Marketing Matters

If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?

If a candidate is stupendous but no one knows it, does it matter that they're wonderful?

I'll leave answering the first question to the philosophical types and pounce on the second: no. If voters don't know who a candidate is and how they'll make things better, they will not get elected.

This is where marketing comes in.

And, although you may not call it marketing, it's what campaigns are all about: crafting and delivering stump speeches, writing op-eds, sending direct mail, calling voters, running ads, etc. So how does this relate to online campaigning? Well, campaigns with meaningful web strategies use the web to extend the reach and amplify the message of everything they do offline.

The really good campaigns make sure their online offerings not only repackage offline experiences, but also make them easy for supporters to share. In fact, the December issue of the Journal of Advertising Research says that common word-of-mouth advertising by regular folks is more powerful than “key influencers.” (Article summary here.) If you're not making it easy and compelling for people to tell each other about your candidate or campaign, you're making your job harder.

--Louella Pizzuti

Who should be in charge of your web presence?

Who you hire to drive your web presence depends entirely on what you want/need to accomplish.

If you are in the camp of campaign managers who see your web site as akin to a yard sign: "something that doesn't do much good but you have to have because the other side does," you'll probably want someone with strong design skills who you can keep busy on higher priority campaign tasks.

If you understand your web presence can be an online campaign office:

• a place where supporters come to get information and inspiration
  
• a place where undecided voters see info and endorsements that help them decide
  
• and a place for meaningful two-way communication

you'll search for someone who understands how to weave threads of every part of your campaign strategy into your online presence.

Most down-ticket races probably need nothing more than mostly-static content that collects all your campaign info in one (well organized) place, that lets visitors subscribe to your newsletter, and provides a donate button. This type of presence leverages the message work you put into your other campaign materials and probably requires no more than a chunk of time for initial setup and bits and pieces of time to update with press mentions and anything else you want to give broader visibility to.

So think hard about what you want your web presence to accomplish before you decide who to hire.

--Louella Pizzuti

What's a blogger?

Blogger definitions range far and wide--wide enough, I'd posit, to make the term as useful as calling a writer a penner. Some of the most common definitions of a blogger:

Blogger, citizen investigative journalist.

Blogger, someone who participates in online discussions.

Blogger, someone who publishes recipes and tips online using a blog.

Blogger, someone who writes her own blog.

Blogger, someone who reads/comments on other people's blogs.

Blogger, online political activist.

From a campaign's perspective, any and all bloggers can be useful (or disastrous)--because they have an audience and a community. It's the campaign's job to figure out how much effort to invest in reaching these audiences through a particular blogger or blog--just as you determine where to allocate your advertising money. Are the readers of this blog in your district? Are they likely to influence voters in your district? Are they likely to donate time or money to the campaign? Are they likely to influence mainstream media in your district?

Many campaigns hire a blogger to do internet outreach; I'd contend that understanding blogging technology is the single least important qualification for a campaign blogger. It's far more important to understand PR and message delivery--since the campaign's blogger is, in many respects, the campaign's face on the web. It's pretty easy to learn the technology (see the explosion of blogs in recent months), but it's a bit harder to learn how to spin a campaign/candidate faux pas, how to create and maintain a relationship with voters and how to inspire blog readers to offline action. On the other hand, hiring a well-connected blogger can be a stroke of genius if your campaign plan focuses on influencing the influencers and the blogger's influencers overlap with your voters.

--Louella Pizzuti

Senator Dick Durbin's experiment very impressive so far

I'm way behind on reporting on Senator Dick Durbin's collaboration with Open Left to gather input on broadband legislation from the folks on the internet. Sorry about that; I'll try to make up for tardiness with a detailed discussion.

First off, it's quite clear that the Senator and his staff are taking this self-professed experiment quite seriously. They have devoted staff time and the Senator's time to live blogging, to lining up experts to launch and participate in the discussions and they even recorded videos with the Senator to set context.

It's somewhat difficult to follow the Senator's posts on Open Left, so I'll outline them here:

Sun Jul 22, 2007 What should be America's national broadband strategy?
Tue Jul 24 Senator Durbin Live Thread
Weds Jul 25 Legislation 2.0, Part 2: Open networks, privacy, and beyond
Thurs Jul 26 Legislation 2.0, Part 3: Universal broadband access and the public airwaves
Fri Jul 27 Legislation 2.0, Part 4: Building a universal system

I don't want this post to be about America's broadband strategy--you can read that discussion in much more detail at Open Left. Instead, I want to focus on what the Senator's team is doing right with this series.

They start the series with posts that make it clear they've done their homework--they're not having this online discussion as a substitute for traditional research, they're having it to supplement the research they've already done. This is important because it lets prospective participants know the Senator's serious about the topic and the venue. And it allows the Senator's team to set a framework for the discussion. A+

As the discussion unfolds, the Senator, members of his staff and subject-matter experts actively participate by responding directly to comments and by summarizing previous discussions. Again showing that they're taking the whole process seriously and that they respect the time and expertise of the commenters. A+

I'm not clear what their next steps will be (and this could very well be because of Open Left's organization rather than because the Senator didn't articulate them), but this process was a big win for participatory democracy, for the Senator's reputation among web users and, in the end, for the legislation.

My only recommendation for the Senator's team would be to incorporate (or at least link to) this discussion on Senator Durbin's web site; right now the only mention of this ground-breaking online town hall is a news article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

I look forward to seeing where this conversation goes next.

--Louella Pizzuti

John Edwards' team gets most improved award

I've got a lot to say about how the Democratic candidates used the web to amplify their debate performances, but for now I'll point to the John Edwards campaign. If you recall, the day after the last debate, they were still touting the "upcoming" debate on their home page and their blog "coverage" was completely uninfluenced by the campaign.

Compare and contrast their performance this time:

link to debate "best moment" from home page

rotating link to "hair" video on home page

campaign live blogging during the debate which not only summarized what was going on but also linked to additional resources.

Nicely done.

--Louella Pizzuti

Dick Durbin uses web to draft policy (maybe)

A quick glance at Senator Dick Durbin's web site suggests he doesn't quite understand the value of the web as a communications tool--no message apparent on his home page and only one paragraph on the page titled "Working for You". Yikes. But Durbin's recent post on Open Left is much more promising:

Today I'm writing to invite you to participate in an experiment -- an interactive approach to drafting legislation on one of the most significant public policy questions today: What should be America's national broadband strategy?

Starting this Tuesday, July 24 at 7pm EST on OpenLeft.com, I will be engaging in a series of four nightly broadband policy discussions with the online community. During those four nights, I am looking for the best and brightest ideas on what Congress should do to promote and foster broadband.

I will begin each night's discussion with a conversation about some of the core principles I think are important, and then I'll ask for you to contribute your ideas that will help me craft legislation.

If this is more than a one-way, let's-look-like-we're-listening publicity stunt, it will be a big win for small-d democracy. And if it's just a stunt or poorly executed? Expect a feeding frenzy.

--Louella Pizzuti

Blogger outreach and the Tom Allen campaign

The Tom Allen for Senate campaign gets blogger outreach. Almost. [Updated two hours after the original post: Yep, they get it; see below.]

The part where they get it: they have a "Blogger Connection" on the campaign web site. Click through and you see:

Thank you for your interest in my campaign for Senate. As a leader in the online community, your voice has power and we want to provide you with the information and resources you need to cover this race. In 2006 we saw the power and influence of the netroots community during the Jim Webb race in Virginia.

We want to build a relationship with the online community going into 2008 and beyond. Signing up to be a member of the Blogger Connection is easy. Simply fill out the form below and we will get back to you shortly.

Members of the Connection are an important part of my campaign. As a member of the Connection you will receive press releases from the campaign as well as other information that will to make [sic] your jobs easier.

Looks good--they understand the influence bloggers can exert on a race (even if they don't proof their copy very well).

But when I filled out the "Blogger Connection" form to join, I got a file-not-found error. Whoops.

I'm (sadly) used to political web sites that aren't well tested (see #6 on my top-ten most embarrassing mistakes list), so I shot the campaign an email alerting them to the problem. And I heard back from them within minutes of publishing this post; they're clearly keeping a sharp eye on blog coverage of their candidate.

[updated to add: Not only is the campaign keeping a sharp eye on blog coverage, they're also moving quickly to address problems. I just received an email from the Allen campaign's Director of Internet Communications alerting me to the fix. If you follow their lead and thank the people who point out problems and then address them right away, the story becomes about your responsiveness rather than your mistake.]

--Louella Pizzuti