Republican and Conservative political analysis and commentary

This is the Tom Tancredo 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.")

Tom Tancredo's campaign website, www.teamtancredo.com, is new-media state-of-the-art, and loaded with news, information, video clips, including an archive of news clips titled TomTV, and more. And yes it has a blog.

It's also highly topical, with the latest news on the immigration reform battle in Congress - Tancredo's primary issue. The website serves a dual purpose - it's Tancredo's campaign site but equally devoted to the campaign for securing the border and against amnesty for illegal immigrants.

Tancredo's blog, "Tom's Blog," isn't written by "the Tanc," as he is referred to on the blog, but by campaign staffer Mike Tate, who is also handy with the digital camera and digital video, which fills the blog.  One recent entry includes a video of Tancredo discussing a measure Tancredo sponsored in the House - which passed - that will "withhold federal emergency services funding for 'sanctuary cities' that protect illegal immigrants." Tancredo discusses the amendment while driving around Denver.

Compare that to video of John McCain talking on the phone with bloggers while riding his rather luxurious "Straight Talk Express" campaign bus and you get a sense of the vast difference between the two campaigns. Tancredo's blog neatly captures the the accessible-ness of the candidate.

Tancredo's website and blog also contain links to the campaign's official pages on YouTube, MySpace and Facebook. A recent blog post looks at the popularity of Tancredo's YouTube channel.

What Tancredo's website lacks, though, is any attempt to reach out to the conservative blogosphere and build a network of Bloggers for Tancredo - a strategic mistake, given the passion with which conservative bloggers are writing about the immigration debate. There's also no downloadable web widgets for pro-Tancredo bloggers to install Tancredo links and donations pages on their sites.

In terms of effective use of various social media tools, Tancredo's website almost deserves a grade of A - except for those deficiencies. I give it a B+.

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