Facebook Updates

I’ve been monitoring how often certain campaigns update their Facebook status.

Flu.gov updates about 4-5 times a day.

Komen for the Cure only updates about once a day if that.

Interesting.

If you are friends with flu.gov, ostensibly you already are aware of the H1N1 epidemic.  So this begs the question: why so many updates?  Is this overload?  Maybe, but if flu.gov using Facebook as a key one-way communication tool, then it is getting key information to those who have asked for it.

Komen, on the other hand, is clearly using their Facebook page for online community purposes.  There are far more friends publically posting to the Komen page.  So they don’t really need to give constant updates.  (They use Twitter for that.)  When they do give an update, it’s pretty good information, whereas, flu.gov updates so much that you could kind of zone it out.

Markets are Conversations

The main premise of The Cluetrain Manifesto, a marketing polemic (among other things) by Christopher Locke, Rich Levine, David Wienberger, and Doc Searls is that at their core, markets are conversations.  The authors contend that corporate culture in the postindustrial age has done all in its power to destroy the conversation.  Marketing/PR people represent the embodiment of the corporation sucking the lifeblood out of conversation and tirelessly working to keep everything monotone on a common theme or position.

The stuff of corporate speak is indeed lots of nonsense, and it’s refreshing to hear that reinforced by those who are on the inside of it.  The manifesto essentially discusses how this old model of corporate speak will not be able to survive in the Internet age.  Press releases, press conferences, flyers, one-pages, etc. don’t ever provide real information.  For that, people can go on the Internet and read review, talk to other customers, get hard data, etc.  

This point is well taken.  I see this a lot today between companies that have really embraced the conversational method of interaction with customers and those that are still clinging to the old world model.  Lee LeFever of Common Craft talks a lot about “lightweight” business models, and I think this applies quite nicely here--as it describe the difference between new and old marketing strategies. 

Lightweight marketing explains things in helpful ways, listen to people, and proactively engages.  Most importantly, the conversation always continues.  Lightweight companies not only allow customers to easily evaluate products and services, but also act on those suggestions.  It’s a type of democratic process that ultimately leads to be best product or service for everyone.  Companies are lightweight because they can respond and adapt with relative ease. 

Lots of old world mega corporations are doing everything they can to adapt to the lightweight model, but this is difficult for companies that have revenues higher than the GPD of many smaller nations.  Starbucks now seeks out the advise from customers in online forums, online communities, and old school reaching out and asking directly.  This has led to some nice improvement at Starbucks.  Other companies are using online communities in similar ways: to get valuable feedback and to engage with the customer.

How does this relate to campaigns?

Well, everyone is still figuring that out, but I think it’s safe to say that lightweight campaigns will be more successful from this point forward.  Campaigns that can quickly and genuinely react to the public will trump those that require top-down approval for every communication.  In short, deputize the right people and the right amount of people to speak for the campaign and let them go to task.  Furthermore, encourage the public to discuss the candidate and the issues, regardless of what they say.  Inevitably this leads to more trust and a better feeling about the campaign—that supposedly will help lead to success. 

Twitter at the Conference

I spent last week at the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) annual conference.  It was a big event at the Walter Washington Convention Center with about 20,000 attendees.

They had a very active Twitter presence throughout the show.  They created a hash tag #naeycac; the “ac” stands for annual conference.  All the tweets from the show had that hash tag, and NAEYC put up big monitors all around the convention center with live feeds from Twitter. 

I was tweeting for my organization, and it was cool to put out a tweet and immediately see it on the big screen.

There were a lot of early childhood education bloggers and tweeters at the show, so it made for an interesting online conversation.  I quickly learned where good tech savvy sessions were being held and got a feel for sessions that I could not attend.

Lesson here is to create a hash tag for any big live event that your organization holds.  It makes the conversation simple, quick, and fun.  

Millennial Makeover

Morley Winograd and Michael Hais’s (2008) Millennial Makeover offers an interesting and prescient look at macro level political shifts.  They argue that major political shifts happen at the intersection of a triggering event and new communication technologies.  They site several examples starting at the Civil War through 9/11.  They identify these shifts with generational transitions as well.  In fact, the whole first third of the book is about generational theory.  (Who knew this existed?  But it’s really cool).

The authors focus on a generational theory that places whole generations into four broad archetypes: 

1. Idealist (Boomers)

2. Reactive (Gen Xers)

3. Civic (Millennials)

4. Adaptive (The Silent Generation)

Their argument is that as the Millennials come into their own, a civic movement will sweep through the country.  People will be less focused on their selves and more on improving institutions. Where the Boomers looked to break the establishment and create a new one, the Millennials will look to perfect what has already been created.  And indeed, if the last election was any indication, that is happening.  Although Obama was elected by all generations, as Winograd and Hais point out, his message was fundamentally Millennial.  They highlight Obama’s reference to the Joshua Generation at a Selma, Alabama church during an annual remembrance of the fateful Pettis bridge crossing and beating of black marchers by Alabama State Troopers.  (A service which I happened to attend). 

Obama’s point echoes Winograd and Hais’s generational theories—namely, the Moses Generation (Boomers) gave us the Civil Right Movement and the Joshua Generation (Millennials) will realize MLK’s dream. 

So how does this all fit in with digital strategy?

Winograd and Hais: “[Technology has] oscillated in harmony with [America’s] generational cycles, so that as the nation finds the need to confront new challenges, the ability to debate those questions in wider and wider circle with more and more information has also been possible.”

Today we see just this.  Social networking and social media have exploded communication and information sharing like never before.  Just as the civic generation takes hold of things, communication technologies now allow people to collect just about any information they need.   Large open and democratic groups have emerged as far more influential and powerful than the cabal of protected, moneyed interests.  Open source software is a perfect example of this—its free and its usually better (if not completely sufficient) than its proprietary counterparts.  All of this is based on the idea that together we can accomplish more than alone.

Unfortunately, Winograd and Hais don’t quite address timeframe.  In order to create a valid working generational theory, you need to have a lot of time and data to look at.  Their timeline is limited as it only goes back about 100 years with any real accuracy.  Indeed, the civic generations (the Greatest Gen and the Millennials) certainly have a lot in common.  However, who’s to say that the next generation will be modeled off the Silent Generation.  Perhaps in the long view, “generations” will model a much longer time frame such as the Chinese Zodiac, or, more likely, a much shorter one.   If it’s the latter, then digital strategy will have to adapt to something quite new just as people begin to master what is becoming the status quo.

The right number of emails

Since signing up for Komen.org and giving some money to the cause, I have only received one additional email from them.  I must think this is a calculated move, and I really appreciate it.   I care enough about the topic to give money, and I can go to the site when I like.  I don’t need to be assaulted with emails.

The DNC takes the opposite approach.  I gave money to pol running for Senate a few years ago, and ever since have been triangulated by the DNC multiple times a week.  I get emails from Biden, Obama, Kerry, you name it.  Leave me alone please.

In a similar experience, my wife gave to the Southern Poverty Law Center a few years ago, and that proved to be a big mistake.  Ever since, our home has become the repository for dead trees.  We get so much mail from SPLC and other organizations like it, that whatever she initially gave certainly has been for a net loss for SPLC in the cost of all the mail we have gotten since then.

 

I Want the Leads! The Glen Garry Leads!

It seems that online political advertising is here to stay.  That’s not really a revelation since, the Internet is increasingly the primary mode of media communication. Best Practices for Online Political Advertising  has some interesting articles about the subject.

What I’d like to focus on a bit is sales, because when we cut all of the fat off this thing, political advertising is just Sales 101.  Different political machines are trying to get you to buy their product, which, in this case is a politician.  And as any good salesman knows, good leads lead to more conversions. 

Lead generation seems to be big business now in the political sphere.  The more you can micro-target the right leads, the more success you will have getting votes.  But bartering and trading leads seems disingenuous.  If I put my name on a list it’s because I am interested in that product.  I really don’t want my information sold to someone else.  If we want to talk about best practices, political organization should stop selling/sharing information to each other.

In the Best Practices piece, Karen Jagoda quotes Nick Nyman, CEO of Dynamic Logic, “…Consumers, needing ways to deal with [the] advertising onslaught, have developed mental and technical firewalls to help filter it all. Keeping that context in mind, the challenge for online advertisers is to understand what techniques are likely to penetrate these fire-walls to engage consumers.”

I see this as a problem.  If I put a firewall up, I don’t want someone to slyly figure out how to penetrate it.  That’s exactly what gave the salesman of yesterday such a bad rap.  It’s why we have bad associations with car dealerships—and why Carmax has been so successful (no pushy salemen).

So what’s the solution?  If I’m a politician, how can I best the message out without buying leads and acting like a salesman?  Well, let’s look back to the commercial sector for some more clues.  Companies that are having incredible success are doing so because they have incredible products.  Apple has a cool music player.  Google has lots of information.  Carmax has inexpensive cars without pushy salesman.  Each of these companies also have great websites.  When you need the product, you go to the website; you have a good experience; you tell your friends.

The political solution is to be a great politician, get great SEO optimization and a killer website.  Those who want to find you will.  Those who don’t want to find you, don’t need to be bothered by you.  This might seem to fly in the face of traditional marketing, but if you stay in the press (hopefully in a good way) people will hear about you on their terms, which is what they want.  People don’t want to be force-fed political speak.  And there’s nothing more disingenuous that a smiling pol on an internet banner ad.

Online Advocacy and the Social Net

Learned from Techpresident about a report on social media tools and major DC advocacy groups by Marc Ross, Christine Stineman, and Chris Lisi of 2ndSix, Tribe Effect and Chris Lisi Communications.

The basic conclusion is that major advocacy organizations have really only embraced email.  Many of the big ones aren’t even on Facebook, which is really like entry-level at this point.  And, of course, all the analysts/experts say you need a blog, but very few have one.

This could be a result of the fact that these groups are not savvy to the power of social media and how it could benefit them. 

BUT it could also be that they just don’t think it will work for them.

Until someone can get some good data, I’m not sure when we will know the answer to this.  While the social net worked great for Obama, can it really work for a campaign that doesn’t have that type of passionate energy behind it?  I’m not sure.  More later…

Social Mediaesque Design

I’m curious how long this design trend will last.  You know what I mean: the clouds, the curved corners, the module/widget look, the large slightly-cartoonish fonts, the in-your-face buttons. Examples: GOP.gov OR  Whitehouse.gov.

These designs, which I assume are user-friendly (they seem so), are certainly better than what preceded it.  But the time seems ripe for a creative designer to start doing something a bit different.

You know it’s about to change when all the political sites start to jump on the bandwagon.

Great widget on GOP.com

On of the blog posts on techpresident.com talked about the new GOP.com.   

The widget that caught my attention was a little dohicky on the home page that allows users to seamlessly glance at the feeds from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.  On the Facebook feed, it showed a selection of people who support GOP.com.  Of course, I recognized some of them, as they came from my friend list.  Always interesting to learn who supports GOP.com—particularly, when it’s unexpected.

techpresident.com....sweet.

Thanks to Allan Rosenblatt, I just looked at techpresident.com for this first time.  Interesting site with some cool features and cooler information.   Particularly nice that it attempts to be non-partisan.

This site integrates and integrates and then integrates some more.  Specifically, it integrates data from social networks directly into modules on its site.  For example, it collects data directly from Facebook and plots it on a colorful graph.  This instant visual perspective of “friend” supporters of different presidential candidates is informative, but, more importantly, shows how far ahead of the field Obama actually is.  (Although we need to admit, that Obama’s popularity is far more a function of who he is rather than his ass-kicking digital strategy).

Another nice integration feature is the Politickr which—on one page—shows the feeds from different social media outlets (YouTube, Twitter, blogs, etc.).  In quick glance, you can get a sense of what each campaign (or at this time, I suppose I should say campaign in remission) is writing about.

Another great integration is with Technorati.  On a series of charts, you see a graphical depiction of how often the candidates are mentioned in the blogosphere.

The MySpace Mess

Wow.  I went onto MySpace for the first time today and was greeted by a huge, unappetizing Wendy’s hamburger.  The whole thing was a gaggle of banner ads and consumer-driven navigation.

As a three-year facebooker, this was an odd experience.

I plugged in a search term and found four thick rows of sponsored links before I got any search results.

The whole thing was kind of like a nightmare—pictures of minor celebrities doing strange things, banner ads with seductively creepy women, and a wireframe architecture that was a cluttered, headache-inducing wreck.  

To Be Anonymous or To Not Be Anonymous

Dan Gilmore’s book We the Media focuses much attention on privacy and anonymity.  That’s what I want to look at today, because it has significant implications in the age of social computing.

As Gilmore points out, “Technology has given us a world in which almost anyone can publish a credible-looking webpage” (174).  I might extend this sentiment by proposing that technology increasingly allows us to have a credible-looking existence.  By that, I mean that social computing has taken individual branding to a new level.  Online tools are readily available to help create entire personas.   

And people, many people, have done just that.    

There are countless examples of folks who have made their voice known online and attracted hundreds, if not thousands of “followers.”   It’s amazing how this has empowered so many who previously had no outlet.   This has been both a good and a bad thing, although I think the general trend is toward the good.

As more and more people make their voice known, credibility becomes increasingly important, and as Gilmore suggests, credibility and anonymity are closely connected: “Credibility…comes from a willingness to stand behind [your] arguments when a compelling reason to stay anonymous is absent” (181).

Media discussion boards are good examples of online credibility.  Take a peek at a Washington Post comment section after an article.  You will see hundreds of angry, thoughtless diatribes about everything related or not related to the article.  Of course mixed in, you’ll find thoughtful and serious posts; but these get crowded out under the din of the obnoxious, intentionally disruptive, anonymous poster—or the “troll”.  I’d suggest that this is largely a function of the fact that the Post allows anyone to comment and comment anonymously. 

On the other hand, the Wall Street Journal requires you to provide your real name and email address.  To comment you must be a paying subscriber.  The quality of these posts is generally more thoughtful, with the angry diatribe posts, few and far between.  It seems that when people are forced to identify themselves in some way, the trollness subsides.  Trollism is of the same family as mob behavior. 

I’m not trying to suggest that we eliminate anonymity on the web anymore than we would in the real world.  But that’s just the thing.  If you had an entire conversation with someone and then learned that he had simply been playing an obnoxious devil’s advocate the whole time, it would be odd and uncomfortable.  At the same time, most people don’t want to announce to world who they are when they’re at the grocery store.

Gilmore basically is basically suggesting that like everything else that’s new, the norms are now being established.  As those norms solidify, one’s ability to be anonymous should be preserved, unless that person wants to “go public.”  At the same time, if you really want to establish credibility, you need to lift the anonymous veil sooner rather than later.

Too Much Tweeting?

I’ve noticed on my Twitter feed that certain folks/organizations tweet all the time—five, six, ten times a day.  They tweet so much that I begin to gloss over their tweets and look for those that don’t tweet so much.  Maybe it’s just me.

At the same time, if an organization tweeted one awesome tweet a day wouldn’t that be more effective?  Maybe…maybe not.  I’m just not sure yet.  One tweet a day means that you might miss it, but with so many tweets you might miss the important one anyway.

Maybe Twitter needs some method to weed out the less important tweets?  Does that already exist?

Mobile Technology as Campaign Tool—part 2

Interestingly, In Tracking Your Supporters: Events and Location-Based Services Jim Udall discussed the potential of using your mobile device as a locator.  There seems to be promise in this as groups will be able to come together with ease.  It does beg the question, however, when would I really need to use this?   Still, it’s cool/scary (depending on your perspective) that technology like this is readily available to anyone.

Mobile Technology as Campaign Tool

Mobile technology as an essential political tool is now a given.  The Politics-to-Go Handbook identified this as early as 2005—as groups we already using SMS text messaging to help them achieve some pretty remarkable things (see Orange Revolution or Howard Dean circa 2004).

With that said, I’ve noticed a trend with devotees of online/mobile communication tools.  Namely, the tools themselves are seen as the primary means to achieve an end.  An example of this is Howard Rheingold’s claim in The Missing Link: How Mobile Technology Connects Internet Activism with the World that Kerry lost the 2004 election in large part because his mobile campaign was not as effective as Bush’s.  See, now, I’m just not that sure about that.  I’d say that Kerry lost the election because people thought Bush would make a better president.  The fact that Bush was better at mobilizing voters is simply a function of the will of those voters to vote.  We saw a similar thing in 2008.  The will of the people to vote for Obama was enormous. He did not win the election because his mobile team were all-stars.

With that said, mobile communications are huge—no denying that.  But we need to remember that they are only as powerful as the candidate or cause.  Hark back to Nazi occupied France.  Somehow the resistance was able to communicate.  (see Inglourious Basterds :).  I mention that only to suggest that if the motivations are there, people will find ways to communicate.  Different tools will simply help them do it in different ways.

When I think of the future of mobile technologies for political communications, I see the Internet playing the biggest part.  SMS will fade away as text messaging becomes more akin to online chatting—most mobiles phones already have this capability.  As change unfolds, I’m not sure how campaigns will effectively use the mobile device—as chatting is deliberate and requires agency by the chatter and is usually done by people who know each other. 

As the internet will increasingly be on a phone, mobile campaigns will need to adjust.  Strategies useful in the last election will be less so in the next one.  The whole process of texting will soon be like the fax machine; namely, it has some use, but not a lot.

I know that this has become somewhat of a theme on my posts, but as a majority of the population adopts these new technologies, it will become harder and harder to reach people with the ease that campaigns can reach the early adopters today.  Take, for example, telemarketers/automated campaign calls—no one likes them.  Still, there was a time in the not so distant past when those types of strategies were effective.  People only have so much time for causes and campaigns not directly related to what they are doing--if your organization is lucky to slip in with someone, that's good.  But expectations should not be based on the success of the 2008 historic presidential election.

 

The Argument--enter the new Washington insiders

“No matter who was right, though, the whole debate was premised on a fundamental assumption about politics that no one on either side seemed to question—that money and tactics alone could revive the party” (Bai, 174).

Matt Bai’s compelling read, The Argument, provides a look at the anatomy of Democratic party politics between 2004-2007.  The book is about the fight for the “soul” of the party and offers arresting views of the inner workings of party politics.  Most importantly, the book reveals that no amount of radicalized communications will lead to a cogent "argument" that unifies the party.  What is needed is not new strategies, but new ideas. 

Bai is an excellent writer, and his book reads like an expert treatment for a movie script—I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s been optioned.  He details each character in the drama from his personal experience of them, and then sets them up for fantastic conflict.  One particularly striking conflict was that between Rob Stein and Erica Payne, two key players in the seedling days of The Democracy Alliance, the progressive response to the withering Democratic party after the dismal 2004 election returns.

With a slide show, Stein and Payne had energized a sea of big money Democratic donors disillusioned with the establishment.  Stein illuminated how Republicans had so effectively won elections over the years.  Payne fundraised some of the biggest donors in New York and California.  Their implicit proposal was to replicate what the GOP has done and take back the electorate. 

Once they had amassed millions for this project, Payne and Stein saw very different visions of how to best use the money.  This came to a head during the election for the first chairmanship of the young organization.  Using backchannels, Payne out-foxed Stein and convinced a majority of the donors to elect a complete political outsider from SOHO to the chairmanship.

These type of mini-dramas abound throughout Bai’s book and provide key insights into a shifting tide in the Democratic Party—from big-money maneuvering to mass-interest influence--but still bereft of broad galvanizing ideas.  The new chairman, Steven Gluckstern was “a guy almost no one in Washington power circles could remember meeting [and] a sense of severe anxiety began to set in among the party elite” (107). 

Bai uses these type of shifts to highlight how the party was moving away from its past into a new unknown.  Who knew what would happen if you empowered millions over the Internet.

Well, we have an idea now that Obama has been elected.  However, it’s interesting to note that the old and the new blended together in the end.  The new internet political movement certainly helped thrust Obama into the White House, but once he got there, he promptly set up a team of old school democratic operatives, including Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff.  And remarkably, as Bai suggested, even now, there remains few ideas that democrats can really stand behind.

In the end, Bai’s book is an excellent history of a specific moment in time documenting the inevitable adoption of digital political strategies to win elections.  However, I think it’s yet to be seen how powerful the internet will be to shape policy.  Bai does give some interesting examples of this, such as when MoveOn pressured Sen. Salazar (D-Col.) to vote the right way on the Supreme Court compromise.  But this example is much like a presidential election—they’re highly charged and everyone seems to care.  Washington insiders, on the other hand, have always made their keep by mastering the unsexy side of politics, and then welding that mastery to fit whatever they are advocating.

I don’t see these insiders going anywhere.  Particularly since any powerful Washington insider knows that as long as you don’t get bogged down in abortion, guns, or God, you have a pretty good run of the place—internet or no internet.

More importantly, the democrats might have the House and the Senate thanks to slick new strategies, but they still lack a clear argument.  And the GOP will be at their heals in no time.

Twitter chat

Learned in class last week about Twitter chat.  Interesting.  This seems like an amazing use of Twitter.

Why?  Well…let’s see…

First, let me define what I mean when I say Twitter Chat, because I’m sure there are a host of different definitions.   Based on what Alan Rosenblatt of the Center for American Progress and William Buetler and Leslie Bradshaw of New Media Strategies said, the Twitter chat has these simple elements:

1. A common topic

2. A unique hash tag

3. A common time

4. A core group of people wanting to discuss

If you come equipped with those four things, you are ready to go.  Basically, you get the word out that you will have a conversation about the topic at a certain time, and everyone gets on and discusses.  Simple.

So what?

Well, having worked in online Communities of Practice for years, I know a lot about the challenges of getting people online together at the same time—and getting them to contribute.  Typically, you have lots of lurkers and few posters…and those that might post are a bit intimidated by those that do.  So you end up with two or three people in a chat—and unless they are super interesting, that can get old quickly for everyone.

The Twitter chat seems different for several reasons.

-The Twitter format encourages quick posts, which mimics the way people talk.  I say something, you respond.  Although the posts might not be as thoughtful, it more resembles an actual dialogue.  For more substantial conversations, an asynchronous discussion board is more appropriate.

-A Twitter chat can satisfy the urgency of the moment.  Right after an election or a Redskins loss, people have a lot to say.  Twitter chat it perfect for that.  And everyone knows where to go.

-It super easy.  All you need to do is search for the hash tag, and you can read and post.  There’s just something a bit much about a discussion board.  This is a amazing alternative.

 

Context is King

Although Person-to-Person-to-Person was completed in 2006, many of the digital political strategies are the same today as they were then.  The main things that are changing are the tools—email, social networking, meta networking, microblogging.  Although each of these tools requires different skills, the strategies seem to be similar to what they were before all these tools were available.

The one key item that these articles don’t really seem to focus on is the item that seems to be the most important: have a cause and a context that people care about.

Eric Alterman’s essay provides the most useful takeaway from the readings when considering digital political strategy over the longer term.  Namely, context is king. 

As people’s tolerance wanes for campaign after campaign asking them to “share” or “sign up” or “join the conversation” the context of the campaign/message will be the driving force for success.  For example, I might love badminton but not be willing to join a campaign by the badminton society to get more high schools to offer badminton as an official sport.   However, if the context were right, my motivations could change.  The campaign could be connected to the Olympics or to a HHS drive to improve the health of kids. 

Take the Obama campaign.  This is widely sited as a primo example of successful online organizing and activism.  Indeed, it was, but that success was in direct proportion to the peoples’ desire for change and the context to channel that desire.  The campaign’s great accomplishment was that it made easy giving money, staying connected, and organizing.  But the fuel was an implicit energy and motivation not only to join the Obama movement, but also to change the status quo.

Things get difficult when you try to gain traction around a campaign that less exciting than Obama.  The methods described by these essays deliver the desired results only if three key prerequisites have been met: 

1. You know how to use the tools

2. People already care about the topic

3. The context is right

This might seems somewhat obvious, but the second and third prerequisites cannot be stressed enough.  My experience has shown, for example, that the association community has not been able to effectively use social media.  What’s odd about that is the association community is a natural pre-formed group who care about specific topics.  Certainly, this could change as society acclimates to these new tools. 

On the other hand, as people grow more accustomed to social media, social networking, etc. they will prove much harder to reach—as they will be more discerning about who they open themselves up to online.  In fact, I would propose that in time it will be as challenging to reach people online as it has been offline.

I’m not even sure if “thinking like a rock band” will suffice.  The fact is that people have a very limited amount of time, and few campaigns will be as interesting as Obama’s.

At the end of the day, context drives the campaign.  In the Obama campaign the context was clear: the chance to be part of something historic—and to catapult the old out and bring the new, the very new.

These tools and strategies can be very, very powerful indeed.  But if the context is not right, it’s like sending out a mailer to a purchased list—not a lot of return.

 

Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky

It’s interesting that a book about, among other things, the radically changing nature and “amateurization” of consumer media was published by Penguin and has three pages of blurbs at the beginning of the book from major, established media organizations.  In addition, the cover has a quote from the Boston Globe (which I think is now bankrupt) and the back cover quotes from the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the New York Observer. 

This suggests one of two things. 

One: Skirky’s book really is on the front edge of a wave that the most of society hasn’t fully caught yet; Penguin realizes that but still has to appeal to older patterns.

OR

Two: the role of the managed, professional class isn’t really going anywhere, despite Shirky’s observations.  

Of course, it’s probably a combination of both these options. 

And that’s one of the more refreshing parts of Shirky’s book: he looks at both sides.  He appreciates that new media trends are just now unfolding and beginning to be understood. He also recognizes that people now have an outlet for the human desire to create groups and organize in ways that allow for the greatest depth and breadth of expression. 

By that, I mean I can now find people to share with and learn from about ideas and experiences that are critical to me.  This, in turn, allows the body of knowledge for everyone to expand exponentially.  If I get Lyme disease, I will be able to find groups of people that have had it, recovered from it, and have loads of information that I would find useful.  In the old method of management and communications, if I got Lyme disease, I would have to seek out support groups or other “communities of practice” that had been created top-down by various professional organization or medical institutions.  No longer.  Now, I can find these communities of practice organically emerging based on the needs of the group.  If I have been experiencing arthritis as a result of Lyme disease, then surely I will be able to find groups discussing and sharing on just that subject.

However, I use a medical example here to demonstrate some of the limitations of these new methods of decentralized communication.  As Shirky says, “It used to be hard to get people to assemble and easy for existing group to fall apart.  Now assembling latent groups is simple, and the groups, once assemble, can be quite robust in the face of indifference or even direct opposition from larger society” (p.210).   This can obviously be a problem if the information the group is providing is either plain wrong or is leading to destructive behavior.  I have seen this with forums discussing the benefits of using massive doses of antibiotics to combat Lyme-like symptoms, despite evidence to the contrary.  Shirky gives the example of pro-anorexia groups on discussion forums of YM.

As a result, I thought Shirky could have put more energy in his book to the idea that indiscriminate blogging, posting, and web publishing does have a dark side.  In a medical situation it could have unpleasant consequences—masses of people determining the best course of action, as opposed to doctors or researchers with evidence based research. 

We see this pronounced in political blogs, the vast majority of which are people who watch/read the news and provide ad-hoc analysis, simply based on their perspective—as opposed to an investigator who diligently researches what is actually in a bill or the voting pattern of a particular elected official.  Hopefully, we will find an economic model in the near future that allows for hard-core investigative research AND for the collaborative power of the blog.  (State of Play touched on this).

One of the weaknesses of Here Comes Everybody was a general lack of real data.  Most of the book read sort of like a thoughtful blog.  Skirky made keen observations about the changing nature of communications, but he didn’t provide real data to back it up; rather, he provided interesting antidotal examples of new media in action.

Despite this, his book is timely and useful, largely because the pros of new media far outweigh the cons.  The outlets for human expression have exploded, and that is a good thing.  The difficult part will be figuring out how to balance this communications “revolution” with institutional knowledge and practices that have proven quite robust so far.  Perhaps his next book. 

Twitter and the NFL

Despite the fact that the organization is now in shambles and the Supreme Court is about to force it to change its name (rightly, I must say), the Washington Redskins have been dear to me since the good old days of John Riggins and Darrel Green.

This week two unpleasant things happened to the team (actually it was more than two—but for the sake of simplicity, let’s keep it there for now).  One, they lost to the previously winless-since-2007 Detroit Lions.  Two, they felt they sting of the Twitter fan attack.

A rookie on the team was upset last week when fans at FedEx Field booed the team despite beating the Rams.  This rookie proceeded to damn the fans for their behavior with this Twitter post: "All you fake half hearted Skins fan can...I won't go there but I dislike you very strongly, don't come to Fed Ex to boo dim wits!!"

The fans went crazy and soon enough the story was picked up by major networks. 

Twitter and football is so interesting because for the first time fans have the opportunity to publically express their celebrations or frustrations with a team or a player.  This is particularly good for Redskins fans who have been deeply frustrated, and rightly so, ever since the team cursed themselves by moving from DC to Landover, Maryland a little over a decade ago.

 Although Twitter doesn’t allow depth or breadth of thought, it does allow for fans to get things off their chests.  This is also true during the political election season, which is very much like the NFL season (I’ll post on that later).

It’s tough to tell whether or not this is really a good thing however.  I, for one, find it fun but a wasteful enterprise, reading all these ranting and ravings.  Surely, there is some value, although I can’t quite point it out yet.  Thoughts?

Nuts and Bolts of Digital Political Strategy

After reading Colin Delany’s Online Politics 101 and Ben Rigby’s Mobilizing Generation 2.0, one thing became crystal clear about online campaign strategy: this is very new stuff. Both writers freely acknowledge this and give practical examples of organizational strategies that worked and those that didn’t. At the same time, they remind us that there isn’t a sure fire method to use online tools to deliver results.

Because best practices on online strategies seem to be changing daily, ROI is often fleeting. An organization might spend loads of money and time building a wiki, virtual world, blog, etc, but be left with few measureable outcomes. HOWEVER, as Rigby and Delany stress, just because we can’t solidly measure all the results of a digital campaign doesn’t mean that it’s done in vain.

The world has alreay begun a new way of communicating and every digital step organizations take keeps them more in synch with these emerging strategies.

One thing that is not new is having good content. Rigby and Delany both emphasize that “content is king.” No matter how proficient your organization is with online technologies, if you don’t have the content no one will care. From my own experience, it seems that this is a real stumbling block for organizations looking to establish an online presence. They either have not thought about how to repurpose their content or they simply don’t have the content to begin with.

Three key takeaways from these readings:

Mobile phone campaigns are here to stay and have amazing potential.

Rigby has an entire chapter dedicated to mobile strategies—and the subject matter certainly deserves it. Mobile strategies are delicate, because the last thing you want to do is spam your members on their mobile devices. But as networks improve and mobile internet browsing advances, it certainly seems plausible that the phone will be as important as the PC for connecting to the internet (it is already is for some people!). By creating strategies using mobile devices that can gather data or send out key information, organizations can capture people right at the moment they are thinking about the topic. If done right, mobile technologies should make it super easy for people to interact with your organization.

Online “gardeners” keep your online presence fresh, healthy and growing.

Rigby talks about “wiki gardeners,” (the people who maintain an organizational wiki). I like the idea of this role a lot, and it will only become more and more important as these strategies mature. I might even take the idea of the wiki gardener and broaden its scope and suggest that all organizations need digital gardeners to monitor and tend to their online presence. The online gardener can monitor comments on organizational blogs, work on social networks to build friend bases and keep good communications flowing, tend to the wiki, make sure that online communities don’t languish, keep content updated, and basically do the lion’s share of the digital upkeep. Unfortunately, until 2.0 technologies reliably generate quantifiable ROI, organizations probably will not justify a full time position for this (but they should--some already do). I think we’ll see this quickly change in the coming years—it’s already started.

If content is king, INTEGRATION is prince.

As Delany writes: “If you pick up one idea from this website, let this be it—integrate or die.” The power of these tools lies in the fact can all work off each other. The more they are integrated the more powerful they become. An add can encourage you to text in some information, which can lead you to a blog, which you can put into your feed, which eventually leads you to join an online community, which makes you like the organization more and more until you bequeath your life savings to them. Well, it’s not that simple, but that’s the idea. If your organization is good, and fights for a good cause, or provides some key service, and you can properly place the content in the right tools the right way, you might be on your way to riches—or at least a more sophisticated communications plan.

Initial Investigation of How Campaigns Are Using Facebook

What Strategy? will be looking at some of the tools used on the Internet today to get the message out. Let's see Facebook in action

Looked at two political campaigns and one cause:

-DC's Mayor Adrian Fenty (sadly, starting his campaign already)
-Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) (campaigning it up this year)
-DC Vote (campaigning, and until a Constitutional admendment, will always be campaigning)

All three Facebook pages followed a pretty standard Facebook tab layout with content on the Wall, Info, and Photos. Some common threads:

-Each page prominently led users to a webpage.
-The photos sections did not inundate you with photos but selected only the all-star pictures.
-Able to see other supporters (standard, of course, on Facebook).
-Each page used the “updates” feature to tell supporters about recent activity. Often these updates included links to other webpages or stories.

Nice touches:

-Fenty had a YouTube tab which allowed you to easily watch key interviews and videos of him (like his appearance on Meet the Press).
-Fenty used a Notes tab to post his extensive bio. But he also had a nice little RSS feature configured for the notes section so that supporters can learn of new info that he puts there—which will most likely be infrequent.
-The profile picture on the DC Vote page is the same as the advertisements that are running around DC right now on the subways and busses. Good integration!
-Fenty had a nice link to the “schedule” section of his DC Govt page so that you can always learn what he is doing, in theory. (He’s been taking a lot of unscheduled trips lately however).

Strategy

The term "strategy" is perilously close to falling in the dark void of jargon. It's used so often that it's meaning is fading quickly.

Unfortunately, I don't have a solution to this problem, as the word does sum up a lot of things in 8 letters.

I will try (although I'm not sure how sucessful I will be) to define what I mean when I deploy "strategy."

What Strategy?

What Strategy? will look at the different methods folks use to get their message out and get people engaged. What Strategy? doesnt make the distinction between messaging for corporations, non-profits, mom and pops, political campaigns or people just trying to get a voice out there. Different tactics are needed for different campaigns, but the fundamentals are more similar than different, particuarly these days.

Although jargon, catchphrases and the dreaded 'conference speak' will pop-up here and there, What Strategy? will make every effort possible to limit their appearance, as they nausiate us, and we don't like them.