The Wayne County Young Republican Website

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

Republicans and New Media

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.

Josh Mandel and YouTube

State Representative Josh Mandel recently announced he would run for Ohio Treasurer. He made his announcement on his website, www.joshmandel.com, using a YouTube video. It is an excellent video and Mandel obviously took advantage of professional help (good idea).



Mandel's video is simple yet powerful. He is able to show his background as a public servant. The video is displayed predominately on the home page and is about six minutes long. Not only does Mandel speak but various community members are interviewed on his behalf. He also shows images and footage from his previous campaign for the Ohio House and from his time as a Marine. Now the question of what should be in a video is probably better left to an expert in video production. What I am interested in is why YouTube is the method used.

First of all it is easily accessible. As long as you have a web browser, you can see the video. There is no software and no special plug-ins involved. YouTube is also efficient in displaying the video, so even those constituents that may have slow internet connection can see the clip. Millions of people visit YouTube's main site daily, so as an added bonus your video can be found outside of your own site. Finally, your YouTube video is easy to embed into any site. YouTube automatically builds a line of HTML code that you can put into your site. It is just copy and paste.

Secondly, uploading your video to YouTube will increase your searchability. YouTube is another place someone might type your name into a search bar. You can now type "Josh Mandel" into both Google and YouTube and get results. When running a campaign you want your name in as many places as possible. Using YouTube to host your own video kills two birds with one stone.

Lastly, it is a free service. You can post as many videos as you like, but the size of the videos are limited (think of this as a tool to keep your videos concise and too the point). Hosting video on your own server can be expensive. Videos typically take up lots of disk space since they are big files. Depending on your arrangement with your host, this could severely limit what you can do on your server. There is also the potential that you would slow down traffic to your site with a bulky file to download.

http://www.joshmandel.com/

Rob Portman's Electronic Campaign

I met Rob Portman for the first time on the day before the election in 2008. He was giving a speech to College Republicans at Miami University. At the time he was not running for any office but he was the chairman of Ohio's Future PAC. The remarkable thing about Rob Portman, from this blogs stand point, is that he is a Republican who understands how to use the internet. In fact, after talking to him for a while about my concerns with the Democrats' plans affecting small businesses in a negative way, he introduced me to the two assistants he had brought along with him. Both of them do web work for Portman at various levels. Not only did Rob Portman hire assistants who have an understanding of the Internet, but he thought them valuable enough to bring with him!

So why all the fuss about Portman now? He has ran in the past representing the Cincinnati area for 12 years in the U.S. House and was eventually appointed as Bush's trade representative and budge director. Rob Portman has now announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate to replace the retiring Sen. George Voinovich (R). The interesting thing is that Portman is starting off strong with the web side of his campaign. Take a look at his campaign site: http://www.robportman.com/. As of right now there is not much content (it is after all two years before the election and he did just announce), but look at what the site has. Right under the Rob Portman for U.S. Senate we see a form for "Join Rob's Team."


This allows voters to sign up for Portman's newsletter. His newsletter comes in the form of an email and the service is provided by Constant Contact. This is a common provider. In the last election I saw it being used by several organizations and candidates running at various levels of government.

Next we see three boxes, "Meet Rob," "Volunteer," and "Contribute."


The "Meet Rob" is a page that contains information regarding Portman. The "Volunteer" page allows individuals to sign up to help out the campaign. This is a very important page. I know politicians have told me time and time again that one of their biggest obstacles is getting people to volunteer. It is not that there are no voters who are interested, it is that when you are having so many events (especially the week or two before election time) coordinating volunteers can become a logistical nightmare. How do you find supporters to turn out to a rally planned with short notice when you have people going door to door and walking in a parade on the same day? Having a volunteer database makes the situation much more manageable. You can do a quick query of the database and in less then a second you should have a list of phone numbers to call of people in the area who are interested in helping out at rallies. This makes it easier for voters to volunteer (they just submit a simple online form and only sign up for things they are comfortable doing) and easier for the campaign staff (more names of people genuinely interested in helping with contact information). And finally, every campaign needs funding. The "Contribute" button is perhaps one of the oldest and most common features on a campaign website. Supporters can easily donate to the candidate they believe in.

What has been mentioned so far is nothing that revolutionary. It is the bottom row on Portman's website that is really exciting. It is "Connect with Rob on:" with links to Facebook and Flickr. Portman has both a Facebook and Flickr account.


His Facebook account contains both a page and a profile. A profile in Facebook is, well, a profile. It contains personal information and allows users to communicate with each other through various means. You can personalize your profile with many features such as posting photos and links. When you "Friend" someone you are connecting to another person's profile by granting them access to see yours. A page is more of an informational section for entities that are not a person. Portman's page is for his campaign. Individuals can sign up to connect to a page by becoming a "Fan." This may be confusing to the non-Facebook user, but the basic point is that lots of information is being transferred on Facebook which is a social networking website. This means that the people sharing information tend to have very high levels of trust and credibility with each other since a lot of "Friends" are real life friends. And the most important point is that Portman is not new to Facebook. I was "Friends" with him before he announced his run for the Senate. In fact it was Facebook that first told me he was running through a posting.


Portman's Flickr account is also an unusual thing for a Republican to have. Although, Facebook allows users to create online photo albums, Flickr focuses on this task. It allows for really professional and dynamic albums with nice captions and organization.

In my opinion Rob Portman has the right understanding of these emerging Internet technologies. Even before running for the Senate his PAC had a very informative and modern website with a presences on Facebook. He is starting in the beginning of his campaign to find supporters and to spread his message. His is also a proponent of using the Internet more in campaigns. When the Dallas Morning News asked shortly after the Republican's sound defeat in the 2008 election what Republican's must do in the future, Portman responded in an op-ed. He cited Reagan's success in two points: the message and the delivery. The message focused on classic conservative policies and the delivery focused on the ability to relate to the voters. The former are time tested values, but the later is ever evolving. Portman pointed out that in order to better relate to the voters "...we must put more effort and resources into communicating our policies. This includes better use of modern technologies, an area where the Obama campaign broke new ground." As of the time of writing this post, Portman had no announced opponents, Democrat or Republican, but I can guarantee you his opponents will find they will have an uphill battle with this kind of digital infrastructure already in place.

References:

Ohio's Future PAC -
http://www.ohiosfuture.com/

Portman for U.S. Senate -
http://www.robportman.com/

Portman's Facebook page -
http://www.facebook.com/robportman/

Portman's Flickr account -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/robportman/

Portman's op-ed in the Dallas Morning News (you have to scroll a little) -
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/viewpoints/stories/DN-GOP_09edi.State.Edition1.3043cfd.html

Link to Constant Contact e-newsletter service -
http://www.constantcontact.com/index.jsp