OP-ED COLUMN
By Coco
This writer is a mild fan of Hillary Rodham Clinton, which I mention here in the sake of full disclosure. However, recent observations about Hillary’s foray into social media, and her (unarguably funny) missteps, should be of interest to all of us as communications professionals, regardless of your opinion of the candidate.
First, you may be aware that you can sign up to receive text messages from Hillary. I signed up early on, fundamentally as a professional experiment. I wanted to see just what she would do and what, if anything, we could learn from her social media savvy. The messages received were few and far between and were generic, at best, consisted mainly of cheerleading and lacked any explicit directives, i.e.; “Encourage your friends to get out and vote!”. Then came her victory in New Hampshire. As the result of multiple channels, mainstream and otherwise, I knew at about 10:00 P.M. that she’d won.
At approximately 5:00 PM the next afternoon, I received a text from Hillary saying “We Won New Hampshire!”
A good social media practitioner knows that the greatest advantages of text message marketing are speed and the ability to incite action. Not only was waiting until 18 hours to notify supporters of the New Hampshire win not speedy, the message also completely missed the mark because it should have included a catalyst for action of some sort. Something that would make me want to text my friends and say “She won, woohoo! — let’s go to the bar, have a Tom Collins and convert the misguided!” By 5:00 P.M. the next day, my friends were already at the bar anyway and had long since stopped caring about New Hampshire.
Then there is “Hillary4U&ME” video on YouTube that we discussed in last week’s issue. Like many, I was first inclined to think an Obama supporter created it because, well, it’s not so good. I take that back. It’s that variety of “good” when so something is so bad that it transcends traditional judgment and becomes good again. In any event, this video has been actively viewed by nearly a half a million people and has created a whirlwind of mocking ridicule across the social media universe.
This sentiment stop was not limited to social media users alone. NPR covered the video as well.
When, I went back to the YouTube page looking for comments to include in this piece, I discovered that the comments are disabled. This confirms that the maker of the video is indeed a Hillary supporter–as the NPR story also tells us. But, again from a social media best practices perspective, disabling comments is the worst of all comments one could possibly make. It screams “This is so bad that I can’t let you read how bad so many people thought it was!!!” By allowing comments, you allow for the possibility of good comments (however unlikely) among the negative comments. This single fact that comments aren’t allowed at all is perceived in the social media world as far more negative significant than the video itself.
Curious, then, I spent approximately 10 seconds searching for comments about the video outside of YouTube. Here’s a sampling of what I found:
“OMG, If that doesn’t seal her fate as the loser then there is no Justice. 
”
“Hooray for Everything!”
“Oh c’mon. This just HAS to be a hoax. At best, it’s some dweeb out there who put this together and thinks it’s good. Right? Right????”
Again, I am not saying Hillary does not have the stuff to be our next President. But if she were being judged on the basis of social media savvy alone, she’d be Ross Perot.
Take a look and judge for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FvyGydc8no