This post was originally published on Save Jersey as a brief analytical follow-up to an online discussion between New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and opponents of his FY2011 budget.
As I discussed earlier in the month on Save Jersey, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is taking his message to the Twitterverse and has been engaging critics of his budget cuts. That is a good strategy, but, doing some effective supporter outreach through Twitter could beneficial as well – however in an extremely blue state he has received more online criticism from residents than support so his strategy is to address critics rather than supporters in order to hope change their opinion.
Christie’s staff has live-tweeted a few events (budget addresses, for example) and taken photos of field events, so in those cases, Governor Christie is not actually updating. However, for the most part, we have seen Governor Christie personally write many of his tweets. I wanted to take an analytical approach to judge the effectiveness of Christie’s web strategy so I checked a few of my favorite Twitter stat sites to see how the Governor was doing on Twitter.
Summary:
Governor Christie is doing a good job of adding followers and authentically communicating with residents while in office. His tone is not always gubernatorial and could be considered combative and negative in some cases. But, at the end of the day he is authentic, and his Twitter account is surely a nightmare for his PR and communications team. With only a few cases of staff-written tweets, Christie is personally responsible for accessing @GovChristie and communicating with the residents of New Jersey. It will be interesting to see if the Governor’s Office takes advantage of his follower count and has an official Q&A Twitter town hall down the road.
Recommendations:
- Connect with more supporters.
- Use @GovChristie to host Twitter town halls on a regular basis.
- Drop the combative tone with unwinnable critics.
Twitter Analysis and Stats of @GovChristie:
TweetStats is fairly accurate on getting direct tweet stats (time, date, method, etc.)
What is easily taken away is Christie’s spike in tweets from March (his introduction of the 2011 budget) and April (the NJEA battle), which is nearly a 250% jump. We can also tell that he does most of his tweeting on Sundays (mornings and evening, mostly) when he is not in Trenton working on fixing the state. A major reason for this spike is the previous Twitter discussion we covered.
We can also see that @ replies comprise about 53.57% of total tweets and the majority are with ideological opponents.
In addition, Gov. Christie uses Tweetee, which is marketed as a “cute twitter client.” However, at the end of the day it is an effective tool to easily view and respond to mentions.
His staff has also uploaded 14 Twitpics, mostly event photos from his advance team.
This is explanatory – this is a tweet cloud of Governor Christie’s tweets and we can see that he stays on topic and tweets a lot about New Jersey and the NJEA (again, the NJEA was a major opponent throughout April).
Here is the word count list courtesy of MyTwitterWeighsATon (no weight reference intended towards Governor Christie). Once again, we can see that the teacher union battle received the most attention from the Governor.
From TwitterCounter we can see that Governor Christie gains on average 168 followers daily, joined on November 16th 2009, and is ranked 46,828th on Twitter (not too shabby). We can also see that on February 27th Governor Christie wrote a tweet on his daughter’s piano recital at Drumthwacket. The following day Christie would accidentally tweet twice about NJ’s Zach Parise’s game-tying goal in the Olympic gold medal game.
When overlaid on top of Christie’s tweets we can see that he adds followers regardless of Twitter activity. Spam accounts probably are a factor in this change
This list shows us who Christie is following. It is not surprising – he follows mostly political users. Of note: he follows Justin Bieber and Bruce Springsteen.
This is a great Twitter analysis site merely for the fun fact of getting context on a users’ Twitter status versus other ‘average’ users’ statuses. However, like all psychoanalysis it needs to be taken with context and unfortunately, computer programs can’t understand human speech all that effectively.
Not surprisingly, Governor Christie tweets about money more than 239% of other users (New Jersey is in a budget crisis after all). He also tweets about work more than the average user (99% more). Again, good to see he is hard at work and not commenting on Justin Bieber. (45% less tweets about celebrities).
Edit: As I wrote this report, Governor Christie mistweets writing “@justinbieber @jdickerson”
invoking this response from @jdickerson (John Dickerson of Slate Magazine):
“Governor, we're often linked because of our global popularity & CD sales but we're quite different RT @GovChristie: @justinbieber @jdickerson”.
Christie is also focused on business and economic development (71% more than average) and education (14% above average).
Now, critics may get a laugh when they notice that Christie tweets about logical reasoning 16% less than the average user and indicates a desire to impose order (22% less tweets about control). Of note, Christie tweets 28% less about negative sentiments.
However, this site isn’t totally accurate as it believes that Christie doesn’t tweet about himself (85% less self-referential tweets) but in reality he often is talking about himself in his capacity of governor. In addition, Christie has indicated that New Jersey residents are anxious and this service believes that he is in fact saying he himself is anxious.
This chart shows when Christie lost and gained followers. Now it is important to realize that Twitter’s spam deletion efforts may be a part of the reason why his numbers go drastically up and down and this service may not be very accurate, but it is important to note that particularly negative tweets have seen major changes. For example: Governor Christie wrote on April 20th: “@NexStitch Glad u just don't repeat NJEA talking pts. Guess RT of falsehoods doesn't count, huh?” and lost 432 followers.
Christie only averages about 1.6 tweets a day or 75.44 milliscobles. 59% of his tweets are @ replies. His last 100 updates increased in milliscobles probably once again due to the most recent conversations he has had with critics.
Say2.Info shows us who Governor Christie mentions and who he is mentioned by on Twitter. We can see that the majority of people who Christie converses with are teachers or critics. He is mentioned by mostly conservative or Republican accounts including obviously the campaign and official news account along with three tweets from Joe Scarborough. This site is not very accurate and it does not catch all mentions.
Christie gets a 99.4% because he updates semi-regularly and follows enough people back where he is not ignoring other Twitter users. He is also fairly social and active. Following more people and engaging with a wider array of followers would improve his score.
Full Tweet Archive of @GovChristie To Date
Here are all of Christie's tweets to date.