Archive for April 4th, 2012
Chapter One of How Campaigns Can Use the Internet to Win in 2012
Hell of a political year, eh? The president, 33 Senators, all 435 House members, scores of statewide officeholders and thousands of state legislators, mayors, city councilmembers, etc, all up for election. The presidential race will dominate the year, of course, and many congressional, state and local races will turn on the outcome of the battle between President Obama and the Republican nominee in the Fall.
Still, plenty of elections will buck the national trends, hinging on local issues and local personalities. Plus we’ll have the primaries, which for many offices are the only elections that matter. Fifteen years ago, the upcoming campaigns would have been dominated by TV ads to the exclusion of most other political tools, but this is 2012 and the world has changed. From Egypt to Wisconsin, the internet has become a key political battleground, and smart campaigns at all levels — presidential to dog-catcher — will be thinking about how to integrate digital tools into essentially all aspects of their operations.
Here are some of the most important ares to consider:
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April 4th, 2012
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Chapter Two of How Campaigns Can Use the Internet to Win in 2012
Using the internet for politics may seem relatively new to some of us, but most online campaigning is a reincarnation of some classic political act in digital form. For instance, you can think of a website as the electronic version of a storefront office, while the process of working with bloggers is a lot like old-school print or broadcast media relations.
But compared with traditional political tools, the internet truly excels at maintaining relationships with many people at once. Channels like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and email connect campaigns directly with their donors and volunteers, providing easy paths to distribute news, talking points, event invitations and appeals for time and money. With planning and effort, the connection can go both ways, letting a campaign actively tap the social connections and even the creativity of its supporters.
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April 4th, 2012
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Chapter Three of How Campaigns Can Use the Internet to Win in 2012
Once a campaign has the basic technology in place, it can begin to take full advantage of the internet’s ability to deliver donors, volunteers and voters. Much of a campaign’s online outreach will take place in the very public venues of blogs, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, but politicians and staff can also reach out behind the scenes. For instance, you can send emails or Facebook messages to selected bloggers, Twitterers and other online activists, usually in the hope of creating connections that will lead to more public affirmations of support.
The variety of outreach outlets available to online communicators can be overwhelming, so let’s start with a few basic principles to help sort out the options.
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April 4th, 2012
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Chapter Four of How Campaigns Can Use the Internet to Win in 2012
Mobilization is simple in concept: it involves persuading people to do things — donate, vote, volunteer, make phone calls, whatever. For instance, as the experience of the Obama campaign showed, one of the most effective ways to spread a campaign’s message online is to get someone else to do it — every supporter is a potential outreach hub in his or her social universe. Campaigns can make the process easy by preparing banners, badges, buttons, videos and other content that fans can post on their own pages. But to get someone to act, first you almost always have to ask — and their answer determines whether or not you’ve succeeded. Therein lies the complexity — how, when and what do we ask of people to help them realize their true political potential?
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April 4th, 2012
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Chapter Five of How Campaigns Can Use the Internet to Win in 2012
What Dean and Kerry suggested in 2004, Barack Obama proved in 2008: an army of motivated online donor/volunteers can be a truly decisive force in politics. And with software designed to allow campaigns to tap the enthusiasm (and the wallets) of supporters both within their districts and around the country now widely available, 2012 should see an explosion of online fundraising at the state and local levels.
A campaign benefits immensely if most individual donations, even the big ones, come in online rather than as paper checks. First, money collected via credit cards is available instantly, allowing a candidate to take immediate advantage of an overnight surge of income. Plus, online donation details automatically end up in a database, simplifying accounting and reporting. By contrast, physical checks present a logistical burden, since each has to be processed individually whether it’s collected at a fundraising dinner or arrives in the mail.
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April 4th, 2012
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Chapter Six of How Campaigns Can Use the Internet to Win in 2012
“Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics” — it’s an old military adage, but it has some truth in the world of digital politics as well. The tools are only as good as the human systems that make them work!
As we’ve seen, a modern online campaign can get intricate fast. At the very least, most campaigns will need to create a website, administer a supporter list via CRM, create a Facebook Page and Twitter account, run digital ads, post videos to YouTube, connect with bloggers and other online activists, and create the infrastructure to raise money online. Those are just the tools — to put them to work, the campaign will need an email strategy, a recruitment strategy, a social media strategy, a grassroots strategy (often including a mobile component), an advertising strategy, a fundraising strategy, and last but never least, a turnout operation to actually get people to vote. And that’s pretty much the minimum, at least for a Congressional or statewide race. Whew!
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April 4th, 2012
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Chapter Seven of How Campaigns Can Use the Internet to Win in 2012
Regardless of the national dynamics at play, local factors will determine the outcome of many an election in 2012, and a campaign’s own hard work is part of that equation. As we’ve seen, smart campaigns can turn to the internet to increase the effectiveness of almost all of their activities and shift the odds in their favor. The internet absolutely excels at providing channels for campaigns to maintain connections with individual voters and energize them to recruit their friends, donate their money and volunteer their time. Extra bodies equals extra votes.
Of course, online tools are’t likely to win many elections on their own, but campaigns that employ online strategies intelligently and with real-world goals in mind should have a significant edge over their rivals, particularly in tight races. Not-so-bold prediction: online ads, online recruiting, online messaging, online mobilization and online fundraising can (and will) make a difference in elections for the Senate, Congress and state and local offices in 2012. TV still matters, field organizing DEFINITELY still matters, but for more and more political fights the key battlegrounds are in virtual space. Ignore that ground at your peril.
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April 4th, 2012
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