Ron Paul Tops Social Media Scorecard in First Ever ‘Social Primary’, Says Sociagility

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A new study from consultancy Sociagility suggests that Ron Paul is using social media most effectively to support his Presidential candidacy. The study also shows a close correlation between candidates’ social media profiles and voting intention, in Iowa and nationally, making this the first ever ‘social primary’.

“This confirms the description of Iowa as the first of a season of truly ‘social‘ Presidential primaries”

Sociagility analyzed the popularity, receptiveness, interaction, network reach and trust of candidates across different social media channels using its PRINT™ methodology, which is normally applied to commercial brands. Ron Paul’s campaign website and YouTube channel, and Newt Gingrich’s Twitter and Facebook profiles, proved the most effective. Paul achieved the best interaction, network and trust scores, while Gingrich’s social media presence demonstrated the highest level of receptiveness.

Individual results were as follows:

	Rank	PRINT Index™	Popularity	Receptiveness	Interaction	Network	Trust
Ron Paul	1	145	87	50	279	164	145
Newt Gingrich	2	109	92	195	46	107	106
Michele Bachmann	3	84	76	108	66	67	102
Mitt Romney	4	79	86	38	69	98	105
Rick Perry	5	78	170	94	-21	148	-2
Rick Santorum	6	70	66	102	70	37	75
Jon Huntsman	7	64	64	78	17	80	82

The Sociagility study discovered a strong, positive correlation between social media performance and voting intention in Iowa, using the most recent polling data from Public Policy Polling*. It also found an equally positive correlation between national voting intention and an effective Facebook page, as measured using PRINT*. (* See Editors’ Notes)

“This confirms the description of Iowa as the first of a season of truly ‘social‘ Presidential primaries”, said Tony Burgess-Webb of Sociagility.

Commenting on the study, MaryLee Sachs, marketing consultant and author of The Changing MO of the CMO, said: “Sociagility’s study shows the importance of an effective social media profile for political brands as much as for products or services. It provides further credibility for PRINT as one of the best KPIs for judging the return on investment from social media marketing.”

More information about Sociagility’s PRINT social media performance measurement methodology can be found at http://sociagility.com/print.

Editors’ Notes

1. The PRINT Index™ is a relative measure of each candidate’s official profiles on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube plus their own website, as at 21 December 2011, based on five key attributes of social media success:

Popularity: measures include fans, followers and views
Receptiveness: including links, friends and posts
Interaction: including shares, comments and references
Network reach: including audience reach and subscribers
Trust: including influence, authority and rating

2. Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients were computed to assess the relationship between the social media performance of each candidate (using the PRINT Index™) and their polling results in Iowa (using data from Public Policy Polling). There was a positive correlation between the two variables, r=0.825, n=7, p=0.05.

3. Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients were also computed to assess the relationship between social media performance of each candidate’s Facebook page (using the PRINT methodology) and their national polling results (using data from Public Policy Polling). There was a positive correlation between the two variables, r=0.818, n=7, p=0.05.