Romney, not Obama, is winning the social media race

As of August 16th Barack Obama has a whopping 27 million fans of his Facebook page compared to only 4.3 million for Mitt Romney. Many in the press would use these raw numbers to crown Obama king of Facebook — but in reality this should just be where the analysis begins.

A closer look of the pages shows the exact opposite conclusion. Facebook’s public “Talking About” figure showcases the number of people interacting with content on a Facebook page. This is the sum number of people who have liked, shared, or commented on page’s content over a seven-day period. As of 12:30 a.m. Thursday, Mitt Romney had 1,579,476 people talking about his page compared with 1,354,550 for President Barack Obama. This means that more people are actually interacting with content on Mitt Romney’s page than Barack Obama’s page despite Obama’s having an almost 7 to 1 advantage in total fans over Obama. This is a remarkable figure, one that I believe reflects the grassroots enthusiasm around the Paul Ryan announcement. If Obama were really “outpacing” Romney online he would need seven times as many people talking about his page than Romney has simply to remain proportional. In reality though, Obama has fewer people talking about his page…

The Romney campaign has been incredibly aggressive and innovative with their use of Facebook. Not only are they running many different fundraising ads but this week they even begun using “Facebook Offers” to sell yard signs and raise money for the campaign.