On Monday, April 13th, Marco Rubio officially announced that he is running for president. He did this just one day after Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy. Rubio’s timing demonstrates that he has an extremely poor grasp of social media and should immediately consider hiring someone who can help him become more aware of this reality.
When candidates officially announce their candidacies, they are officially inviting the world to ridicule them. This is clearly seen in the seconds, minutes and days that follow a presidential run announcement. Consequently, a candidate’s initial entry into a campaign is a really big deal. For that first week, the world focuses its attention on the flaws and failings of the newly declared candidate. This includes twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms. It’s the first time people get to really focus their disdain, scorn and memes. It’s one thing to attack a possible candidate, it is another to focus your social media posts on an official candidate.
After Hilary Clinton announced her candidacy on Sunday, I told my wife that Clinton should pay some crazy person to announce his intentions for the presidency on the same day. That way he would take attention away from Clinton’s initial negative social media buzz. As if he heard my musings, Marco Rubio scheduled a press conference to quickly shift the social media scorn cycle in his direction. I simply cannot fathom why he did this.
Once everyone is in the race, the ridicule is spread out among the front runners, but before everyone throws their hat into the ring, in the early days of a campaign, each individual receives a lot of individual attention. A lot of this attention can be really, really bad. Thankfully for Hillary Clinton, Marco Rubio came to the rescue before another Hillary Clinton negative meme could be created to define her entire candidacy. Instead, within 24 hours the focus shifted to the dry mouthed Rubio.
Not only did Rubio shorten the initial scrutiny window of Hillary Clinton, he also positioned himself as a contrast that most likely bolstered anti-Clinton democrats to give Hilary a second chance in comparison to the Republican option. It seems Rubio’s announcement did little to rally anyone but those who were already in his camp.
A word to Rubio, hire someone who uses twitter and understands the power of a good meme.
Doug Bursch writes at https://fairlyspiritual.org
He tweets @fairlyspiritual
Douglas Bursch is the author of Posting Peace: Why Social Media Divides Us and What We Can Do About It. He also hosts The Fairly Spiritual Show podcast.