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Monitor Multiple Twitter Feeds

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

One of my many responsibilities is the eCampaign Co-Chair for Kasich for Ohio Governor in Butler County. My primary focus is on social media for the county. Each county has a different Tweeter account. The one I manage in Butler County is @ButlerForKasich. I have been experimenting with Twitter and have discovered a lot of useful information, not only for Kasich in Butler County but also for Ohio in general. This was done by using a tool I have mentioned before: TweetDeck.

I have many, many feeds that I have created and follow in TweetDeck. TweetDeck allows you to define feeds using various parameters. For example, you could set the parameter to a group of users or anyone who uses certain keywords. The really nice thing is you can set up multiple columns in the TweetDeck application so you can see these feeds simultaneously. In @ButlerForKasich’s case, I have columns for all followers, mentions (Tweets with a specific users name), and a column each for keywords “kasich” and “strickland” (the incumbent Democrat is Gov. Ted Strickland).

This set up has allowed me to track everything that is going on with the governors race in Butler County and Ohio. We have started building up followers since I can quickly and effectively engage local Twitters. And, interestingly enough, I have discovered the Strickland campaign Butler County, specifically @ButlerForKasich. My account is the only county account that gets challenged by Strickland’s anti-Kasich campaign “Kasich Facts.” This typically involves inaccurate information but on one interesting occasion @KasichFacts tried to trick people into thinking we supported the anti-Kasich campaign. Take a look at these two Tweets:

As you can see, my Tweet was promoting Kasich’s statewide website, www.KasichForOhio.com. However, @KasichFacts took that Tweet and substituted in the anti-Kasich site, www.KasichFacts.com, and made it look like a re-tweet. They technically did not misquote us because they did not use the “RT” prefix to signify a re-tweet. I find these types of tricks underhanded, but at least the Strickland campaign’s insecurity towards the @ButlerForKasich account shows that I am doing my job.

The moral of the story in today’s post is you need to monitor multiple Twitter feeds. It will help you find opportunities and identify threats. There is a wealth of information out there, don’t pass it up!

The next post will be May 11th.

Posted in Butler County, Butler for Kasich, Kasich, Kasich Facts, TweetDeck, Twitter | 162 Comments »

Data Driven Decisions

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

For a long time I have been passively gathering followers, gaining a handful a day. However, recently I noticed my number of Twitter followers plateauing. I was getting new followers, but apparently my new followers were equal to the number of people who unfollow me. I was stuck at 1090 follows. This went on for a week or two before I concluded this was a new trend for my account. I decided to start investigating why this was happening.

My first suspect was an auto-DM (direct message) directing new followers to this blog. An auto-DM is a standard message that is sent out automatically typically after someone follows you. I had set it up a long time ago when I was playing around with different tools and then basically forgot about it. I have heard arguments against auto-DMs but my Twitter followers were growing and hits to my blog was growing (albeit slowly). Since the trend was changing on my Twitter side I began to investigate the relationship more in depth. I dug into the data that my Google Analytics account had gathered on traffic for this blog. Hits were growing but where were they coming from? Search engine traffic was better than what I hoped. Facebook referrals were remaining healthy. Twitter referrals where a different story. In the past month Twitter had sent a whopping 1 hit. My Twitter strategy obviously needed rethinking. It also meant I can get rid of the auto-DM without hurting traffic to my blog. Within a day or two of turning the auto-DM off, my number of Twitter followers clearly broke the resistance level of 1090 and has returned to growth. It is now time for me to start working on improving my Twitter strategy.

This was a process and decision driven by numbers. The problem was identified through numbers (a flat trend of 1090 followers). A possible solution was identified through numbers (no one was clicking on the link in the auto-DM). The solution was confirmed by numbers (follower growth picked up again and surpassed 1090). I do however want to point out that the process was not completely numbers. It took a little bit of intuition and background knowledge to start off the search with the auto-DM. However, the numbers made the difference between a guess and a solution.

This process can be applied to any number of situations. The great thing about the Internet is that it is easy to track numbers. Where are visitors coming from? Where are they going? What are they doing while on your site. Many social media tools are even now providing in depth analytic tools. Make sure you are using these assets and apply the data to your campaigns. You’ll even be able to solve bigger problems than my 1090 ceiling of Twitter followers.

The next post will be April 27th.

Posted in Google Analytics, Twitter, analytics, social media | 191 Comments »

Twitter Hints

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

Recently I have been asked a lot about Twitter, mostly how to use it. The concept is simple: you create posts that are 140 characters long and you read your friends posts. However, leveraging the technology for something productive like campaigning is a lot more difficult.

As I wrote over a year ago in my first post about Twitter, http://www.republitech.com/2009/02/twittering-towards-future.html, Republicans are using Twitter much more than Democrats. This means, as a Republican, you are going to inherently have a larger audience than your rivals across the aisle. But, you must use the technology in a way that is helpful and engaging. Below are a collection of helpful hints on how to do that.

Understand the 140 character limit

What ever you want to say must be said in that small number of characters. There are several ways this will impact how you write your post. First, you need to be willing to use abbreviations. In Twitter it is perfectly ok to use “u” instead of “you.” There are also other abbreviations that I only see on Twitter, such as POTUS or President of the United States. Secondly, use a url shortener such as bit.ly or Tiny URL. What these services do is take a link such as http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/nyregion/17budget.html?hp and making them shorter such as http://nyti.ms/akrqzv. Go ahead and check, those two links go to the same place, but the second one uses significantly less characters. Finally, an issue many people do not think about is the effect of the length of their own Twitter name. Mine is “boyerbl” so that is 7 characters long. If someone wants to re-tweet (see re-tweeting below) my post, they must use all of the characters from my original post plus give me credit with “RT @boyerbl: ” or use an additional 13 characters (spaces count!). This means if my post is 130 characters long, it must be edited before being able to re-tweeted by another user.

Remember to re-tweet

Re-tweeting is a great way to interact with other Twitter users. If you find a post interesting and want to share it with your follows then you just copy the post and use the “RT @…” format. Just substitute the “…” for the user’s name. So if you liked something I posted, such as “Obama is the most dangerous thing to your healthcare” then you could post “RT @boyerbl: Obama is the most dangerous thing to your healthcare.” People really appreciate the credit and exposure that you will give them. It also is a great way to show that you are listening to what people have to say.

Actually have conversations on Twitter

Twitter is not just for posting how you feel, you can actually engage individuals with ongoing conversation. There are two ways to do this. A private way is to send a direct message (DM) to a person. The individual will be the only one who can read your DM. A public way is to refer to the individual in a post. If you wanted to talk to Karl Rove for example you would post “@karlrove How are you doing?” Karl Rove then could respond in the same way with “@yourusername Great, how about you?” This could go back and forth indefinitely.

Use hash tags when you can

A hash tag is a simple way of tagging posts. For example, you may see the hash tag “#tcot” a lot in conservative posts. #tcot is short for “top conservatives on Twitter.” It is a great way for individuals to find conversations on Twitter that they want to be a part of. If you want to rant about healthcare reform, post about it and add “#hcr” to the end. Or, do a quick search for “#hcr”. Either way, you will find people interested in the same issues that you are.

Get a Twitter application for your desktop

The application I use most is TweetDeck. I could write a whole post on this piece of software but let me just sum up its advantages. TweetDeck not only allows you to see your Twitter feed, it lets you customize multiple feeds that you can see at the same time side by side in columns. For example, I am currently one of the co-eCampaign chairs for Kasich’s Butler County campaign. One of the columns I have set to show me any posts that contain the word “Kasich” Another example: I also have a column that is set to the Ohio House GOP list. Any post from an Ohio House GOP member with a Twitter account gets put in that column. The ways to organize your columns are almost endless. This can become a powerful tool to manage your Twitter account (You can also link TweetDeck to multiple Twitter accounts and your Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace to help synchronize all of your social media).

Search for other users

While you may have followers find you on their own, a great way to attract attention and interest is to go out and find followers yourself. Do searches for certain keywords or hash tags to find people posting about issues you want to talk about. You can also search for individuals who are in your district. A service such as Twellow can help you greatly. Go to their website and look under “Twellowhood.” This is where you can find individuals from certain areas such as your constituency. In many cases these individuals that you follow will end up following you back and participating in conversation with you.

The next post will be March 30th.

Posted in TweetDeck, Twitter | 1 Comment »

How Scott Brown Used the Internet to Change the World of Politics

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

Tomorrow it will be the one year anniversary of Republitech and thus one year since Obama has been sworn in. It is rather fitting that today is the special election in Massachusetts to replace Senator Ted Kennedy. A Republican named Scott Brown looks like he might beat Democrat Martha Coakley in a state that has not sent a Republican to congress in well over a decade. While we won’t know until later tonight who will win, it is an excellent lesson on how Republicans have an opportunity to seize the moment and leverage technology.

We have been hearing a lot about Brown’s campaign. However, there are some things his campaign has been doing quite well that have not been highly publicized. The first comes from a CNN article that caught my eye – http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/01/15/first-on-the-ticker-gop-candidate-saturates-google-with-ads/. It was last month that I talked about the power of pay-per-click ads, specifically Google’s tools (See post here). There are two things I want to highlight with Brown’s Google ads. First, he started early. It got him name recognition, traffic to his website, and most critically donations in the early stage of his campaign. Second, his campaign clearly has spent time developing a pay-per-click strategy. They have a focused keyword strategy going after those searching for “Martha Coakley.” Since Coakley is not buying advertising on Google at all, Brown has had free reign on both his name and his opponents. In other words, you are going to get pro-Brown ads no matter if you are searching for Brown or Coakley.

There is one “mistake” I noticed after doing some quick searches on Google. While the campaign is in Massachusetts, the race has become a national sensation. I could not find any ads on Google for either candidate. This is most likely because Brown has limited his ads to the state of Massachusetts (I am in Ohio). People all over the country have been motivated to lend support (money, phone banking from their house, etc). Why not reach out to them through Google ads? The only thing I found was this:

It is an ad with a link to a form to allow you to donate money to support Coakley (albeit somewhat indirectly through the DSCC). There should be Republican ads popping up.

The second facet of Brown’s online strategy I want to discuss is that of social media. I read this interesting blog post just the other day written by Professor William A. Jacobson (Cornell Law School) – http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.com/2010/01/brown-massacres-coakley-online.html. The charts Jacobson provides are quite telling. Brown is a topic that people are finding very interesting and talking about. Some of this is probably due to the recent national attention the race has been given, but there are two candidates in this race. Voters are finding Brown’s social media efforts to be engaging, helpful, and motivating. Coakley appears to be uninteresting. Interestingly enough, in the previous CNN article Coakley’s campaign’s excuse for not running Google ads was to focus on social media. Clearly her campaign has failed. I also want to point out that so many people have taken interest in Brown’s social media outlets that he is receiving positive and free grassroots advertising. Take a look at the YouTube videos at the end of the blog post that were created by average citizens mocking Coakley’s campaign strategies.

Don’t get me wrong, Scott Brown is a great candidate beyond what he has done with technology. He is active, motivated, respected, thoughtful and unlike his opponent, he is gaffe free. Even so, in a state like Massachusetts a Republican is going to have to be way above and beyond their opponent. The lessons from Brown’s campaign are clear. Online campaign is not a theory. it is not a fad. It is a communication tool that gets the Republican’s message out and it has put Obama in a very awkward spot.

Below are some of Brown’s online resources. Please check them out!
Website – http://www.brownforussenate.com/
Twitter – http://twitter.com/scottbrownma
Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/pages/Scott-Brown/178795233167
YouTube – http://www.youtube.com/user/scottbrownma

The next post will be February 2nd.

Posted in AdWords, Facebook, Massachusetts, Scott Brown, Twitter, YouTube, pay-per-click, social networking | No Comments »

The Wayne County Young Republican Website

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

One of the many organizations I am part of is the Wayne County Young Republicans. WCYR was formed early in 2009 in response to the high level of Democratic youth votes in the county. My role is the Marketing Chairman which means my challenge is to find young Republicans in the county and get them to join a new organization. My first task was to put together a website and online strategy for the organization. We recently completed the first phase of the website at http://www.WayneCountyYRs.com and I wanted to share a few key elements of the website.

First, take a look at the home page. We have a large image that shows something the organization has done. Right off the bat, the organization looks active. Then, we have two columns on the top right: Events and the Twitter Feed. Visitors can keep up to date on what the organization is doing and are invited to follow the organization’s events and Twitter feed. To further reinforce the concept of staying connected, just below that area is a form to sign up for the email newsletter and a cluster of links to all the WCYR’s social media.

On the topic of social media, we can now look at the organizations strategy for social media. We have included a number of social media elements including YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, blogging, and Twitter. These are all possible points of contact with the community which mean possible points of recruitment. They also each serve a different function. Facebook events have been a great way for WCYR to organize and advertise events. Flickr will be the main repository for pictures of events. This will help show how active and involved members are in events. The blog helps focus on the ideals of the organization. I could go into much more detail on each element but the point is we are providing multiple ways for members to find us and interact with the organization.

Another important part of the site is the Committees link. This page has a list of all the current executive committee members and information about each. The idea was to try to break down the “stranger” factor with joining a new organization. If there was a young Republican who wanted to join, they could become familiar with some of the officers. Not only would they know what they look like from the pictures, but also certain information about the person. This makes the officers more relatable and approachable. Just think about how much easier it will be at the first meeting you attend to start up a conversation with Doug Deeken when you know he is the guy who is not only an engineer, but also is a stay at home dad in Doylestown who often calls into the Matt Patrick show to talk about issues Doug brings up on his YouTube channel.

There will be more to this site in the future. More connections to local campaigns, more information on events, both past and up-coming, and new features. The site is to the point where we can advertise it heavily and it provides a good resource to members. Hopefully, some of the ideas and tactics that went into building this site can be easily transferred to other political organizations.

The next post will be Nov. 24th

Posted in Facebook, Flickr, Ohio, Twitter, Wayne County Young Republicans, social media, wayne county, website | No Comments »

The Power of the Mobile Phone

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Last Saturday there was a Tea Party in my home town, Wooster, Ohio. The problem was that I was on the other side of the state in Oxford. While I was disappointed I was not able to attend personally I was still able to see a lot of the afternoon’s events. How? With Facebook and many mobile phones.

While I will admit that it is better to actually be at an event in person, logistics tend to get in the way. The next best alternative is to use social media to be connected. During the Tea Party, many of my friends, family, and co-workers took pictures on their mobile phones and submitted them to Facebook during the event. It was moving seeing downtown Wooster filled with people sharing a common belief in limited government along with all their witty signs. There was even the occasional Twitter update sent via the phone.

The point is, anyone in the world had access to experiencing the Wooster Tea Party in pretty close to real time. I did not have to wait until a newspaper report was made. In fact the next day when our local paper reported on the Tea Party, http://www.the-daily-record.com/news/article/4696290, it did not capture the event’s atmosphere (although they did include a nice slide show) as did all the first hand accounts I saw during the Tea Party.

Mobile phones with a camera and Internet capabilities are quickly becoming a standard. Moreover, individuals are utilizing these resources more and more for personal and political reasons. This means that the connection I had to a distant Tea Party is going to become common place. We should not only be aware of the fact that at political events there will be people taking pictures, videos, and texting (Twitting, Facebooking, or otherwise), but encourage it. Thousands of people got to hear the message of the Wooster Tea Party loud and clear even though they were not in attendance. We are seeing a shift of importance from the number of people at the event to the number of people that can see the event. I am by no means saying we should not work on bringing more people to political events, my point is simply that you can make a big splash with a little event.

I would also like to make an important differentiation in the posting of material on social networks. I did not look at anything the organizers of the Tea Party posted (I hope they did though). All of my information came from people I trust: friends, family, and co-workers. I can relate better and place a higher value on the campaign when my Facebook friend news feed is stuffed with people posting comments and pictures about the event. It is the same concept of seeing a campaign sign in your friend’s yard versus a total stranger. Republicans need to realize that web 2.0 is not just about what websites can do, it also means what mobile phones can do.

The next post will be November 10th.

Posted in Facebook, Twitter, mobile phone, wooster | No Comments »

Jim Renacci and Ohio’s 16th Congressional District

Monday, October 12th, 2009

Earlier last week I had the pleasure of interviewing Matt Hutson, the campaign manager for Jim Renacci. We had a good discussion on the direction politics is taking in terms of technology. But before I get to those details let me introduce Jim Renacci first.

Jim Renacci is a Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio’s 16th Congressional District (Canton, Media, Wooster, and Ashland areas). He has an impressive resume as Mayor of Wadsworth, accomplishing 100% of his goals and left office with a budget surplus. He is a CPA who started his first company when he was 24 years old. Renacci has owned and managed a wide array of businesses from car dealerships, to nursing homes, to arena football teams. This is a man who knows how to add value to an economy and create jobs. I have met Renacci a couple of times and continue to be impressed with his openness and honest concern for his constituency. Renacci has a deep commitment to serving the American people with a long line of successes in business and politics to pull insights from. Coming from a simple coal mining town in Pennsylvania, Renacci epitomizes the American spirit while remaining humble. I can think of no other trait that a candidate for Ohio’s 16th district needs to have. Jim Renacci is the best man for the job hands down.

After a conversation with the campaign manager Matt Hutson, I have become convinced that this is one campaign that at least understands the fundamental shift in communication that has occurred due to the Internet. Mr. Hutson loves using social media to build a following of Renacci supporters. He points out that social media is less intrusive then more traditional campaigning methods. Some times voters get annoyed with phone calls and knocks on the door. With social media, it is easy to send out multiple campaign updates that simply show up in voters Facebook and Twitter feeds. Every night Renacci personally updates Twitter and Facebook on the status of his campaign including events he goes to a people he sees. It is a great way to show activity and remind voters that he is working hard to represent his constituency.

Mr. Hutson also describes the personal nature of the Internet. Whenever an individual signs up to the Facebook group, Mr. Hutson replies with a personal email with some suggestions as to how to have a positive impact on the campaign. He suggests that each of the recommendations (there are four if I remember correctly) will take under a minute. The reason they take less than a minute is that, for the most part, they focus on inviting other friends to join the group. The thinking behind this tactic is that people are more likely to respond positively to a friends suggestion than someone they do not know as well. Mr. Hutson is looking for individuals on Facebook to help promote Renacci as it is more meaningful to other voters.

Renacci understands that his voters are his boss. He also realizes that it is a challenge to effective communicate with every singly constituent. As Mr. Hutson put it you “must figure out how to reach your bosses” and he sees social media as just that. Renacci has a commitment to being open and approachable. His campaign has built up these social media communication channels not just to promote his campaign, but to listen. Too many candidates use the Internet purely for self promotion. This turns potential voters off and leads to “defriending.” Renacci wants to sincerely engage his constituents and wants them to know they have a voice. Using social media ensures that he is reachable through as many methods as possible.

To ensure engagement, Mr. Hutson frequently encourages individuals to blog and/or post comments on either the campaign’s material or what other voters have said. He wants voters to be involved and to be engaged because to the campaign it matters. He checks blogs daily to follow what the local opinion is. He wants to engage the local community for ideas, thoughts, and discussion. Renacci has been a resident of the district for well over 25 years and is interested in a campaign for Ohio’s 16th, by Ohio’s 16th, and of Ohio’s 16th. Residents of the 16th may notice this as a different approach.

Finally, Mr. Hutson discussed how he sees the campaign’s online resources shifting in purpose if Renacci were to be elected. He points out that not much will change. Renacci will still use social media to reach out, engage, and listen. Mr. Hutson really emphasized the word “hear.” Renacci wants to know what voters’ issues are. Renacci would ensure that he could get discussion and opinions on bills being proposed in the House. Mr. Hutson claims that this type of communication aids in accountability. He believes that there is too little accountability of representatives at any level of government and that the Internet provides a reasonable solution. He also suggested that it could be a platform to help sway other representatives. For example, if there was a close vote with a few representatives on the fence, he could post their names and office numbers to encourage voters to call in and voice their opinion.

Jim Renacci’s campaign to be the Representative from Ohio’s 16th Congressional District should be exciting to watch. Renacci has hired a top notch campaign manager who has a good grasp of how to leverage the Internet to be a more competitive campaign and a more responsive legislator. I again thank Matt Hutson for taking the time to share his insights with me. Below are links to some Renacci online resources.

The campaign’s home page:
http://www.renacciforcongress.com/

Renacci’s Wikipedia page which I helped get off the ground:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Renacci

Renacci’s Facebook group:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=113705578897

Renacci on why he is running:
Part I – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWnMlZIN4Rs&feature=youtube_gdata
Part II – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQn3zecpGhY&feature=related

Renacci on health care:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y17Hm7RX5ls&feature=related

The next post will be October 27th.

Posted in Facebook, Matt Hutson, Renacci, Twitter | No Comments »

Republicans and New Media

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

About a month ago the Ohio Erie County GOP Chairman Mathew Old asked be to put together a document with my ideas on how Republicans can leverage new media. My hope is that this document can help campaigns begin to think about new media and ask important questions. Below is the link to the document and the summary.

Republicans and New Media (pdf)

Many will argue that “traditional” media has evolved over time. In many ways, it has. From the written word, to the radio, to the television it seems the dynamic of media is on a continuous and steady march. However, in the past few years there has been a fundamental revolution in media. It is the advent of the Internet. Traditional media is all one way communication; the advertiser has all the power, controlling the information while the public is at the mercy of billboards and commercials. The majority of the public does not have the resources to broadcast their thoughts and opinions to millions of people. With the arrival of the Internet, individuals have just as much power as the advertiser. They can write a post on a blog that will reach just as many people, if not more, than a TV ad. They can tweet and Facebook their friends about their positive or negative opinions. Many organizations fail to understand the multidirectional nature of communication on the Internet. They are stuck in the traditional media mentality and end up annoying customers with spam and failing to address complaints that are instantly shared with millions of fellow users.

Corporations are just now realizing that the Internet has given their consumers more power than their own PR departments. For the most part, political campaigns are even farther behind. The 2008 election gave rise to one political organization that clearly understands and respects the complex and powerful nature of the Internet: the Obama team. Obama’s new media campaign demonstrated that these technologies are relevant but no single organization can control the discussion. To be successful, a candidate must participate in the discussion, not lead it. They must use the opportunity to listen, not shout. They must sincerely engage voters, not spam them. A candidate must genuinely understand the paradigm shift, rather than simply jumping on the band wagon without understanding where the band wagon is going.

Republicans and New Media (pdf)

The next post will be Oct 13th.

Posted in Amstutz, Boccieri, Facebook, Google, Obama, Ohio, SEO, Schuring, Twitter, YouTube, election, email, graphic design, responsiveness, small campaigns, social media, social networking, usability, website | No Comments »

Conversations from the Wayne County Fair

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

This past weekend I returned home to attend the Wayne County Fair. I spent a significant amount of the time at the Republican’s booth discussing politics and technology. While I could write a post on each of my conversations I am going to give a broad overview of some of the things I discussed that I think are relevant to share in this blog.

The first candidate I ran into was Craig Sanders who is running for Wooster City Council At-Large. His concern was that his website,http://www.craigsanders.net/ , still advertised he was running for Ward 1, which he did in the past. The problem was his campaign had no way of directly changing content. They had to call up their provider and ask that they change it, who were not very responsive. I checked today and it looks like they managed to change what is advertised on the site. However, the title tag still says “Ward 1.” While no organization should tolerate this kind of dysfunction, the demands of a political campaign require responsiveness. This is why campaigns need to be very careful about how they set up their site. If Sanders was using a content management system (CMS) he could change it himself without worrying about time delays and contacting a programmer. All the intricacies like the title tag would be fixed instantly and automatically.

The next candidate I talked to was Ron Amstutz. He is currently the chair of the budget committee in the Ohio State House of Representatives and is from Wayne County. Amstutz seems to always be experimenting with technology. Here is what he tried and had lots of success. First, Amstutz created a short survey about state issues designed to be released around the time of the fair. Then he got on Facebook and created a list of all of his constituents. Finally, he invited all of his Facebook friends on that list to take his survey online. He also had paper version at the Republican booth at the fair. Just in the first few days he got a ton of feed back and there are still three more days left for the fair.

Now that you know what Amstutz did, let me walk you through why it was awesome. First, Amstutz reached out to his constituents through an online survey. He is able to ask his roughly 110,000 constituents to directly participate with him on state wide issues. Voters will take note of that kind of interaction and will feel more valued by the candidate. Furthermore, Amstutz leveraged social media by reaching out to his Facebook friends. He didn’t just send them a message, he invited them to a week long event (the fair survey). He also did not send it to everyone. He targeted his own constituency using Facebook’s list feature. With a different project he may want to target a different group, such as his Facebook friends in Columbus. This use of the list allows him to only get the group he wants and cuts down on spam. Too much spam and messages about things that do not apply to the individual will always result in “defriending.”

Finally, I had a short conversation about Internet tools with Jim Renacci’s campaign manager Matt Hutson. Jim Renacci is running for the Ohio 16th District for US House of Representatives. This is the same district that State Senator Kirk Schuring ran in last year. His website is http://www.renacciforcongress.com/.Even though I had a short discussion with Matt, I feel pretty confident that this campaign understands that they have to use all these new and exciting online tools. First, he recognized the importance of having YouTube videos show up under certain search terms. In this case, they managed to have a positive video of Renacci as the top result when you search “Boccieri” (Boccieri is his Democrat rival). He was also very interested in integrating social media into their new website. Right now Renacci’s Facebook and Twitter accounts have a long way to grow, but the campaign is putting effort forth 14 months before the election. Finally, Matt recognized the value of bloggers. He pointed out a positive post that was written just the other day and is excited about connecting Renacci (not a campaign staff member) directly with other bloggers.

There are a lot more to discuss on each of these candidates. The basic point however, is that there is a lot going on in the world of political technology. Candidates are realizing there are problems and opportunities associated with the Internet. This is a topic of discussion that we must always engage.

The next post will be September 29th.

Posted in Amstutz, Boccieri, Craig Sanders, Facebook, Renacci, Schuring, Twitter, responsiveness, social media, wayne county, website, wooster | No Comments »

The Public versus Private Solution

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

Recently, Audra Shay got into a bit of trouble leading up to the National Young Republican elections. Shay was running for the chairman’s position and was favored to win. However, a few days before the election, a leftist blogger allegedly discovered what was described as racist comments on Shay’s Facebook page. You will not find any of the comments on Shay’s profile. The leftist blogger claims she cleaned her profile up after the contents became public. Whether or not Shay’s Facebook comments were as “ignorant and racist” as the blogger claimed, there is still a lesson to be learned: the Internet, specifically social media like Facebook, is public.

Our society has faced difficult issues between the Internet and privacy. Politicians have also struggled with the public’s right to know and privacy. By campaigning online, those two struggles have combined to create a tangled mess of ethical and moral issues. That is, is Facebook a private communication channel? But, if so, does the public have a right to see the contents of a public figure’s Facebook? This post is not about what should be public realm and what should not, it is about risk management with your online resources. After all, an answer to the debate of politicians’ rights to privacy and the public’s right to knowledge has been waging long before the invention of the word “politics.”

So what is a good risk management strategy? In my view it is actually pretty simple. If you are a politician, assume everything online is public. If you work for a politician, assume everything online is public. If you are related to a politician, assume everything online is public, et cetera. Traditionally, family was considered off limits and this was generally respected by opponents and most media outlets. However, bloggers are a different story. They are individuals who can say whatever they want. In the week leading up to the Young Republican elections, one of the top results on Google for “Young Republicans” was a blog post entitled “Young Republican Leader Audra Shay Is Crazy, Illiterate, Racist.” Even the left wing media would not be so bold in naming their articles.

This problem also relates to a post of mine not to long ago about search engines, Be Seen With SEO. These blog posts were everywhere and a lot of them made it to the top search results for “Young Republicans.” Even if what Shay was accused of was not true, it is still embarrassing to the organization and to the Republican Party. It is true that after a while most of these posts will lose their position in Google searches, but some will still linger. For example, The Huffington Post has enough traffic and enough weight for Google to continue ranking it’s anti-Young Republican post about Shay pretty high.

Really you should consider the Internet and public speech the same thing. This goes for all forms of online resources: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and even email. Just as a private written letter can be leaked, so can an email. In some ways the Internet is even more dangerous then the other forms of communication as it automatically creates a record of every little thing you do. The point is: pay attention to what you and those around you say and do online!

This post should not discourage you from using the Internet. If you have considered your risk management strategy for the Internet, it should be no more harmful then when you give a speech. I have stated before that the Internet is a wonderful thing for politics. It helps you engage and interact with thousands of people you would have otherwise never met on the campaign trail. You just have to be responsible online.

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