Chuck DeFeo’s Big Picture

There’s a lot of hype that goes on when talking about the Internet & Politics.

former chief’s head coach, “the main thing is the main thing & as long as you remember the main thing is the main thing, it will be the main thing.”

The main thing = getting 51% of the vote.

Not about having the coolest widget, etc….

Every action you take, every framework you put in place needs to answer the question: What is your organization trying to accomplish?

Raise Money, Organize a Volunteer Base & Communicate a Message.

It gets more complicated when you start to think about how the Internet will help you achieve those goals.

Today it’s all about tapping into the communities that exist out there and then deciding how to funnel them into your organization.

At the dawn of the industrial revolution, the smart candidates realized to go where the people were as those people started to convene at work for the very first time.

YouTube, Facebook, Myspace are communities where people are gathering.  Smart candidates go to where the people are.

What do you do to get attention when you are not the RNC or the President?

*recognize who your audience is in each and every social network.

*introduce yourself properly.  talk to them. get to know them.

It’s like meeting someone at a bar.  You don’t call them and ask for $15 the first call. NO, you ask them out for a drink first.

Liberals are beating us on the Internet & we don’t know what we’re doing.

Fundamental truths: much more energized central support on the left — our base is demoralized.

2004 Campaign Models: Bush & Howard Dean

*Bush had the right model for an incumbent president.

Dean Model

Howard Dean had comments on his blog & any Joe 6-pack could post. “You are the message, you have the power” -Dean

Used earned media, viral communities to bring people in and congregate on his website. (Myspace, Facebook, Youtube didn’t really exist)

Pros — unknown candidate trying to be the cool, hip place to hangout.

Cons — You lose message control, when you allow people to create their own messages. Howard Dean became who everyone wanted him to be.

Bush Model

Had a large, existing base of support already.  How do we most effectively make use of that audience — going back to that 51% goal.  Chuck’s job was to get folk’s off that website as quickly as possible.

Specific set of goals, record, message. *empower grassroots supporters to carry president’s message*

1_ sign up to volunteer

2_give you a list of other people in your community to contact

You only get, at best, 7-8 minutes with a first-time visitor to your website.

Message control is key — ***

Matt Lira on Eric Cantor’s Modern Media Story

Shooting for the Battlship, beginning with a Paddle Boat

Re-Launch Website — if i am the user going to the site, what the objective we want him or her to achieve & constructed the site around those goals.

Fairly extensive blog outreach – how can we make blogs part of our everyday existence? — incorporating online video.

Limited budget, manpower, time — had to make sure that everything they do is effective.

Main goal – get the message out.

Solutions Factory — a space for constituents to submit solutions and then rank and debate solutions of others.

Bring in the traffic via: extensive blogger outreach, google ads, offline press coverage. Weaving together the new media into existing efforts.

Don’t view online efforts as a seperate category in a box. 360 degree integration is key.

Justin Germany on Understanding Online Video

One of Justin’s primary responsibilities during the Bush-Cheney 04 re-election campaign was to track the president on the campaign trail & capture the energy of that campaign on video.

 He oversaw one of the first User generated video ad contests for the campaign and quickly found that user generated content is a double-edged sword.

Enter the YouTube age in 2005.

Flash-forward to McCain 2008.

“Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran….”

“Thanks for the question, you little jerk….”

Sometimes it depends on how you react.  If you’re able to embrace these moments, you can really take advantage of humorous situations. 

Good idea to have a tracker cam on your opponent at every single event.  On the flip-side, you have to expect that your opponent will always have a camera on you.

What you need:

*nothing fancy, but select a camera that you know will work with whatever editing program that you have.

*if anything else, have the ability to get that footage on YouTube quickly.

*For Mac, imovie is fine — FinalCut Express is better — if you’re really into it, FinalCut Pro or FinalCut Avid.

*For PC, windows media maker is not really good, but will do. Be careful about investing in Adobe Premier, etc…

*www.blip.tv — for something like $80 a year, you can create higher quality video.

Spend more time nurturing your YouTube channel.

Working with your communications and oppo team to find everything you can about your opponent (video clips, speeches, etc…) Have it organized, ready & useable.

Use footeage to set up a theme or narrative about your opponent (Romney got branded early on as a flip-flopper).

*www.ripzor.com finds source video files so you can download them to a flv file and there are several free services that will convert flv files.

Visual Hub converts flv files.

Mindy Finn on Building Effective Email Lists

Mindy argues that email is still an effective email tool.

Not all email subscribers read your blog, but they do check their email.

There is no clear formula to predict whether or not a movement will go viral.

Email is more predictable than other new media strategies, which are often hit or miss.

That being said, you have to be viral to get an effective email list.

William Beutler on SEO

You should never pay anyone any money to get a higher page rank.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization *do things that are free in order to help people find your site.

If you’re going to focus on SEO — focus on Google.

Most people will go through 3 pages of results before giving up.

What does Google look for? — Google evaluates more than 100 factors to determine rank.

*page content

*page titles (H1 is the highest headline on the page)

*Website subject matter

*Internal Links

*Inbound Links from other sites

*Category & Meta Tags (think tagging — make sure to use those & use as many as possible)

*Site Structure – Google Sitemap

*What’s in the URL

–search engines rank pages not entire websites

Go get Google Site Maps –

Use proper nouns.  Be consistent with the words that you choose.

Whenever inserting a picture on a blog — always use an alt tag — alt+”keywords go here” great way to gain incidental traffic.

Tight, Original writing is ideal.

Use highly relevant keywords.  Sometimes limits creativity.  The thing to do is find the trade-off to keep in interesting.

Ideal blog post length is 300-500 words.

Don’t overdo keywords.  If you try too hard, Google will think you’re trying to game them

2% is the rule for keywords.

Google doesn’t search Flash @ all.

Use punctuation to spice up your writing & hide the fact that you’re putting key words together.  Google can’t read punctuation.

Focus on your candidate’s/company’s name.  Don’t optimize for slogans. You can put these names in your URL as well.

Many SPAM cites use hyphens. Don’t be fooled into using them.

Http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ — here’s a link to write down.

*Check out your opponent’s URL — shows you what other pages are linking to the site/page.

Joe Mansour on Getting Tapped In to Social Networking

Basic Tenet: Go where your customers are.

i.e. 1.5 million users on Linkedin are C+ executives

A social networking strategy: Spreading the message & converting friends to supporters, volunteers, donors. Your goal is to get your friends to take specific action.

Say to yourself:  I’m going to interact with a voter; however he or she wants to interact with with me.  Know how he or she wants to communicate & respond accordingly.

Trix are for kids? Not — the fastest growing demographic on facebook is 25-34 year-olds.

Tricks of the Trade:

*personalize your profile

*increase your friend count

*engage your community to do something

*grow the group by recruiting volunteers

*monitor your profiles and be active

Matt Lewis on Integrating Modern & Traditional Media

Matt Lewis puts new media in it’s place.

He’s explaining how new media will fit with an organization’s or candidate’s traditional media strategy.

& that 5 years from now, new media will be naturally integrated.

Today, the key to integration: It’s vital to be on the cutting edge.

However, we’re still not at the point where the candidate with the best blog wins races over candidate’s with the best television ads.

Right now, new media are “ninja tactics” — to quote David All.  It’s still important to have your other ducks in a row.

Still, be sure to direct everyone to your website or new media efforts each and every time you push a message through traditional channels.

Justine Lam on Activating Online Community

Justine Lam, eCampaign Director for Ron Paul’s Presidential Bid is talking about Activating an Online Community.  It’s interesting to get the behind the scenes take on how Ron Paul’s online community was able to pull off the Money Bomb.

3 Keys to Successful Online Communities

1) A message that resonates with a specific audience

2) The ability to give partial ownership of a campaign or cause to this audience

3) Transparency

Vincent Harris on Generating Content People will Read

Know your Site – What genre will your blog be?

Pick a narrow topic and have your blog be centered around that topic.

Know your Audience – Use Statcounter.com to monitor who visits your website. You’d be surprised who reads your content.

Be Original! Don’t post content that’s already out there.

Gabcast is a great website – Free podcasting software for bloggers who are just getting started and looking to host original interviews.

Bottom line, reporters are lazy & they want stories from you.

Use people’s names.  People love seeing their names in print.

Live blog with Twitter. Great way to get content up and running, on the go. All you need is a mobile phone (and we know that a cell phone is one of the top three things people won’t leave the house without).

I hope this audience is understanding the finer nuances of this crazy little bird

Use video, maps & graphs….

Mapmaker is free (it’s complicated to learn how to use it, but it’s free).  You can also grab maps from the US Census site & plug in election results.

Bottomline, be original & get creative.

Up next, Jon Henke on Driving Quality Site Traffic.

Getting Started with Rob Bluey

When Rob Bluey went to highschool, he had to learn to navigate complex HTML code & script to promote his school newspaper.

Today, there are great tools out there that make blogging much simpler & easier for folks interested in making a difference online. Tools like:

www.blogger.com

Blogger is google’s easy to use blogging tool.  Bluey went through the 3-step process and actually set up his own blog.  In about 5 minutes flat, Rob has a blog post up complete with video. 

It’s also easy to post pictures. 

It’s also easy to indent large block quotes.  Simply click “Block Quote” and you’re all set.

Other tools out there:

www.wordpress.com

Rob prefers wordpress to blogger, because wordpress is easier to use.  Specifically, wordpress.org to wordpress.com.  (The downside of wordpress.org is that isn’t free & you need to be a bit more tech savvy)

With wordpress there are many more options at your disposal (things like blogroll, presentation, widgets, etc…)

In wordpress, you can get crazy with widgets — it’s easy.  Just pick a widget from a list of available widgets & click & drag the widget into your sidebar, give it a title, and you’re ready to go.

www.redstate.com

www.townhall.com

According to Bluey, blogging isn’t just about getting started…(that’s easy) — the key to being successful is blogger outreach.  You need to identify your niche issue.  Your blog needs to be a place where people come to you & trust what you have to say.

Rob’s niche? — earmark reform.

Tools to find what other bloggers are writing about:

Technorati – tracking 112.8 million blogs!