Rep. Jim Matheson is a new and improved man on social media

Representative Jim Matheson

By Sterling Morris
Representative Jim Matheson is Utah's new congressman in district 4, but he's no rookie in the political scene. He has 12 years of leadership under his belt serving from early 2001 through January 3, 2013 as a congressman in district 2. Although he's an experienced and skilled politician, he has recently become a new and improved man on social media. 

Sure, Representative Matheson has been on Facebook, Twitter, and other outlets for a long time now, but his social media performance has improved by leaps and bounds since election day. But before we look at his performance, let's visit the tough race he found himself in during the 2012 campaign season.

Josh Light interviewing Mia Love

On November 6, Jim Matheson won an impressive and hard-fought battle against Mia Love by 2,646 votes in a race with funds that reached a combined $4.6 million between said competitors and $5.8 million when considering funds raised by other competitors pre convention. 

Mia was a particularly strong competitor on social media where she generated some of the top performance numbers of any politician in Utah. She had Jim Matheson beat on the social media front. The excitement she generated seemed almost palpable and this showed in her donations. Mia raised over 400% more funds from individual donors ($1,945,414) than Matheson raised ($471,984). 

Josh Light interviewing Rep. Jim Matheson

Matheson ultimately won this tight race, and it appears he learned a valuable lesson from his experience. Following election day, Rep. Matheson's social media outlets became highly active and conversant. Between November 6 and today, Jim Matheson has made more posts to his Facebook wall than any other congressman in Utah including social media powerhouse Jason Chaffetz. In fact, he is three posts short of having made more posts than all other Utah congressmen combined. 

It's the same story on Twitter for Jim Matheson. He has been very active on his Twitter feed and has more followers than Chris Stewart and Rob Bishop combined. Rep. Matheson even began posting photos to an Instagram account he recently set up. He deserves a big congratulations for this high level of performance and communication. It's clear he wants to serve Utah past the 2013-2014 congressional term. 

You can follow Congressman Matheson on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You can subscribe to his YouTube channel, here.

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Sterling Morris

PoliticIt provides It Scores on political races. An It Score measures a politician's digital influence. It Scores have correctly predicted more than 700 election outcomes in 2012 with 91% accuracy indicating that digital influence seems to correlate with election results. PoliticIt will release Politicit Candidate in early 2013 -- software that will enable politicians to access their daily It Score and monitor their digital influence. Contact Sterling at Sterling@PoliticIt.com to become a beta tester of PoliticIt Candidate.

Sterling Morris is a co-founder at PoliticIt. Connect with PoliticIt