Making online/mobile strategies count

September 14, 2010September 14, 2010 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

Matt Lewis had me back on his podcast today, and we discuss the balance campaigns must strike between different tech tactics. Specifically, we chat about Florida gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott’s very deliberate decision to avoid text messaging in favor of email to announce his running mate. In this case, the Scott campaign decided that emails were more valuable to their campaign strategy than mobile numbers. (Given Florida’s elderly population, it was probably a wise choice. Also facto in the power of email’s reach – John Boehner actually sent an email update to his supporter list to draw attention to a tweet. It sounds redundant but it’s actually the best way to make the tweet gets seen.)

As Matt and I discussed, the rumor from Scott’s consultants is that he is not averse to spending money – so this was an educated decision.

I’m excited to see the implementation of good mobile strategy – and text messaging is going in some exciting directions. But too often, the people with resources to burn don’t stop to think through their online strategy. This is especially true with issue or candidate campaigns which use tools like Facebook for messaging, but really don’t know what to do with their 10,000-person follower list after everyone clicks the like button.

To use an old-school campaign example, imagine going door to door for a candidate. When the voter opens the door, you ask, “Hey, are you going to vote for my guy?” The voter says, “Yup!” and the conversation ends. You don’t take down their name, address, or phone number, or even ask if they’d like a lawn sign. The same is true if think taking action on an issue you care about ends when you send an email to your Member of Congress. Chances are, that email will be counted and deleted because the staff knows how easy it is for any crazy person to send them an email. (That’s why advanced follow up is always recommended.)

No matter how advanced your tactic, if it isn’t applied with some measurable and impactful result, it’s a waste of time and resources.

Crist probably didn’t approve THIS message

September 9, 2010September 9, 2010 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

From the Florida Senate race comes this re-mix of a Charlie Crist ad:

This video is well done, drives home a message simply and effectively, and may very well have been done on an activist’s home computer. Aside from demonstrating that the campaign messages are sometimes best articulated by volunteers and voters, it shows the idiocy of campaign finance laws.

This isn’t necessarily a rogue activist popping off, but that is certainly a possibility. Is that an in-kind donation to the Rubio campaign? To Meek? To both? And how much is are the few hours of video editing worth?

The argument against campaign finance laws has always been that they fail to recognize the individual right of free speech. When the only way to broadcast a message to a wide audience was through expensive broadcast media buys, it was harder to put the speech of a wealthy campaign supporter in the same category as Joe Q. Average sharing an opinion with friends and neighbors. Today’s environment is different. The person behind the video above understands that it doesn’t take a big dollar donation to get your point across anymore.

40Seats.com: A literal map to GOP victory

August 31, 2010August 31, 2010 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

The historic highs Republicans are enjoying in this week’s generic ballot poll numbers are nice, but it alone won’t restore GOP control of Congress in November. A pretty cool website called 40seats.com literally provides a map to GOP victory in November by allowing potential activists to be connected to nearby Congressional races which are up for grabs.

Ballots aren’t generic – and in some cases Democrats have plenty of advantages. For instance, let’s say your Congressman had a long list of embarassments – maybe he famously accused an eight year old of attempting to carjack him, or promised to “earmark the [expletive] out of” appropriations under his purview, or said “I like to hit people” when describing his affinity for boxing, and/or had a birthday party interrupted by what eyewitness observers described as two girlfriends fighting. Yet, the people of your district keep electing him to the House, apparently for earmarks and giggles. But next door, maybe even in a Congressional district you lived in up until, say, June 28 of this year, your involvement could really help the folks on the ground.

40Seats gives you an at-a-glance view of what’s wrong with the incumbent, and gives users options to allow varying degrees of activity – from making phone calls to putting a yard sign out to donating to walking precincts:

The credits indicate the site is mostly a mashup of tools that are open, available, and free – which is what makes 40Seats even smarter than it looks.

And no, sadly, Jim Moran is not targeted.

Your thoughts and the NRSC

August 27, 2010August 27, 2010 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

An ad from the National Republican Senatorial Committee showed up in my GMail this week, asking me to take a survey. The survey was pretty basic – asking which issues I care about, and things like that. But with unofficial Campaign Kickoff Weekend just a week away, it’s a good idea.

The NRSC has been taking some flack this week, but this is a pretty good idea – and not just because surveys and petitions make it easier to capture my email address and information. Even better, it follows a good pattern – between this, America Speaking Out, and YouCut, there’s a consistent pattern of engagement with voters and activists. That outreach in the context of the NRSC survey will help them craft communication that speaks a bit more directly to me when they follow up.

If you’re an optimist, it’s about connecting with the voters; if you’re a cynic, it’s about refining strategy so match talking points with the things people actually care about. Either way, it’s a good strategy.

Better yard signs? We have the technology

August 25, 2010August 25, 2010 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Supporters love yard signs. Not only is it an easy way to demonstrate support for a candidate, it also offers an unofficial measure of how a campaign is doing. Driving through a neighborhood amid an ocean of your favored candidate’s name is a big morale builder.

Political activists hate yard signs. They’re expensive, and a volunteer sticking a signpost in the ground is generally not a volunteer walking through a precinct and talking to his or her friends and neighbors. To that point, Alex Lundry has a great post about the utility of location-based apps, and mentions how campaigns may be able to use location-based services to give their yard signs greater impact.

A Spanish company, whimsically called Macanudos, is going one better. They’re working on creating a quick-response (QR) code technology that would allow users to scan images and instantly “like” something. These QR codes would operate like bar codes, and if they’re on a lawn sign, someone walking down the street could immediately like a candidate with a smartphone.

Of course, Facebook followers are like lawn signs: they both provide a nice stat that is, without further action, ultimately meaningless. But what happens if we mash up Lundry’s idea for incorporating location-based services with Macanudo’s ability to instantly scan-like something? Campaigns might then be able to figure out roughly where the scan-likes were coming from and give the list to the appropriate precinct captains, who could then in turn follow up with the individual voter.

Creepy? Maybe a little. But hey, you wanted yard signs…

A quarter million doesn’t go as far as it used to

August 23, 2010August 23, 2010 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Rand Paul’s $250,000 money bomb is being treated like a dud for failing to meet the lofty $400,000 goal the campaign set for it. For a Kentucky Senate race, a cool quarter mil is far from chump change, but the dour coverage shows the value of managed expectations in setting benchmarks for online metrics.

Paul inherited from his father a reputation for both staunch libertarianism and savvy online organizing, which make his swings-and-misses at online fundraising and Facebook recruitment much more pronounced. But Paul isn’t the only one who falls into the trap of easy metrics: dollars raised online, Facebook “likes”, Twitter follower counts, and other obvious numbers are easy to understand, so issue and candidate campaigns alike will use them as benchmarks for impact.

Two problems stem from this. First, metrics which are easy to understand are not always easy to obtain. Second, having big numbers doesn’t always translate to big impact. Having 100,000 Facebook followers who don’t vote is just like having 100 Facebook followers who don’t vote. Further, there comes a time when a campaign must balance the effort of recruitment with the reality of mobilization.

In the particular case of the campaign’s recent online fundraising attempt, Rand’s supporters may be suffering from money bomb fatigue, since the campaign has used the tactic regularly. They might be feeling the pinch of a tough economy, and giving $25 where they would have given $50. But none of that would be in the discussion if, at the outset, the campaign had set a reasonable benchmark for dollars. There are plenty of completely legitimate explanations for why Paul raised “only” $250,000 – but what really requires explanation is the original expectation for $400,000.

New Diggs

August 20, 2010August 20, 2010 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

Digg got a lot more relevant after announcing upgrades that make it a true social news service this week.

The old Digg was pretty straightforward: people submit stories, everyone votes, the top links appear on the home page and drive thousands of hits worth of traffic. The problem is that the top stories for one user are the top stories for every user – and means that the site experience is a reflection of the aggregated community, rather than a user.

Breaking into a system like that means joining with like-minded users to promote content more favorable to your side. Alternet called that “censorship” a few weeks back, but is really just a form of political organizing. It was an attracting but ultimately useless expenditure of time; while Digg could drive traffic, it’s probably not going to be an important front in the war on ideas.

A more user-oriented model downplays the need for such a strategy (while promoting further social engagement) because the front page is no longer the Holy Grail. It opens up the possibility of niche communities. In politics and advocacy circles, it means you no longer need to have a high-profile race for Digg to be a viable part of your social strategy.

Smart phone strategy

August 19, 2010August 19, 2010 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

With Facebook announcing its Places geo-networking service – and with it, countless opportunities for social networking gone terribly wrong – it’s tempting to keep the discussion going about how campaigns can use location-based networks. But it’s worth noting that using these networks and applications is part of a much bigger strategy – reaching voters on their mobile phone.

A friend who runs a political text message contact/mobile marketing technology shop recently pointed out that only a handful of the top targeted Senate races have texting strategies. This is amazing considering how direct and effective the mobile phone is in terms of reaching someone:

Scott Goodstein ran Obama’s mobile communications campaign operations. He said, “262 million Americans are using mobile phones. That’s roughly 84% of the total population… It’s the only device that’s truly with people for 15 to 24 hours a day.”

Another plus: mobile is a spam-free zone. One has to opt-in to receive texts, and a whopping 92% of text messages are read by the recipient.

(Via TechRepublican.)

Location-based engagement and smartphone apps are great, but at the end of the day they are part of a bigger picture: getting into that little gizmo that just about everyone carries around almost every waking hour.

Location based social networks and the 2010 campaign

August 18, 2010August 18, 2010 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

As discussed previously, no one is quite sure what to make of location-based networks yet – to the point where Christopher Walling of Project Virginia makes a compelling case that such technology won’t be impactful until at least 2012:

Not only are campaigns unable to reach a significant amount of voters, but I also don’t see using an LBSN [location-based social network] to disclose your candidate’s location as an overly effective tactic. Most of the venues that candidates will “check-in” at are campaign events or fundraisers, which most would expect them to attend anyway. If candidates choose to “check-in” at more “off-the-radar” locations, then they are essentially giving political trackers and their opponents an upper-hand, (don’t forget this is the year of the tracker) which could lead to more unsavory “gotcha” moments.

Not only is Walling right on about the time frame, he’s also right on about the concept of candidates checking in being kind of dumb – thought not because of the army of interns on both sides with flip video cameras and attitude problems.

Social networks involve two-way communication rather than one-way broadcast communication. That’s why good online strategists look for opportunities to engage with supporters, rather than simply building giant email lists. The bottom line is that few voters give a crap where a candidate is.

On the other hand, an activist may want everyone to know that he or she just checked into Campaign HQ to stuff envelopes for three hours; or they may want to know where polling places are. If they have three hours to kill on a weekend, they may want to know if there’s a neighborhood nearby where no one has gotten around to knocking on doors.

In other words,it isn’t important for the candidate to be active for a campaign to get a lot out of a location-based social network; but as Walling mentions early on in his post, the supporters sure have to be.