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Tips & Tricks

Which Candidate Is Winning the Content Race in Election ’16?

Media analysts and voters alike were wowed by the savvy operation of President Obama’s content marketing initiatives during his two presidential election campaigns. Never before had anyone tapped into the mindsets of voters and hit them with messaging where they lived—on their digital devices.

Some of the campaign success had to do with the fact that Obama arrived on the scene at the dawn of the social media age, and the tools simply had not been available to candidates prior to this. However, his campaign masterfully crafted a digital content strategy that played a huge part in his success.
It’s natural, then, that today’s presidential candidates—Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton—have launched their own content initiatives in order to best each other in their bid for the office.
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Trump Wins Social

It’s not clear which Donald Trump likes better—talking or tweeting. What is evident, though, is that he is clearly the winner when it comes to social media. Trump has not only created his brand on social media but also continues to build on it, with followers and analysts being alternately appreciative and appalled by his social speak.
The social media game is won by shoring up both quantity and quality of audience, and Trump has swept this largely due to his sensational campaign rhetoric and more frequent and numerous social media activity.
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On Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, Trump takes the cake when it comes to the number of followers and page likes.

  • Twitter: Trump 10.3 million followers; Clinton 7.84 million followers
  • Facebook: Trump 9.9 million likes; Clinton 4.9 million likes
  • Instagram: Trump 2.1 million followers; Clinton 1.6 million followers

In addition to social media statistics, Trump has an avid following on Reddit that he (or his team) uses wisely. An official Trump account occasionally posts in the subreddit r/The_Donald and is successful when it comes to stirring up excitement within his Reddit following, just as it did before the final debate. While Clinton’s campaign does have a presence on the website as well, Trump’s subreddit garners the most attention in terms of election-related news.
The other part of the social media equation is quality, which is measured by engagement of followers, and Trump is rising to the top here too. His followers are engaging at over twice the rate of Clinton’s followers, which tremendously boosts his online presence.
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Clinton Wins With Email

In what may be the ultimate irony of this presidential election, Hillary Clinton’s team is winning the email marketing game. Despite the controversy surrounding Clinton’s use or misuse of email servers and potential deletion of thousands of confidential emails, her team has masterfully developed email marketing initiatives that are really working for the campaign.
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The Clinton team has crafted messaging that resonates with voters and has chosen MailGun’s RESTful APIs, Mandrill from MailChimp for distribution and Silverpop’s mobile tactics.

Clinton Wins the Logo War, Too

Clinton wins major points in the logo battle. Compared to Trump’s initial retracted and arguably amateurish graphic attempt, Clinton’s logo came out of the gate strong. The graphic designers created a brand mark for Clinton incorporating a bold statement of a sans-serif “H” coupled with an equally strong forward motion arrow pointing to what the campaign believes will be a brighter, stronger America.
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The name of the game for political candidates is building trust and engaging voters. Content marketing can bring those candidates to the people in means unparalleled in campaign history. They want us to know them, like them and, hopefully, vote for them.
It’s all about crafting the winning message, being authentic and reaching the audience you need—and content marketing wins that contest. But ultimately, a politician is a product, a brand to be marketed and hopefully adopted by more people than their opponent. May the best man—or woman—win.

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