Why Wikipedia Matters

First off, I hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season. We are just a few days away from Christmas and a week later it is New Year's Day.

Now for the exciting part of today's post: why Wikipedia matters. Wikipedia has become the standard for quickly looking up information. Google will most likely refer you to Wikipedia when performing a search. I was able to play around with Wikipedia recently while helping out Jim Renacci's campaign for the U.S. House race in Ohio's 16th Congressional district. His entry is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Renacci.

On a personal level, I have it say Wikipedia is a lot of fun. You add an entry with some information and a couple days later you find out other people contributed to the entry. It is literally a collaboration project with everyone in the world. I strongly encourage everyone to participate, even if it is on topics not relating to politics.

Before you jump into Wikipedia, you need to be aware of a few rules. First, Wikipedia is not an "encyclopedia of everything." You must prove your topic's importance. Often this can be done by linking the post to other Wikipedia posts. For example, Jim Renacci's was linked to the Columbus Destroyers Arena Football team because he is an owner of the team. However, this is not necessary. State Rep. Ron Amstutz has an entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Amstutz. His entry has been there for years and oddly enough has been simplified to one sentence. Secondly, Wikipedia is not a place to self advertise. This rule is mainly targeted at businesses, but still applies to politicians. The Wikipedia entry needs to come across as non-partisan with facts not opinions. For example, you can say "Mr. X has worked in the health care industry for many years," but not "Mr. X's experience in the health care industry will help us solve the looming health care crisis." There are people who work with Wikipedia who check all of the entries to ensure they do not violate either of those rules. Do not try to trick them. It will not work!

So if Wikipedia's rules are so strict and non-partisan what is the advantage. The truth is, for a campaign, a Wikipedia page is indispensable. As stated above, Google often likes Wikipedia entries. Most likely it will show up on the first page of results. Since it is non-partisan, you shouldn't have to worry about what it says. Furthermore, while the entry is suppose to be neutral and independent, a link to the campaign site is acceptable. In other words, Wikipedia will give your campaign lots of visibility. Furthermore, since search engines (e.g. Google) like Wikipedia so much, having a link to your website from Wikipedia will boost your site's rankings on search engines (good for search engine optimization). It great for rankings and it is a link that is relatively easy to get.

The next post will be January 4th, 2010.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Jim Renacci and Ohio's 16th Congressional District

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.

Conversations from the Wayne County Fair

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.