Sarah Palin’s Twitter Problems

Sarah Palin again left us scratching our PR noggins this week. Fan or not, she’s crushing it in terms “Going Rogue”. So why did her people outright kill her sizable AKGovSarahPalin Twitter account and open SarahPalinUSA to promote the book? Are they people who run the 7-figure Facebook Fan page? The new feed has been languishing all week at between 24,000 to 25,000 followers. You can maintain a following with a simple Tweet announcement after simply changing one’s screenname.

We thought it had something to do with public offices or PACs needing to migrate to a personal brand for legal reasons. We checked in with Nicco Mele, founder of poli-digital consultancy EchoDitto in Washington who is nearly as confused:

Continued after the jump:

“It’s odd that Palin would shut down her AKGovSarahPalin–that’s where the followers are, and it does remind people of her principle political credential. Directing users to her SarahPalinUSA feed seems like an odd combination of some vague legal concerns combined with a muddy understanding of social media.

It smells like the work of a social-media-dumb PR person re-branding her without thinking about the consequences on her audience and reach. It probably won’t hurt her that much in the scheme of things given how much attention she’s getting now. It also points more generally to how new the social media space is for both politics and marketing.

Al Gore didn’t have this problem when he launched his movie/book tour–because none of this existed. Palin is breaking new ground in terms of a major political figure trying to use social media to move from one arena (AK Gov and VP candidate) to another (selling books with an eye towards a possible political future). It makes me think of Meghan McCain’s struggle with Twitter post-campaign–how do you reclaim your social media life after devoting to a campaign for a cycle?”

Mele and his colleagues are the social media pioneers who came out of the Howard Dean campaign two elections ago. EchoDitto works with big political candidates, companies and advocacy campaigns such as the Clinton Global Initiative.

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