"Brooklyn Bernie" Tweets
/ 
A New York Times article touts Bernie Sanders' Twitter approach, including a ghost tweeter. Twenty-seven-year-old Hector Sigala, Sander's digital media director, tweets anything potentially newsworthy as it happens.
If numbers matter, the article reports a comparison between the Democratic frontrunners:
Sanders has close to 2 million followers on his Twitter campaign account and has tweeted nearly 8,000 times. His opponent, Hillary Clinton, has tweeted less, 5,000 times, but she has nearly 6 million followers.
Sanders, however, has an edge because his tweets are much more personalized than Clinton's, say some social media strategy experts.
"He's been able to really resonate with (different groups) and connect with them on a level that many other candidates have not been able to do," said marketing consultant and social media strategy specialist Dr. Kay Green.
Although Sigala is proud of increasing Sanders' followers from 50,000 to almost 2 million, he is more focused on how tweets perform and has learned a few things:
"We have got to" do something will do significantly worse than a tweet reading "We gotta."
"That's because it sounds like Brooklyn Bernie," Sigala said with a laugh.
This one was retweeted 2.4 thousand times and liked 7.2 thousand times. Not too shabby.
Discussion Starters:
- What makes a good campaign tweet? What principles do we know about social media posts that will help your response?
- How do numbers of social media likes and followers measure outcomes, and how do they fall short? What are the best measures of social media posts?
