Heidi M. Przybyla

USA TODAY

Hillary Clinton’s campaign looks like a new media startup.

The Democratic front-runner has a staff of dozens producing original content — including bylined news stories and professional video — all managed by an audience development team, a model similar to digital news pioneers BuzzFeed or Vox.

A blog, called the "Feed,” anchored by five full-time writers, pumps out articles, interactive trivia quizzes, GIFs of Clinton's late-night-show appearances and other content designed to engage supporters and court potential voters across social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat.

“They seem to be trying to mimic a publisher,” said Michael Wertheim, an adviser to media and tech startups and a former strategy director at Upworthy.

President Obama's team was the undisputed powerhouse of the 2008 and 2012 cycles. Now his digital mastermind, Teddy Goff, is helming Clinton’s efforts, but, Goff says, succeeding in 2016 is far more challenging.

In past campaigns, "we felt that we could pretty much reach the people we need to reach by running a really good Twitter and Facebook account,” he said. Obama for America built Facebook and Twitter followings of more than 45 million and 33 million, respectively.

2016 USA TODAY/Facebook candidate barometer

Now, people have more power over what they consume, said Goff. They have “a higher set of expectations for how they’re going to be served," he said, and are steering away from overtly political messages.

“When you put those together, it’s a pretty difficult task."

The Clinton approach is made possible by its resources, said Katie Harbath, Facebook’s global politics and government outreach director. Others are “having to be leaner, be more resourceful and deal with a smaller staff,” she said.

Yet, in this election, “resources don’t necessarily mean they’ll resonate more or create more of a discussion on the platform,” said Jenna Golden, Twitter’s director of political ad sales. While the Democrat’s Brooklyn-based team crafts images and stories optimized for mobile viewing targeted at both broad and specific demographic audiences, Republican candidate Donald Trump’s approach is more basic: He sits at his computer and sends out missives. And Bernie Sanders, her main rival for the Democratic nomination, has more overall digital interactions than Clinton.

Trump’s posted over 5,000 times since June, mostly on Twitter, according to CrowdTangle, a social analytics tool that monitors social media. Since June of last year, Trump has generated nearly 85 million interactions (positive and negative) on his campaign accounts, which include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. Sanders comes in at 34.6 million and Clinton at 31 million.

According to Facebook, Trump generated the most interactions across the social media network the week after his controversial proposal to temporarily ban non-citizen Muslims from entering the country. Clinton's peak came the last week of October after a successful debate and a marathon performance before a House Benghazi hearing.

Trump took over Twitter with proposed Muslim ban

Trump shows complete domination of Facebook conversation

“Trump is absolutely dominating social this election cycle and it’s not even close,” said Brandon Silverman, CrowdTangle chief executive. “It’s a way to skip the media and go directly to his audience,” he said. Yet dominating the conversation doesn't necessarily translate into votes.

Trump and Clinton have “very different strategic goals,” said Silverman. While Trump is “brand building,” Clinton is converting her traffic into actions such as site registrations to acquire data critical to her get-out-the-vote efforts.

Whether the Clinton or Trump model is more effective will be part of the election post-mortem, said Jake Horowitz, founder of Mic, a top millennial website.

“You have a very sophisticated operation, and then you have someone who’s a total monster with media attention, and they’re competing for attention across social,” said Horowitz.

A lot of the focus appears to be on evoking emotion as the former first lady battles perceptions that she isn't personable.

A recent post getting a lot of clicks shows Clinton retelling, in a speech, the story of Army Captain Humayun Khan, a 27-year-old Muslim American who died in Iraq after waving his unit away from a vehicle that exploded.

The video, set to background music, includes a cutaway shot to a visibly anguished man who, as Clinton speaks, bows his head and and chokes back tears as his fingers tweeze the bridge of his nose. It’s gotten over 2 million views on Facebook.

There’s also a regular series, called “Quick Question” that catches the candidate spontaneously discussing fun topics, including lessons from her mother and what it’s like to watch football in the Clinton household. “They catch her randomly, and she just answers. It captures her,” said Goff.

“They’re probably trying to get her to react in a genuine fashion and trigger some emotion,” said Wertheim.

Similar to what you’d find on BuzzFeed or The Huffington Post, Clinton's site is interactive. In December, a quiz asked readers to guess whether certain statements came from Donald Trump or someone else.

Another notes her summer job after college in Alaska “sliming” fish, or removing the guts from salmon with a spoon. Another featured five vintage photos telling “the story of how Bill and Hillary Clinton fell in love.”

Many readers are probably unaware some posts are from the campaign since a number feature people other than the candidate, including one of a cute 8-year-old and another highlighting a 1986 letter from a grandfather who fled Germany ahead of WWII aimed at illustrating the historic role the nation has played in taking in refugees.

Ultimately, though, digital experts say social media success depends on something only the candidate can deliver: authenticity.

“The candidates who are willing to be more authentic and show who they are as a person get a lot more engagement,” said Horowitz.