Republican and Conservative political analysis and commentary

This is the Mitt Romney installment of a series of 11 posts I am presenting today here at ElephantBiz.com surveying the social-media aspects of the websites of the 11 Republicans currently running for President. (See: "Grading the Candidates' Blogs.")

Romney's campaign website is the kind of website you get when you start your campaign by loaning it more than $2 million of your personal wealth rather than wait for the first fundraising checks to flow in, so you can staff up and launch big immediately rather than grow the campaign as the money comes in. It's flashy, colorful, and loaded with information.

From the links to official Romney campaign pages on MyTube, YouFace and SpaceBook, to MittTV and the MittWire news wire, the site offers plenty of new-media content. And there's even a blog - though it's unlike any other presidential candidate's blog.

Romney's blog is called "Five Brothers, A 'Blog'" and it's written by Romney's five sons, with occasional posts by Romney's wife Ann and by Romney himself. And Romney's sons don't write about politics much - rather, it's like a travelogue from the campaign trail written by five kids on a road trip.

Perhaps it's meant to personalize Romney and his family, but I don't think it works. I don't need to know that Tagg Romney is looking for reading suggestions because he's bored with his video iPod - or that he gets to hang out with executives with the Red Sox, and I don't want to know that some blogger out there has a crush on Josh Romney, either.

On the plus side, there is a blogroll of blogs supporting Romney, and as of this writing it lists 38 blogs. The Romney campaign site also has a "Word on the Web" feature that links to blog posts about Romney, although the link to it is unfortunately buried under the main "News" link on the home page.

The message of that, perhaps unintentional, is that the Romney campaign thinks you reading Romney's sons writing about unserious things is more important that showcasing what the thinkers of the blogosphere are saying about serious things.

I'd ditch the "Five Brothers" blog and give its prominent slot to the "Word on the Web" blog, with reader comments, and add a widget allowing more bloggers to sign up for the bloggers-for-Mitt list. 

In terms of effective and broad use of social media, I'd give the Romney website a B-.

Update: For reviews of social media efforts of the other 10 Republican presidential candidates, see the list below: