Blog #3: Martin O’Malley and Social Media

Martin O’Malley and Social Media

·         Does he have a website?:

 

o   Yes! Martin O’Malley has a website (https://martinomalley.com/).

o   O’Malley’s website includes:

1. A place to show your support by signing up for emails.

2. A biography

3. A section describing his vision.

4. A tab titled “latest” which features recent articles about both O’Malley and his competitors.

5. A tab that allows readers to “get involved” providing volunteer opportunities, events O’Malley will be at, internship opportunities, and a commit to vote option.

6. A link to his other forms of social media.

·         What social media platforms is he participating on right now?:

o   Martin O’Malley participates in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube, and Snapchat. 

·         How active is your candidate on each of these platforms?: 

o   Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/MartinOMalley

§  O’Malley’s biggest following is on Facebook with 79,767 likes. O’Malley’s Facebook features a combination of articles, pictures, and videos from his other forms of social media. Typically O’Malley posts a link to a video, picture, or article and then includes his own paragraph explaining said video, picture, or article. O’Malley usually posts on his Facebook every day, usually more than one time per day. Although he has 79,767 people who like him on Facebook, he only receives hundreds of likes and even less shares on each post. His highest liked post was about the Republican vs. Democratic debate which pulled in 1,893 likes and 349 shares.

o   Twitter- https://twitter.com/martinomalley

§  O’Malley has a follower count of 2,010 on Twitter and has about 11.4K tweets in total. His twitter is less interactive than his Facebook. O’Malley mostly tweets links to other websites or articles. He does include the occasional retweet or picture. It looks like O’Malley post on twitter almost every day sending out anywhere from 1-5 tweets daily. His tweets don’t usually break 100 favorites or retweets.

o   Instagram- https://instagram.com/martinomalley/

§  O’Malley’s Instagram is far from interesting with only 101 posts and 2,793 followers. O’Malley averages anywhere from 100-200 likes per picture indicating people are not very active on his page. Some of his posts only have one comment which indicates that not a lot of discussion is being facilitated on his Instagram. Just to put things in perspective for you, Kim Kardashian’s latest Instagram post has 327,327 likes and 1,638 comments in only 4 hours. Donald Trump’s latest Instagram post has 6,769 likes and 546 comments in 51 minutes. If you haven’t gotten the point yet, O’Malley needs to step up his Instagram game ASAP. 

o   Pinterest- https://www.pinterest.com/martinomalley/

§  Yes, you’re reading this right. Martin O’Malley has a Pinterest account. It’s hard to know for sure if this is actually him running the page because Pinterest doesn’t certify people the way Instagram and Twitter do, but it looks pretty promising. O’Malley has 7 Boards, 75 total Pins, and 566 followers. His boards include “Goals to Move Maryland Forward”, “Books Worth Reading”, “Pictures I took with my phone”, “My T.V. Appearances”, “Maryland Pinterest Business Pitch Contest”, “DNC 2012”, and “Fiscal Responsibility”. Personally, I’m impressed with how many followers he has on Pinterest. 

o   Youtube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb7eu74-_tCNLw9FfavvKnw

§  O’Malley has his own Youtube channel which basically just contains a bunch of videos of him at debates and doing other things along those lines. My assumption is that links to these videos are imbedded or featured on his other social media sites. He has a ton of videos, too may for me to count (and I can’t find where it says how many he has) and none of them have substantial amounts of views. Each video pulls around 100 views. 

o   Snapchat- @GovernorOMalley

§  Although O’Malley does have a Snapchat according to his Facebook account, I’m not entirely sure what he posts on here because he doesn’t currently have a “My Story”. Judging by the Facebook post announcing his presence on Snapchat, he uses Snapchat to share a more personal side of himself. The Facebook post says, “I just joined Snapchat. Follow me @GovernorOMalley for a sneak peek at my trip to New Hampshire.” I guess I will find out how often he is active on Snapchat in the weeks to come!

·     Are there any viral videos or important online sites about your candidate that the candidate and/or campaign/staff didn't create?:

o   As of right now I haven’t really found any. I suppose his character on The Wire could count as something viral he and his campaign staff didn’t create. He also got backlash for his tough-on-crime policies and got some media attention for events surrounding that (I’ve posted about these things in both of my other blogs so I don’t want to bore anyone). Other than that, I haven’t seen anything really go “viral” regarding Martin O’Malley. 

  

Game Plan: 

 

·        o   A plan for what Martin O’Malley needs to do to boost his online presence for 2016 would probably be to work on gaining a bigger audience. Once he gets that audience he needs to figure out a way to facilitate conversation and make his social media interactive. He has a big following on Facebook, but it seems like people just skip over his posts and don’t find any reason to share or comment. I hate how dramatic any political race is, but honestly, drama is the best way to gain an audience and make people interested. O’Malley is playing it pretty safe so far which isn’t going to help him win.