Dr. Spiro Kiousis, associate dean for the College of Journalism and Communications, has reviewed the PR strategies of both US presidential candidates over here on the IPR Blog, looking at public relations efforts along the lines of media relations, donor relations, volunteer relations, and social media engagement.
He identifies a clear advantage for Hillary Clinton in both donor relations and volunteer relations, as she attracted twice as many donations and had double the number of campaign offices throughout the US, compared to the Trump campaign.
Trump was however much more successful in using social media, resulting in a much higher number of responses than Clinton.
Kiousis concludes that:
“Looking at the way that both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump According the multiple studies completed by the team, the best platforms for increasing the importance of topics in political news coverage are blogs, news releases, twitter messages, and television ads.”
But he also highlights the importance of linking the various campaign public relations efforts:
“Finally, for linking elements together in messages, blogs, Facebook messages, Google+ posts, email, and press briefings are most influential. Such findings can help guide message platform selection decisions in political campaigning and governing.”