Posts filed under 'Media Relations'
- Update: The Obama Camp Dials It Forward. Post-primary conference call plays it subtle, while all is well in ClintonLand.
- McCain Launches Spanish-Language Website. Wonder how the Minutemen (no, not THE Minutemen) will feel about THAT one?
- Bury bad news with online press releases. Somebody forward this to Hillary Clinton. C.f. Craigslist Ad Of The Day.
- The critical technology, for the early phase of the industrial revolution, was gin. From gin to sitcoms to lolcats, via Henry Copeland.
- Bunches o’ Studies and Stats on Nonprofit Marketing.
- How-To: 10 Tips for Launching a Solid Podcast.
- Two new guides to presidential online advertising from Clickz, Online Presidential Display Ads Leading to the 2008 Primaries and All Primaries Are Local: 2008 Presidential Campaigns Buy Local Online.
- The Tale of the E-mail. Hillary and Barack’s constrasting post-Indiana/NC notes. C.f. She’s Still In, And She’s Still In To Win.
- Pew Study Confirms Cell Phones Rule.
- Mobilizing Generation 2.0: A Practical Guide to Using Web2.0 Technologies to Recruit, Organize and Engage Youth.
- Right now, I’m watching the President of the Utah State Senate on my desktop. Julie, you had me at “desktop.”
- Google Reader is becoming more of a social networking application.
- Twitter Post Rescues Jailed Journalist, but Egyptians ignore Facebook call.
- How the White House lost 5 million e-mails.
- Jailed Chinese Journalist Shi Tao’s Poem Follows Olympic Torch’s Route Online.
- Matt Stoller on how liberals rule the web, and The Baltimore Sun on how Matt and friends raised 400K for Donna Edwards. Via tPrez.
- Phantom Obama Vote Appears on NJ Voting Machine.
- Web Ads from Left and Right Advocacy Groups Signal More to Come.
- Media criticism in context: “Yes, it would be nice if the press spent less time on inanities and more time on how candidates planned to actually run the country. But this view of the media is just too simplistic.” Via Salon.
- North Carolina Radio Host Reports Anti-Obama Chain E-Mail Distortion As Fact. C.f. Pennebaker: Clip Doctored, about the Mickey Kantor video distortion. (also via tPrez).
- Union-organizing emails get employees of a social networking site fired! Sent around by Michael Whitney.
- Clinton’s and McCain’s Gasoline Tax Holiday Reimagined as a Phishing Scam.
- National Intelligence Agency Breaks Out RSS Feed.
- 6% are Natural Born Clickers.
- Twitter frenzy! Using Twitter for Your Organization, Use TwitterFone For Easy Voice-To-Text On Twitter, and Political Junkies Congregate and Comment on Election Results Through Twitter. Plus, 5 Tips to Grow Your Twitter Presence and The Bivings Group Does Twitter.
- Yes, a Montana cattle ranch is using banner ads combined with search ads to sell their premium beef via the internet.
- 10 Valuable Tips for Shooting Web Video. Via Frogloop.
- Google, YouTube and the city of New Orleans try to host their own presidential forum. Via Mike Allen.
- Video: how primary-season attacks have been amplified in the general election.
- FBI Targets Internet Archive With Secret ‘National Security Letter,’ Loses.
- Harold vs. Markos. Not everyone wants a unified Dem ticket.
- META Keywords are Legally Dead.
- Be very afraid: Engineers find ‘missing link’ of electronics. Robots take next step toward world domination.
- A minute and a half with Shana Glickfield…is enough to spark any man’s dreams.
- Clone-tool war on nipples continues. Complete with tragic casualty figures.
– cpd
May 7th, 2008
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- Adding Video to Turn Dead-End ‘Thank You’ Pages Into Viral Marketing Campaigns. The Obama campaign finds yet another sweet spot for online recruiting.
- The Post Is Having A Rough Day. Spam attack!
- Reluctantly, a Daily Stops Its Presses, Living Online.
- Rev. Wright Baits the Soundbiters.
- The Internet Goes Green. The growth of the envirosphere, via Micropersuasion.
- Space war would leave destructive legacy.
- McCain: It’s “clear who Hamas wants to be the next president.” Fruits of a blogger conference call.
- Google Earth Outreach Aides U.N. Track Refugees and Save Lives.
- Beyond Bittergate, Barack Yields Success to His Supporters.
- Obama’s Database Will Make Him the Power Broker. Another persistent political following! “Like Mussolini/ And Kennedy…”
- The chummy relationship of campaign professionals and journalists in Washington. Or, getting scolded for making fun of McCain on Facebook.
- Schism Grows Between Obama and Liberal Bloggers.
- Were Mesopotamians the first brand addicts?
- Subject Line, ‘From’ Address Crucial to Email Marketing.
- Who Stole the Plans for iRobot’s Battle Bots?
- YouTube vid inspires Obamacrombie t-shirts.
- Facebook as Weekly Evil.
- McCain on FriendFeed: “Considering the McCain campaign’s sometimes uneven online strategy, this is a step in the right direction.”
- Social Applications Dominate the Web.
- Gays, Lesbians More Receptive to Blog Ads than Heterosexuals.
- An overview of web mining in societal benefit areas.
- Top 10 Wireless Marketing Mistakes.
- 3 Top Tips to Improve Your Online Writing.
- Henry Copeland of Blogads: “As the social media winter looms, the winners will be the folks with strong relationships, low overheads, a strong commitment on innovation rather than coat-tail riding, and, most of all, a indelible passion for the business. We’re looking forward to seeing you after the bust.”
- Sorry Disney, But You’re Kind of a Skank Factory.
- DNC’s national cable ad buy. The RNC’s not so hot about it.
- Web Site Blames Sen. McConnell for Quorum-less FEC.
- The Twitter Disconnect. An introduction and how-to. Also, glimpse a hardcore Twitter-using life.
- Things Really Were Different Before Clinton-Obama. Time keeps on slippin’ slippin’ slippin…into the future.
- Which Government Agency Should Be Your Computer’s Firewall? HAL 9000 or black squirrels?
– cpd
April 28th, 2008
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Along with Dennis Johnson, Karen Jagoda and Morra Aarons-Mele, I had the pleasure of giving a presentation this morning on congressional and local online campaigns for the assembled journalists at the Knight Digital Media Center’s symposium, Election ’08: Unleashing the Cyber-watchdogs (i.e., after a week of luxuriating in the California sun, it was time to sing for my supper and justify the trip). My notes are below; if they’re too cryptic, drop me a note for details.
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April 24th, 2008
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These tips are for an Advocates for Youth/Choice USA online organizing training session on April 16, 2008, and you kids can look at them in greater depth in the relevant Online Politics 101 articles, particularly the ones covering marketing and promotion, websites, blogger relations and search engine optimization. They’re aimed at organizations and campaigns that are on the resource-poor side, since those won’t be able to do much paid promotion, but the basic ideas apply to most sites regardless of scale. See also that enduring classic from November of 2006, How to Build Traffic to a Blog: Ten Tips.
10 Ways to Build Traffic to a Website
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April 15th, 2008
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Greetings from New Orleans and the Nonprofit Technology Conference, where e.politics is bearing up nobly under the strain of going to fantastic cities and hanging out with bright and interesting people. Rough life, I know
As a takeaway for the participants in our online advocacy panel on Friday, below are a ton of articles on various aspects of the question of spreading a message and working to change politics and policy online.
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March 20th, 2008
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Post-Politics Online/pre-SXSW Quick Hits extravaganza.
- Does Good Design Matter? Todd Zeigler’s excellent follow-on to our Politics Online panel. C.f. lots of POLC coverage at Capitol Valley and Tech Daily Dose.
- Trusting Politics 2.0 Can be Difficult in Local Elections.
- Getting Duped: How the Media Messes with Your Mind.
- Online Video Audience to Hit Critical Mass in ‘08. “Nearly 80 percent of US internet users will watch online video at least once a month in 2008.”
- News and Media US Website Visits Up Sharply. Lindsey Lohan softcore locked in deathmatch with political coverage. C.f. Obama: Bigger than Britney.
- How-To: 6 Tips on Writing an Actionable Press Release. Basic but useful.
- Historically, Most Online Communities Haven’t Stuck. Facebook and MySpace: do not forget the lesson of Ozymandias.
- Crowd Enabling, the Obama way. A mighty bold claim: “Even if Obama fails to achieve his goal of becoming President of the United States, I predict he will have a deeper and more powerful understanding of the American people than anyone in the history of politics.”
- Did the Clinton Campaign Doctor Obama Footage to Make Him ‘Blacker’?
- Spying Fight about Emails, Not Phone Calls, DOJ Reveals.
- McCain’s Unfiltered Blog. Straight conversation.
- Hillary’s pop culture problem vs. Did SNL Save Clinton’s Campaign?
- Is the Obama Campaign Really Different?. Or is he the new New Coke?
- ObamaCycle: A Craigslist for Obama Campaigners.
- Hillary’s Classy Tweets to Ohio and Rhode Island. Not sure “Tweet” and “Classy” belong in the same sentence.
- Air Force Launches Recruitment Campaign Touting Cyber Command. Check out the gee-whiz landing page, and also the fact that the Air Force has blocked access to many (most?) blogs.
- Obama Reaches 1 Million Donor Mark. Check out the comments on Micah Sifry’s article about it.
- Obama does not read blogs. No wonder he has time to run for president.
- Quote of the week: “‘It’s a love tap compared to the Wu-Tang fist of fury that’s coming at this guy in the fall,’ said Rick Wilson, a Republican media consultant.”
- Heather Havriskey interview with George Carlin. A must-read for anyone interested in writing or the creative process.
- Facebook Launches Band Pages. “MySpace also might start to get worried — I’m sure I’m not the only one who uses that site solely for auditioning bands.”
- New Source for News Vetted by Scientists. A peer-reviewed take on social news.
- The Charms of Wikipedia.
- Are Liberals and Conservatives Different Species? The Answer is Yes.
- Extended rant against microsites. Not sure if I agree, but it’s worth reading.
- A Whole Toolbox of Contention.
- ETech: Lessig Calls for Geeks to Code Money Out of Politics.
- Wanted: A More Digital Congress.
- Inside Obama’s Ground Game.
- Hillary’s Rapid Responders.
- Obama Lawyer Crashes Clinton Call. With audio!
- Politico 2.0: Ruffini Blogs, Twitters, Crowdsources Obama Donations. Via tPrez. C.f. Josh’s take on the candidates’ post-Tuesday splash pages
- Flickr and TechSoup to hand out free Flickr Pro accounts to nonprofits.
- Facebook changes political affiliation choices. Michael Whitney and Nancy Scola are not impressed.
- Over 1 million people have seen Robert Greenwald’s anti-McCain online videos.
- Geeking out before checking out: Spacecraft photographs avalanches on Mars. Don’t miss the accompanying Earth/Moon family portrait, taken from Mars orbit — such a cute couple. And, dig the new European automatic robotic space truck. Finally, some good advice for the Coast Guard, and a Farewell to the Dungeon Master.
– cpd
March 6th, 2008
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At last week’s tech project management workshop, a software developer from Community IT Innovators talked about a worldwide collaboration that’s plenty nerd-cool but also gives political communicators something to chew on. Late last year, a group of 30 or 40 software developers scattered around the world gathered for a live debugging session. They were working together to fix final problems in the next version of the open source content management system Joomla, and they used five key (and either cheap or free) technologies to work together:
- Skype. They began the session with an internet conference call to get everyone on the same page and assign basic tasks
- Chat. To communicate quickly as they moved through the process of fixing bugs, they used IRC. Instant Messaging would have been an alternative.
- Screensharing. When they ran into problems that needed a picture rather than words, they used free screen-sharing software. This way, a developer in India (for instance) could show a developer in Europe what he was doing and either get or give help.
- Google Spreadsheet. They used a Google Docs spreadsheet (also free) to track changes and allow all participants to view the project’s status and make updates.
- Face-to-face. Many of the developers were gathered in small groups and could help each other directly, turning to their online colleagues only when needed.
Obviously, this was a group of power-users rather than newbies, but the tech tools they used are available to anyone in the world with a decent internet connection (and IRC and Google Docs will work over dial-up). Besides the political implications of their project — many advocacy campaigns are using Joomla and similar CMSs to build websites and maintain them easily — political communicators shouldn’t ignore the potential of distant collaboration that this example illustrates. From environmental work to democracy-building to media relations, the ‘net provides tools that make it infinitely easier than ever before to organize and communicate across borders — or across the building. Most political users will obviously lag behind the tech elite in adopting them, but these applications are so useful (and cheap) that even the tech-averse can’t ignore them forever.
– cpd
January 15th, 2008
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- Users’ Online Time Spent Mostly on Content - Not Communications, Commerce. Content is king!
- Tech Savvy Protesters take on China, but when is it appropriate to spam the Great Firewall?
- Social networks not just for kids, as Boomer site pitches own political tent. See what all those Cialis ads have led to?
- Building a Successful Internet Presence.
- Sidestepping the ‘macaca’ moments. Politicians’ desperate desire to be boring.
- Democratic Advisers Take Posts in Group Opposing Wal-Mart.
- Cost of Saving the Climate Meets Real-World Hurdles. On problems with the selling of carbon offsets online.
- As Billboards, Public Phones Always Work. Does advertising assure the survival of pay phones?
- Army Reports Brass, Not Bloggers, Breach Security. “It’s clear that official Army websites are the real security problem, not blogs,”
- More military threats: Russia Orders Long-Range Bomber Patrols. Backfire bombers, coming soon to a backyard near you.
- How Google Works. Nice visual overview, suggested by my NET colleague Erica Peth.
- Which Presidential Candidates Have Mastered Google?
- Mobile Advertising is Irritating. Shocking news from the world of marketing.
- More fallout from Wikipedia edit tracking: Vote On the Most Shameful Wikipedia Spin Jobs, and find out about The Feds Who Edit Wikipedia. Lamest Wiki story, as noted by tPrez and about 10,000 NY Times commenters: Messing With Iowa.
- 13 Winning Ways to Make Enemies in the Press. Never too early in the week for self-sabotage.
- Rule #1 In E-Politics: Don’t Attack The Bloggers. But what if they’re annooooooying?
- Three Strategies for Thriving on the Decentralized Web.
- The continued usefulness of direct mail in the Internet era.
- A Simple Yahoo Pipes RSS Filtering Example.
- Investing In Netroots Innovation.
- Cheap media, cheap ads. Seth Godin takes on a common mistake.
- Facebook Opens Email Up A Little; I Want More. C.f. Newsweek’s take on Facebook, via David All, and Facebook rules for the rest of us (when is a poke not a good idea?).
- EmergencyCheese: A Citizen Journalist gets a taste of MSM.
- Beware the Dark Side of PR 2.0. Spoilsport.
- The Untold Story of the Cheney ‘Quagmire’ Video. The making of an Internet hit.
- Why the YouTube Election Should Evolve into the Gaming Election. Because we have 14 months to go and desperately need a distraction?
- Late addition! Google Maps are now embeddable, via Rochelle Robinson.
- A final sad note: the geek community loses a founder, as Joe Engressia, Expert ‘Phone Phreak,’ Dies. The first guy to manipulate the phone system by whistling in perfect pitch, he was an original hacker — you gotta love someone who picks a city to live in because he likes the quirks in its phone circuitry.
– cpd
August 21st, 2007
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- Late addition: Community Counts: Real Participation in the Debates. People are stepping up and fixing the problems with YouTube’s debate video process.
- Why MySpace is for freaks and Facebook is for preps. I KNEW I felt out of place on Facebook…Salon’s Machinist blog looks at a new analysis of the two sites’ different demographics.
- Facebook Spam on the Rise — the Changing Face of Email Permission. When friendship isn’t commitment.
- Web 3.0: The Future of Video. “The future of video is professional content with a twist. Interactivity. Targeted to niche audiences, by niche additions.”
- Pro-Romney website dispels Mormon myths. For once, let’s skip the “garment” jokes.
- Bloomberg Announcement Crashes Unity ‘08 Site. Collateral damage is sometimes inevitable in war.
- The Mobile-Phone Primary: Are cell-phone users screwing up Ron Paul’s poll numbers? Slate sez, not so much.
- Forget those new guys, it’s McGovern in ‘72! Via Kevin Reid of IDI.
- Digital Marketing Key to Booze Advertising. A look at niche marketing. You’ll find me in the Busch and PBR demographic.
- Social networks geared for offline success? Another Kevin Reid find. Hey Burt and Ha-Hoa — this guy’s tryin’ to muscle in on your turf.
- An amazing new video-editing program. Online video-editing and hosting.
- PoliticalWire Launches Political News Video Aggregator.
- YouTube dirty tricks and presidential debate Buzz.
- Google to Shut Down Gmail Germany if Bundestag Passes Surveillance Law.
- ‘Great Firewall’ Marks Flickr its Next Victim. Censorship continues to suck.
- Online Branding Takeaways. A Frogloop report from last week’s Internet Advocacy Roundtable.
- What is YOUR Audience Doing Online? Wasting time, looking for love, or something more sinister?
- Estonia Presses Bush for Cyber-Attack Research Center Critical quote: “NATO was designed to counter physical threats and hasn’t yet developed detailed plans for cyber warfare.” Hey kids, how about we get ready to fight the NEXT war instead of the last one?
- Gates Dodges Cyber Attack. Don’t bother calling NATO.
- ‘BONG HiTS 4 JESUS’: Nevermind. Hooray! Schools can crack down on speech — thank god, I was afraid we might teach those little bastards to think for themselves, or something.
- Top 5 stoopid YouTube questions for politicians. Let’s rethink that YouTube presidential debate idea…via ReelPop.
- Ron Paul and Distributed Online Campaigning. The advantages of having a feature-poor website. Hmm, where have we heard this before?
- The Top Consideration When Choosing a Free Blogging Platform. Whether or not chicks dig it, of course.
- A Crisis Communications Primer: 10 Tips for Managing the Interview. Short and clever, with a nice payoff at the end.
– cpd
June 26th, 2007
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Steve Rubel recently pointed to an article from Google’s “Consumer Packaged Goods” blog (a niche most of don’t contemplate regularly) that covers the question of damage control in a crisis, a situation that absolutely never ([cough] Macaca [cough]) arises in the political world. The article is aimed at companies trying to recover from a product recall or similar brand-disaster, but campaigns can learn from it as well. The author’s observations:
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April 19th, 2007
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An excellent presentation at last week’s NOI training examined the power of using your online campaign to gin up “earned media” (free media coverage as opposed to paid advertising), with Adam Green of MoveOn and Trevor Fitzgibbon of Fenton Communications looking at ways to create news hooks and to attach your campaign to unfolding stories. Much of what they covered should be familiar to experienced press relations folks, but they did an excellent job of showing ways that an online campaign can fit into a comprehensive press strategy.
Adam Green started things off by looking at WHY campaigns should try to get themselves in the newspaper, on television or in blogs — because it works. Media coverage can give a campaign instant credibility (”I read about you guys just the other day”), can help you reach a new audience, and is free (in money, though it can be VERY expensive in time). In particular, local media attention matters: it’s often easier to get than national coverage, it lets you leverage your local activists and it can lead to much broader distribution of your story if it gets on a newswire (even local blogs can help, since they may be disproportionately read by elected officials and other opinion leaders and can also serve as a source for national blogs — see this article for details).
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March 13th, 2007
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Today’s Post has an interesting look at Gannett’s new emphasis on the web, with local newspapers attempting to drive traffic to their websites by focusing on very local stories. The article discusses a new style of reporter, the mobile journalist (or “mojo” — very clever), whose office is a car and who travels with a laptop and digital still and video cameras. Mobile journalists are encouraged to file stories constantly and on the fly, often covering events that would have been buried in a print paper or ignored entirely.
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December 4th, 2006
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Hey kids, this weekend’s Roots Camp was a terrific experience — not only did I get to meet Ha-Hoa Dang and several other regular readers face to face, but I was lucky enough to sit in on a bunch of really fascinating discussions. One of them looked at the benefits of working with local bloggers, a subject that we’ve touched on here a number of times. Some things that both electoral and issue advocacy campaigns can think about:
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December 3rd, 2006
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We made it! The 2006 campaign season is dead (well, mostly), and it’s already time to dig up the bodies and see what they can teach us. Here are some lessons I’ve taken away from the last few months of online political frenzy.
The Internet is Still a Spark, Not a Firestorm
This year, YouTube and online video really came of age: a slew of campaign ads, embarrassing candidate gaffes and satirical commentary pieces ended up on the web and some were seen hundreds of thousands of times. Online video could highlight a candidate’s troubles, provide an outlet for supporters’ creative enthusiasm and even raise the profile of an otherwise obscure campaign.
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November 8th, 2006
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