a couple of blocks from each other.

---

Social savvy

---

Overall, no one aces this comparison. Various candidates have areas of strength though. Combining the factors, Connolly is at the top. Arroyo and Pressley are very close behind and to each other. I'd give these three an arbitrary B grade.

Dorcena is at a disadvantage, which he seems to want to overcome quickly. He was the last candidate in, he is new to both campaigning and social media. His website just came on line. He has just started tweeting. His campaign site has political/issues content, but no media. He gets a C-, but I bet he'll up that soon.

Flaherty was surprising. He is charming and has a long political history, including presidency of the Council. He's a big tweeter and has been for a long time. I have not heard back from him on when he'll have a campaign site up — he uses his Facebook page for that. His sole social-media link there is on the Info tab, which has his twitter handle. Right now, he's a D. Interestingly enough, he comes in with over a thousand twitter followers, a promising number. His old eponymous campaign site is parked under someone else's name (maybe a lawyer holding the place).

August 4 Update: Flaherty let me know that his site will in fact be up and viewable in a day or two. I guess I should get ready for some content analysis.

August 11 Update: Murphy told me he had his folk fix the domain-name issue. The campaign site is now stephenjmurphy.com.

Murphy too is behind on social media. He does have a compaign site, but it's under the last election's domain, when he ran for Treasurer of the Commonwealth. Surely someone in his campaign knows how easy it is to replace the domain name and route the old traffic to it as well. He needs some media hygiene, such as removing a duplicate FB page, updating his most active one to include links to his campaign site, adding some video, and fixing the Flickr link from the current text line. He's a D+ at the moment, mostly because he's made things hard to find with too few links and buttons.

Ryan runs a low-cost gum and paperclip campaign, but isn't too bad on social media. Both his tweets and videos are concise and beefy. He has serious political, economic and philosophical point to make. He clearly writes and video edits to make his view accessible. As we say in the biz, he understands chunking. Modified for new media, he gets his points across in under 2-minute videos.

---

Campaign sites

---

Six of the seven have formal campaign sites in addition to Facebook pages. These tend to follow the basics, including a bio, an issues page, and tabs for new stories and photographs and video.

Some make better use of social media here. In addition to buttons for donating money or volunteering, there's great opportunity here. Various visitors prefer different social media and will be attracted to related links on buttons.

Everyone except Dorcena and Flaherty present easily accessible social media buttons. Arroyo and Connolly have the widest range. Only Arroyo has an RSS feed button for news, although Pressley serves this function with a newsletter subscription link. Actually her solution is savvy in capturing a voter's email.

Connolly and Pressley both have Flickr links. These would tend to attract those who volunteer or attend rallies and events. People love to see their pictures or those of folk they know. Otherwise, this is not an interactive medium for candidates.

As for URL, the site address, three were smart and fortunate enough to get their names. Mnemonic sites are best. Arroyo is lucky his father didn't squat on that domain. Dorcena and Pressley had singular enough names to grab. The other three ended up with sites have URLs long enough to encourage misspelling and unintuitive enough to make the curious struggle. As for Murphy, he just needs to update the domain to the current race.

---

Twitter chatter

---

Particularly with smartphones in hand, candidates have gotten into tweeting. I read chatter on Google+ that it will quickly make twitter irrelevant. I remain to be convinced, as it seems a majority of us tweet or at least read those of others. Pols really can't be left out of this medium.

Again, Dorcena is new to this, but all seven tweet. Arroyo and Pressley in particular are prolific, often informing followers where they'll be or have been. Connolly seems the most thoughtful, with only, largely substantive tweets.

The only surprise among the followers to be was how few Murphy has so far, about 300. Three incumbents, plus Flaherty, seem to have made greater efforts. Connolly has the most followers, with Pressley not too far behind.

As with the campaign URL, several were fortunate and savvy enough to end up with eponymous twitter handles that also mirror their site names. That kind of consistency is social-media wise. FelixArroyo, willdorcena, and AyannaPressley fit that. The other four likely ran into the already-taken syndrome of more common names.

---

Friends and likers

---

All candidates also have Facebook pages. For this, I considered the number of Friends or those who clicked Like, depending on how the page is set. Then I looked at what outgoing page links appear in their Info sections.

Incumbents Connolly and Pressley decidedly have the most chums, over 4,000 each and twice or more fellow incumbent Arroyo. Numbers for the others can be misleading.

Dorcena at over 1,000 inherits from his business activities. Flaherty is just getting the hang of FB. Ryan is much less well known and has targeted contacts.

Perhaps more telling for social media is what Info offers. Arroyo, Connolly, Pressley, and Ryan include their campaign sites. At the moment, Dorcena has not upgraded his to have that as well as his company. Neither Flaherty nor Murphy links to the campaign there. Here Ryan seems to have put the most thought in, with FB, twitter and Youtube links here as well as on his campaign site.

---

Picture that

---

As for still and video components, three make use of Youtube and two of Flickr. Only one has both.

Flickr streams are available for Connolly and Pressley. His have a wide range from his two terms. There are lots of meet-and-greet, along with the speechifying ones. Many supporters are evident. Hers are similar but outdated and not well organized. She has her 2009 campaign and a bunch from early in this year. She should have someone update this in content and create galleries.

Similarly for Youtube, it is Arroyo, Connolly and Ryan with videos. Connolly's is the sparsest with only four, one amusing one of him speaking at a car-wash opening and three political speeches. These vary from 1 to 6 minutes, or just-right to too long in social-media terms.

Arroyo has 26 in his feed. They are almost all Council speech clips. They tend to run long, most between 3 to 4 minutes. The rule here is that under 2 minutes is OK for keeping people's attention.

Ryan gets Youtube. He has 25 vids, almost all under 2 minutes. Each has been carefully edited to illustrate one of his issues and points.

---

So what?

---

This social-media campaigning is still relatively new. Plus the platforms and rules continue to change. Even if we watch this election and others carefully, we may not be able to draw too many conclusions yet.

Just as candidates speak of the necessity to knock on as many doors as possible — the wear-out-shoes method, most know social media are now part of meeting people where they live, work, and think.

It is likely impossible to separate the power of incumbency and name recognition from the extra pushes given by social media. What does seem clear in this race is that candidates have bought into the better-safe-than-sorry mentality for social media.

Plus, they have my number and that of many other voters when they make us feel like we are really interacting with them.

---

Tags: massmarrier, Boston, City Council, at-large, Arroyo, Dorcena, Connolly, Flaherty, Murphy, Pressley, Ryan, elections