Gingrich Pins Hopes on Hashtags
From CNN
Newt Gingrich may occasionally refer to a Twitter hash tag as a hash mark but he is relying on the Internet to reach out to voters, one tweet and Facebook friend at a time.The Republican presidential candidate doesn’t have as much money to spend on television advertising as his counterparts, but Gingrich is devoting considerable resources to maximize his online presence.
Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond said the campaign has raised a little more than $10 million in online fundraising, and approximately a quarter of that has been spent on digital strategy, which includes fundraising, advertising, the campaign website and social media management.
In late January they hired digital media consultant Vincent Harris to help the burgeoning campaign after Gingrich won the South Carolina primary.
“I stepped in to a campaign that was very well-versed with everything online, they just didn’t have the people resources,” said Harris, who worked for Rick Perry’s campaign before the Texas governor dropped out of the race.
According to Harris, he primarily helped redesign Gingrich’s website and brought online advertising and Facebook expertise to the campaign. He said he and his firm Harris Media “were able to articulate more about the potential ROIs (returns on investment) for running online ads.”
Four weeks ago Gingrich introduced his plan to reduce gasoline prices to $2.50 per gallon and the campaign has aggressively promoted it on social media sites. On Twitter, the hash tag #$250gas has been tweeted 35,105 times by more than 7,400 users, according to Harris.