Interadvocacy

Social Networking Sites: Framing the Future of Grassroots Outreach

2009-03-31T15:06:16Z

Internet advocates are expanding their activities beyond web-based outreach. Through the use of social networking sites, successful tech savvy advocates are linking up and starting new grassroots efforts. The social networking site Facebook.com is how Retired Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely met Annie Hamilton and together they set the wheels in motion to create Stand Up America, a new conservative grassroots association.

"With the help of some political writers and columnists he met on the Internet, Vallely started a grassroots association called Stand Up America USA (SUA). He describes the project as a multimedia organization that involves radio, television, speaking engagements and web and print writing by Vallely himself as well as other columnists."

The popularity and simplicity of the modern social networking sites has made it easier for like-minded individuals to come together and mobilize advocacy efforts. With the small amount of personal information posted by users, dedicated and motivated individuals have been able to link up and move forward with their grassroots activities.

The Right Embraces Internet Outreach

2009-03-31T14:41:17Z

Internet advocacy and web based grassroots movements are continuing their ascent to the top of contemporary political action. In her recent article "Web 2.0 and the New Conservative Revolution" Rachel Alexander brings to light the fact that even groups that were slow to embrace the power of internet advocacy are redesigning their efforts to reach out to new more internet savvy generations. Conservative groups that have, until recently, favored more traditional means of outreach are beginning to be competitive in the fast paced internet based advocacy game.

"There is a new conservative movement sweeping the country, and it is taking place in technology. As the entire internet moves toward social networking sites and interactive media, transitioning to the Web 2.0 next generation of the internet, conservative activists are riding the crest."

This new media push from the right is a serious endorsement of the power of the Internet and how effective web advocacy efforts have been so far. The Right's acceptance of Facebook and Twitter and other social networking sights should serve to advance their goal of expanded and more influential outreach.

Obama Embraces The Internet as a Forum for Public Access

2009-03-27T14:15:17Z

With yesterday's Online Town Hall meeting at the White House, the age of Internet Advocacy was widely acknowledged. National constituents ranging from the members of NORML to teachers to nurses had the ear of the president and the world as they used the internet to raise their issues.

"Despite the technical elements and the regal venue, the meeting had the feel of a typical presidential town hall meeting in Elkhart, Ind., or even a campaign stop."

The use of modern technology and tools is expanding the public's ability to have access to the government and bring issues to light. Events like yesterday's E-Town Hall expand everyone's ability to raise awareness and the public profile of those issues that are most important to them.

Convio Study Examines Non-Profit Online Engagement

2009-03-24T21:20:58Z

Convio, a provider of constituent relationship management software and services, released a report detailing the continued growth and success of online efforts in the face of the economic downturn. The Convio Online Marketing Nonprofit Benchmark Index Study seeks to measure the growth and success of technology based outreach undertaken by its non-profit clients.

The conclusions drawn from this report suggest a continued importance being placed on Internet outreach. The growth of Internet fundraising as the financial crisis worsened throughout 2008 illustrates how important emerging technologies will be for successful advocacy efforts in the future.

"'Online tools continue to play a very important role in the success of nonprofits, especially as many of them see negative growth via traditional channels," said Vinay Bhagat, founder and chief strategy office for Convio. "The results of the survey also indicate that organizations that are engaging donors through multiple channels are better positioned to weather the current economic storm and build lasting relationships.'"

These relationships will prove invaluable for future efforts to promote causes, and reach constituents.

Blogs "Incubating" Public Debate

2009-03-23T16:13:33Z

Today's most successful political and issue advocacy movements have already come to recognize the growing influence of web-based media. Yet coming to terms with the "twitter generation" is only the first step towards using modern technology successfully.

The gap between those "in the know," like the Obama campaign, and those "in the trenches" when it comes to net advocacy and blogging was the subject of a recent article on The Caucus, the Politics and Government blog of the NY Times:

"Web traffic may be down since Election Day, but compared to their numbers before the 2008 campaign season hit high-gear, each say it's still growing at a healthy clip. Blogs are fast-becoming the primary incubator for future public debates, but that doesn't mean they will become indistinguishable from newspaper Web sites, even if "newspapers" are increasingly based online."

While the more traditional efforts such as door to door campaigning and petition circulation have not yet been rendered obsolete, as the influence of web based efforts grows the ability to use the newest and fastest growing technologies will become essential to building a successful movement.

RNC to Host Open Meeting on Tech Ideas

2009-02-10T01:55:33Z

The Republican National Committee will be hosting a technology summit on Friday where activists and experts will be given 5 minute blocks of time to express their own ideas about how the GOP should take advantage of high-tech tools to move forward.

Areas that are expected to be covered include:

Blog Outreach
Databases
Email Strategies
Grassroots Activism
Mobile
Online Advertising
Online Fundraising
SEO/SEM
Social Networking
Web. Dev.
Widgets

(click here for more information or to register for this open event)

Tips for Pitching Your Advocacy Campaign to Bloggers

2009-02-10T00:54:50Z

Over at K Street Cafe, Chris Moody of the Cato Institute offers up some tips on getting your advocacy campaign covered by bloggers. The post includes examples from a recent effort that included basics on etiquette as well as ideas for the best formats and approaches to use.

The guts of Moody's argument is that one should consider giving the scoop on efforts to bloggers to generate buzz.

(read the full post at K Street Cafe)

Update on Obama's Pledged Legislative Transparency

2009-02-09T13:05:34Z

Patrick Ruffini draws attention to President Obama's election pledge to shed some light on the legislative process.

He notes that:

During the campaign, Barack Obama promised to post all non-emergency legislation on the White House website for public comment: "Sunlight Before Signing: Too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them. As president, Obama will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days."

To date, this has not been done with the handful of bills that have made their way to the President for his signature. The Republican leadership has attempted to use this pledge as leverage with the White House in the stimulus negotiations, to no avail.

Apparently the White House Communications shop was getting enough questions on the topic that they quietly posted an update on the White House blog on Friday afternoon:

This policy will be implemented in full soon; currently we are working through implementation procedures and some initial issues with the congressional calendar.

It isn't clear precisely what the "implementation" issues might be as they clearly have figured out how to post text to the White House web site and presumably have access to the text of the legislation that the President will sign.

A cynic might think that the "congressional calendar" issues referenced simply refer to the White House's desire to get certain legislation enacted on a schedule most suited to public relations and coalition relations and didn't realize during the campaign how that 5 day waiting period might impact the traditional Oval Office dog and pony show.

Are Obama's Early Virtual Grassroots Efforts Working?

2009-02-08T12:23:48Z

Sarah Wheaton at the New York Times touches on an important question about the early verdict on the Obama campaign/administration's effort to convert election supporters into policy activists.

Since Mr. Obama took office, a major question has been whether his netroots base could be repurposed to help promote his policy agenda, so observers are already looking for signs of success or failure in the house meetings. Frank Greve of McClatchy, using online sign-up lists, determines that "few supporters" are responding. But the Democratic Party is pushing back, noting that the online rosters are not representative of actual turnout (The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder agrees), and a Democratic official said the party is expecting tens of thousands of people to attend a meeting. The party also noted that a call for questions about the stimulus -- Gov. Tim Kaine, the Democratic National Committee's new chairman, answered a fraction of them -- yielded 30,000 queries.

A significant hurdle to overcome will be the fact that a not insignificant portion of Obama's electoral supporters simply wanted major change. Others were more interested in being part of making history by helping to elect the first black President. There was certainly no unifying policy viewpoint that pulled most of them together.

Now the Obama campaign has a massive list of supporters and donors with disparate motivations and desires. It is likely that not all of them support the stimulus package currently on the table, and it is even more likely that support for future policy battles will steadily erode as details emerge and divergent viewpoints resurface.

Nevertheless, Obama has an important resource and even partial success could translate into legislative victories in Washington, DC. But the jury is far from reaching a conclusion.

Think Before You Tweet

2009-02-08T12:07:12Z

The good news is that Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) is using Twitter. The bad news is that the Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee slipped up and Tweeted a few details about a Congressional delegation trip to Iraq that was supposed to be kept quiet until it was over, likely for security reasons.

Now, contrary to some of the overheated rhetoric being found online, this doesn't qualify as a classified national security secret. In fact, Congressional Quarterly acknowledges that they knew about it before Hoekstra' Tweets. So it really falls more into the category of unpublicized rather than super secret information.

Yet it was clearly a mistake. And Hoekstra should have known better. It does show one of the risks of immediate, direct, unfiltered communication through tools like Twitter. In the days of more structured communication, there would have been many check valves to stop this inadvertent public disclosure. Either Hoekstra's staff or a reporter may well have stopped the broad dissemination of these facts.

No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater though. Ultimately, no real harm appears to have been done here, but it does offer up an important cautionary note for everyone on Twitter and similar services.

Just because you CAN Tweet anything does not mean you should.

House GOP Seeking Technology Edge

2009-02-07T13:37:18Z

Are House Republicans getting ahead of the game when it comes to technology? Nancy Scola at TechPresident seems to think so. She writes that "Again and again, Hill Republicans are proving themselves more creative, more ambitious, and more forward-looking than Hill Democrats when it comes to the web."

Scola specifically points to the recent announcement that GOP.gov would have an API to enable tech-savvy Internet types to extract data from the web site to include in online or offline applications and web sites.

Of course, GOP.gov has actually been at the leading edge of political technology before. Nearly a decade ago I was hired by the House Republican Conference as a consultant to help construct a small part of the early innovation in the form of XML feeds to enable other members or even outside organizations to consume press releases and other data and re-display it. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich was a driving force behind technology adoption in Congress -- by Republicans as well as the body as a whole -- and in many ways some of the efforts he spawned were almost too far ahead of their time.

In those days, nobody was using RSS and there were no simple tools for capturing and re-using the XML data, so it required custom programming for anyone who wanted to use it. While that was a great full employment program for me and a few other consultants who understood the guts of the GOP.gov XML, it wasn't a recipe for widespread adoption.

Today, the tools are more readily available and people who can work with API's, XML, RSS, and other sharing technologies are a dime a dozen.

Building Obama's Presidential Grassroots Organization

2009-02-07T13:25:45Z

Usually when a presidential election concludes, the campaign goes dormant for a few years while much of the party-building and other grassroots activities switches to the national party committee and state and local campaigns. Not the Obama campaign. They have decided -- probably wisely -- to try to continue to harness the energy of its supporters by converting the campaign organization into a grassroots policy group.

Hence, "Organizing for America" was born. Details have been sketchy, but they are beginning to emerge.

Micah Sifry of the Personal Democracy Forum taps his resources to get a report from the group's first major conference call with supporters. Interestingly, the focus seemed to be on offline organizing methods -- specifically the house party. The Internet appears to play a supporting role as the infrastructure and communications medium, but the guts of their drive is face-to-face supporter meetings.

(read the complete report of the conference call here)

Help Shape the Politics Online Conference

2009-02-07T13:11:06Z

Colin Delany over at e.politics points to a survey being conducted by the Politics Online conference to help determine what sessions will be held this April in Washington, DC. He suggests a few that he is involved in, but when you visit the survey you will find a wealth of panel and presentation titles from plenty of folks.

Unfortunately, the survey doesn't include any additional information about the sessions beyond the title, so it is hard to cast accurate votes -- but that didn't stop me from filling it out anyway.

Also, note that Colin's post came a few days ago and since then the conference has been pushed back two weeks to April 20-21. This is typically an informative conference, so I recommend you check it out.

Mailbag: Guaranteed Blog Placement for Higher Search Engine Ranking

2009-02-06T14:11:57Z

Q. I found a company that guaranteed coverage by a certain number of bloggers that would help improve my search engine ranking. Is this a good idea?

A. Probably not. Without knowing all the details, this certainly sounds fishy at best. Typically companies that undertake projects like this are compensating bloggers under the table. Sort of like the old days of radio payola where labels funneled cash to disk jockeys to play certain songs more often.

While such an arrangement may help boost your search engine rankings in the short term, the chances of being discovered are pretty good if you are truly successful. Then you have created your own crisis communications project for no good reason.

The blogosphere is especially sensitive to anything that even hints at "pay to play" or a lack of transparency. Even when a blogger may disclose compensation, there is often hefty criticism of that individual (no matter how well-respected that person may have been to begin with).

Many even criticize bloggers who accept free samples or evaluation products from companies -- even if it is fully disclosed. While that is silly and I would never advise a company not to share samples with appropriate journalists or bloggers for review purposes, it gives some perspective as to the vehement criticism one is likely to encounter in a paid blogger post program.

Now, there are companies out there that try to thread the needle and pay bloggers but require them to explicitly disclose the relationship. PayPerPost was probably the most famous and controversial company in this space and its disclosure policies were much debated.

These vendors are still very controversial in the eyes of many and should be deployed by companies and organizations with appropriate trepidation. In fact, in the online advocacy and public affairs space, there doesn't seem to be much good reason to do it at all.

The best way to improve search engine rankings is to conduct a solid one-on-one blogger outreach program. It takes more time and effort, but the long-term results are much more convincing and the relationships built will likely continue to bear fruit.

Twitter Crosses the Pond to Parliament

2009-02-06T13:29:05Z

It seems that Twitter has crossed the ocean and become part of the political dialogue and toolkit of members of Parliament in the United Kingdom. A new web site, Tweetminster, aims to aggregate the Tweets of MP's and other leaders, as well as to connect visitors with their own politicians.

A Tweetminster press release touts the adoption of Twitter in recent weeks across the pond:

TweetMinster aims to realise Twitter's potential of enabling real-time conversations between members of parliament and voters. Since its launch, the number of MPs on Twitter has grown week on week, George Foulkes became the first Lord to join Twitter and several MPs have "tweeted" during the Prime Minister's Question Time.

(read the complete announcement here or visit Tweetminster to see for yourself)