Archive for November, 2006
How-to site edition.
– cpd
November 30th, 2006
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Alan Rosenblatt has a good article on Frogloop this week urging organizations not to fear hostile comments on blogs and other online forums. It’s an elaboration of his idea a few weeks ago that Google has destroyed message control, that it’s better in a networked world to frame your opponents’ arguments and refute them than to ignore them entirely. It’s a concept that also meshes well with Tuesday’s article about social media and the advantages of letting site visitors create content at will.
Of course, like every other strategy, social media has its place — you probably don’t want random strangers writing your press releases. But I agree with him that you shouldn’t worry too much about allowing the public to criticize you, as long as you ask them to observe basic rules of behavior and are careful to answer any charges promptly.
– cpd
November 30th, 2006
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Sarah DiJulio with M&R Strategic Services has some excellent tips for converting traditional offline members into online activists. Switching members from snailmail to email for many communications has the obvious advantage of lowering mailing costs and can also reduce the barriers for donations (besides turning your members into potential e-advocates). Note: the mix of direct mail and email is important, since email addresses churn but snail mail can follow a forwarding notice. Make sure you can still reach your members even if their online addresses change.
Here’s what Sarah has to say:
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November 30th, 2006
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- 2008 Candidates Search Web for Next New Thing. Writing in The Hill, Jonathan E. Kaplan gives a solid overview of social networking, YouTube and other new political tools. One nice twist — measuring and rewarding supporters’ online zeal. A tip from my NET colleague John Anthony (never trust a man without a real last name).
- Entrepreneurs See a Web Guided by Common Sense. John Markoff in the Times looks at the potential of artificial intelligence to mine the depths of the Web for answers to normal human questions — Web 3.0 awaits. One bummer: IBM is only looking at the “six billion documents that make up the non-pornographic World Wide Web” (they’re missing out). A Ha-Hoa Dang suggestionTM.
- Crash The Parties. USA Today contributor Don Campbell touts Unity08′s attempt to build an independent third-party movement using Internet tools. Hmmmm, pardon me if I’m skeptical — the rising online applications depend on bottom-up creativity, social media-style, and this endeavor has a utopian, top-driven air about it (like some other sites I can think of).
– cpd
November 29th, 2006
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In DC this Friday, The Center for American Progress is hosting a discussion of what worked and what didn’t in the online component of the 2006 elections. The panel looks like a good cross-section of lefties — Megan Matson from Mainstreet Moms Organize or Bust (a grassroots organization), Tom Matzzie from MoveOn, Benjamin Rahn from ActBlue and Jessica Vanden Berg, Jim Webb’s campaign manager. I’ll be there, notebook in hand. And if you show up early enough, they’ll feed ya. Bonus!
– cpd
November 29th, 2006
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This month’s Wired takes a look at the Chevrolet’s attempt to promote the Tahoe by providing people the tools to make their own video ads for the SUV. Some of the results would drive a traditional marketer mad with fear:
The contest ran for four weeks and drew more than 30,000 entries, the vast majority of which faithfully touted the vehicle’s many selling points — its fully retractable seats, its power-lift gates, its relative fuel economy. But then there were the rogue entries, the ones that subverted the Tahoe message with references to global warming, social irresponsibility, war in Iraq, and the psychosexual connotations of extremely large cars.
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November 28th, 2006
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Mental ones, not the icky kind (you pervs). Thomas Baekdal has put together a nice list of Seven Tricks for Viral Marketing and illustrates them with some successful viral videos (man attacks bear!) Some of his observations: make people feel something — positive or negative. Do something unexpected (humans love the unpredictable). Standard advertisements will not catch on (believe me, I’ve had some fall very very painfully flat). Never restrict access, and make the content easy to share (should be a no-brainer, since the slightest speedbumps can really slow viral spread, but you’d be surprised at how many campaigns put obstacles in viewers’ paths).
The videos alone are worth the click, and the article has attracted some good comments as well. Via Micropersuasion. For more tips, see the e.politics section on viral marketing.
– cpd
November 27th, 2006
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Slate points this afternoon to a post on MyDD from shortly before the midterm election that looks at lefty bloggers’ attempts to googlebomb Republican candidates. What’s a googlebomb? A concerted effort to influence the search ranking of a given web page on a certain topic — in other words, an attempt to pop a page to the top of search engine results.
In this case, bloggers encouraged site owners across the web to link from chosen Republican candidates’ names on their own pages to specified unflattering articles on the web. The goal: to push those articles up the list of results for searches on the targeted candidates (see the section on search engine optimization for more on how search engines work).
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November 27th, 2006
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Writing in today’s Post, Sudarsan Raghavan and Nancy Trejos describe how cell phone messages and websites are wratcheting up the level of tension among civilians in Iraq. Besides distributing tips for neighborhood defense (note: put snipers on the roof, and if you have anti-tank missiles, hide in trenches and hit the first and last vehicles of an attacking convoy to pin it in place), they’re also spreading messages like this one posted on a site for Iraqi Sunnis:
“The curfew will not affect the sectarian killing militias. The Americans will not rush to help you…The entire world around you is not concerned about what happens to you. The evil people want to pluck you off one by one. So rush to your weapons and defend yourselves and use this page to inform us of what’s going on in your areas and launch rescue calls.”
Or this chilling text message that also went out to Sunnis:
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November 26th, 2006
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It occurred to me the other day that e.politics really got started eleven years ago this weekend, way back in 1995. (Remember 1995? Before the dot-com boom? Before Monica Lewinsky? Back when budget deficits were on their way out, corporate Alternative Rock ruled the airwaves, and our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity was in full and frightening bloom?)
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November 22nd, 2006
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Steve Rubel points out a new application of wikis on his Micropersuasion site today: breaking out corporate organization charts, pieces of information usually tightly held by companies because of the details they would reveal to competitors.
Political applications of the concept jump right out at me, though other people may be way ahead on this front. How about a collaboratively maintained map of political relationships, i.e., who’s worked for whom over the years in the Hill/lobby community, who’s consulted for which candidates, who’s dated whom, whose kids go to school together, which legislators have taken trips with which trade groups, who’s sponsored legislation for which industries, etc. Marry that kind of information with publicly available campaign contribution data and you can have some REAL fun.
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November 21st, 2006
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Catching-up-with-the-blogs edition.
– cpd
November 20th, 2006
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Beth Kanter, author of the excellent Beth’s Blog (a great resource on technology and the nonprofit world), writes in to talk more about fundraising with widgets.
I’ve just spent about month or so researching widgets for nonprofits over at my blog. The most exciting one, I think, is the widgets for personal fundraising campaigns. Here’s an experiment I set up. Any thoughts? My complete widget exploration as related to nonprofit use is here.
This article is a good place to start — she includes excellent tips for setting up and promoting a fundraising campaign.
– cpd
November 20th, 2006
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Think piece edition!
– cpd
November 19th, 2006
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