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Alabama Politics Tweets of the Week – 3/12/2010

It was a relatively quiet week in Alabama politics on Twitter, but there were still some items of interest.  We welcomed candidate for Alabama’s 3rd Congressional district seat, Josh Segall to Twitter this week.  Though I’m not sure the person running his Twitter account should continue using the number of hashtags they have started out with…

Join me tomorrow at a meeting with River Region Dems http://bit.ly/c0wtDv #AL03 #AL3 #montgomery #segall #alabama#congress #al

I’m pretty tuned in to common hashtags for Alabama politics and none of the ones they used in their first two tweets are in common usage.  The account finally hit on the most common hashtag: #alpolitics, in it’s third time out.

For the uneducated, hashtags are a way to “flag” a tweet or add it to a category of interest.  You can certainly start a hashtag that others may want to use, but if no one else is using it there isn’t much point.  I would advise sticking with the #alpolitics tag as that will get to the widest audience of interest.

Next we have Bradley Byrne (@BradleyByrne), who seems to be in a bit of a Twitter rut…he only offered nine tweets this week and these were four of them:

Looking forward to tonight’s fundraiser in Sylacauga.

Looking forward to being on the Leland Whaley radio show in Birmingham at 10:00. 100.5 FM.

Looking forward to campaign stops in north Jefferson County.

Looking forward to our Vestavia fundraiser.

Anyone else notice a pattern?  Trying to communicate a message of optimism perhaps…always looking forward?

Sen. Paul Sanford offered some insight into his feelings on the debate over the $1 billion roads bill proposed by Sen. Lowell Barron:

Raid the Trust Road Bill up again. Would not accept any amendments from Conservatives. It is almost like witnessing DC in action.

The bill ended up passing 25-10 and we will move on to Spring Break week in the legislature, but hopefull that will not stop the flow of interesting observations and insights from the Alabama politics universe on Twitter.

Was there something I missed this week?  Please post it in the comments and remember you can cut and paste candidates for “Tweets of the Week” in the textbox in the right sidebar here at The World Around You.

UPDATE:  Brian from Flashpoint reminded me in the comments below that I left out some of the funniest tweets from the committee hearing on cockfighting legislation by Rep. Phil Williams (via @vote4phil)

2 hour hearing on cockfighting. Just shoot me.

3hours of cockfighting. Now it’s about gambling. Can I make an “electronic cockfighting machine”???

Now it’s about the fights and violent crimes that break out at cockfights. Anyone remember “little Jerry Seinfeld”???

More than 3 birds constitutes “a flock of cocks”.

I also was reminded that Robert Bentley tweeted the following:

Don’t forget to follow Dr. Bentley on Twitter @Bentley2010 http://bit.ly/aWKzwO

For those who are not Twitter proficient, only those who were already following him could see that message.  I called this out at the time and was informed by the campaign that the message was “pushed” to Twitter from their Facebook account…but that doesn’t change the fact that it looked odd.

Bradley Byrne and Kay Ivey release New Campaign Ads

Just after I got caught up on campaign ads, the Byrne and Ivey campaigns released new ads today.

Apparently someone has convinced Kay Ivey that green screens are the way to go with her ads:

Kay Ivey Campaign Commercial #2 – Pledge 3-9-10 from Kay Ivey on Vimeo.

As for Bradley Byrne, his commercials continue to stick with him in close-up speaking directly to camera:

[youtube]q0zjYwZGJus&hl[/youtube]

Both commercials are trying to stake out the most conservative ground possible.  Kay Ivey uses her opposition to Amendment One as her anchor in conservative territory.  While Byrne can’t stake out the same territory, so he turns his focus to his perception of what is going on in Washington, adopting the language of “government takeovers”, “the 10th amendment” and “fighting back”.  Nothing too surprising here, just the next step in the progression of trying to win a Republican primary in Alabama.

Campaign Ad-apolooza – Byrne, Davis, Bentley, Ivey

Robert Bentley is up with his first campaign ad:

[youtube]fXnxglIOvEs[/youtube]

Artur Davis’s first ad is called “Alabama First:

[youtube]L1ZCzR5gGSs[/youtube]

Kay Ivey has this:

Kay Ivey Video from Kay Ivey on Vimeo.

 

And, finally, Bradley Byrne’s latest, focused on jobs:

[youtube]_SkksQUVAoA[/youtube]

 

 

Latest Social Media Poll Results and Updating the Twitter Scorecard

The latest TWAY poll results are in.  This time, the question we asked was “Which gubernatorial candidate is running the most effective online campaign?”  Our completely unscientific (but still interesting) results are:

Bradley Byrne 33%

Artur Davis 28%

Tim James 20%

Bill Johnson 9%

Ron Sparks 6%

Roy Moore 2%

Robert Bentley 1%

Kay Ivey 1%

James Potts <1%

I also wanted to check-in once again with some objective numbers (and subjective analysis) on the use of social media by the candidates for Alabama governor.  Let’s look at the number of Facebook “fans”, Twitter “followers” and You Tube “subscribers”.

[gdocs type='spreadsheet' st_id='0AnkbXmhwgbPIdENFcDkwcHhPdXRBU1JCd0Nka2VCVFE' wt_id='od6']

We last visited the usage of Twitter by candidates in December.  While the number of pieces of information flowing on Twitter have changed quite dramatically, there is still a key piece of what social media is all about missing, interaction.  While there is now much interaction between surrogates (including campaign staff) and the general public, there is still very little to no interaction from the candidates themselves.  We receive assurances that most if not all of the candidates are now producing their own tweets (which I still find suspect), but few questions are being answered or posed from those accounts.

As I did in December, I looked at the results from Twitalyzer, which is an application that provides a way to score your impact in the Twitter universe.  Here is how the candidates shake out (with their December scores in parentheses):

@ArturDavis: 3.4 (1.8)

@Bradley Byrne: 1.6 (1.4)

@TimJames2010: 1.5 (0.9)

@Moore2010: 1.5 (0)

@Bentley2010: 0.9 (0.1)

@TeamJohnson2010: 0.5 (0.9)

@KayIvey: 0.4 (0.5)

@RonSparks2010: 0.3 (0.2)

Congressman Davis continues to expand his lead over the field by this measure, almost doubling his score from December.  Roy Moore made the next biggest move, followed by Rep. Bentley, then Tim James and Bill Johnson.  Kay Ivey and Ron Sparks actually regressed since December.  From my own experience with following these accounts, I once again believe this objective measure to coincide with my subjective opinion of what is happening.  I am impressed with the engagement of the James campaign on social media, and their use of it in getting out their message.  I still believe Davis’s apparatus has been superior, but the gap is closing.