As the Republican caucus in Iowa nears, presidential hopeful Ron Paul is winning at least one race—social media engagement, according to a new analysis.
After tracking seven Republican candidates' performance on Facebook through the end of December, social media analytics firm Socialbakers found that Paul is the most "viral" contender, with nearly 60,000 users talking about him this past week, followed by Mitt Romney and Rick Perry. Socialbakers determined each candidates' viral reach after pouring over more than 10 million Facebook Pages and Places, as well as billions of individual user interactions, taking into account the number of "likes" and comments about each candidate.
Paul increased his social media engagement rate the most of any candidate over the past month (69 percent), followed by Perry (58 percent), and Newt Gingrich (57 percent), according to Socialbakers.
In terms of raw Facebook fan numbers, President Obama beats out every Republican hopeful, with 24 million individual fans. Romney won out among Republicans with more than 1.3 million fans, followed by Paul, who boasts more than 670,000 and Michele Bachmann, who has more than 460,000.
Social media engagement is an important campaign tool, according to Jan Rezab, CEO of Socialbakers.
"Politicians and brands have a tremendous opportunity to go beyond counting the number of 'fans' or 'likes'—they must pay attention to why people are talking about them and what they care about," he said in a statement. "Fan and community engagement is the key to success.”
For more, see the infographic below.
Meanwhile, Google on Monday got into election mode with the release of a new Web site where users can follow the digital campaign trail. On the site, users can sort through election information by individual candidate or issue and find real-time Web trends.
