Candidates – Maryland’s 4th Congressional District – December Technology Outreach Scorecard

Here is my second full evaluation of the Maryland Congressional District 4 race. You can view the November evaluation HERE. Last month Brown and Ivey led the pack of eight Democrat candidates…let’s see how everyone did over the past month:
The candidates: To see the full list of candidates that have “Officially filed” click here
Anthony Brown: http://anthonybrown.com/
Glenn Ivey: http://www.iveyforcongress.com/
Ingrid Turner: http://www.turnerforcongress.org/
Joseline Pena-Melnyk: http://www.joselinepenamelnyk.com/
Warren Christopher: http://www.warrenchristopherforcongress.com/
Dereck Davis: http://dereckdavis.com/
Alvin Thornton: http://www.alvinthorntonforcongress.com/
Terence Strait: http://www.straitforcongress.com/

The Scorecard: (Click the follower numbers below to view the social media page)

Notes:

• A third GOP candidate has entered this race (Robert “BRO” Broadus). There is still not enough technology outreach that I have found to add any of the three GOP candidates to the scorecards today. Other candidates include Rob Buck & George McDermott.
• Facebook – Pena-Melnyk had the best month in terms of adding new followers. Solid amount of new followers for Ivey and Turner.
  • Terence Strait still has that Facebook “Group” associated with his campaign with 139 group members (that is 1 less than the last time I looked at it). This is a bit different and I am not a fan of this approach. This will be the last time I even look at this in regards to the evaluations.
• Twitter – Christopher added the most new followers in the group. Ivey, Pena-Melnyk and Davis added a decent number of new followers over the past month.
• Extra Credit – Christopher remains the leader in “extra credit” points by listing LinkedIn and Instagram on his website. Christopher also has a YouTube channel. Ivey has a couple of YouTube videos now on his website. Pena-Melnyk is on Instagram (but the link is not on the website yet).
• Candidates that need to fix some issues:
  • Davis – still no social media icons on your website. Please correct this soon.
  • Pena-Melnyk – As mentioned above, you need the Instagram link on your website.
  • Thornton – would be nice if you were active at all online. Are you still running? I can’t tell via your online resources.

A significant factor in evaluating online outreach is looking at follower engagement. In December, I am focusing my reviews on recent Twitter engagement. Want to know how i get the numbers? READ THIS. Here are the numbers for the candidates over the past week:

Notes:

• Strait had the highest score but that was really based on one tweet with 27 retweets and 41 favorites (95 points). Having @Lawrence retweet you to his 292K followers was nice for the campaign. Other tweets were not as successful in engagement.
• Pena-Melnyk had the most consistent engagement of the campaigns tweets and the real engagement leader over the past week.
• Christopher was the most active (maybe to active) in the past week. Remember that tweeting to often can actually hurt the campaign account.

Online Outreach Leader in this race: Last month I ranked the candidates in “tiers”. This month, I am putting out a straight up ranking based off of evaluation points. Here is my December ranking:

1. Joseline Pena-Melnyk (2.5)
2. Glenn Ivey (1.5)
3. Warren Christopher (1.5)
4. Anthony Brown (1)
5. Ingrid Turner (1)
6. Dereck Davis (.5)
7. Terence Strait (.5)
8. Alvin Thornton (0)

Of course the reality of followers, likes, and subscribers does not mean a lot when it comes down to voting in the end, but it can show trends in a campaign cycle and makes a great resource for following all of the candidates.

Scott E