Build Your Own Video & Audio Production Studio and Portable Streaming Video Kit for Your Campaign

Part I – Audio

Your campaign should be using video and a lot of it. Campaign video can build a reputation and a defense against baseless attacks from the competition. Video also helps you build your brand. Just check out the latest stats from Comscore on Youtube and you’ll find that 33.2 billion video views occurred in 2009. That’s 100% growth between January ‘09 and December ‘09. Still not convinced? I’m guessing you agree with what I’ve said so far…but you just don’t know where to start.

I understand. It is overwhelming when you haven’t done video as a habit before. Let’s chisel away at your road blocks one at a time.  Today we’re going to look at the audio component.

Wireless Lapel or Lavalier Microphone:
Why use an external mic when my camera has one?  Bottom line..the mics built into camera are awful.  They do the trick if the subject is close enough but you can really raise your production bar by using an external mic.  Obviously this means your camera must be able to accept an external input.  Most Canon’s have a mic jack even at the low level.  MOST non-HD cheap camcorders today have eliminated the mic jack and the famous FLIP HD does NOT have a jack.  There is a place for Flip cams and we’ll talk about that when we release the video portion of this series. Flip UltraHD Camcorder, 120 Minutes (Black)

Why wireless? Here’s the super double bonus.  If you buy this wireless Shure lapel mic, you can also use it when you do your streaming of events using Ustream.tv or Livestream.com on the campaign trail.  You won’t have to rely on yucky mics built into computers or trying to patch into a sound system.  You simply plug the wireless mic base station right into the MIC JACK on the laptop and you’re good to go.  This works incredibly well.  Just be sure to bring a bunch of 9V batteries because the power pack you wear requires this size and it can eat batteries if you use it a lot.

Using a wireless lapel mic with your camera and during streaming will prevent issues like we saw in the beginning of this Mike Cox 2010 review I did.  These guys are smart and they know how to fix what’s going on there with the audio (watch for a couple minutes)…but you’ll get the idea.

This rugged and affordable Shure wireless mic system is really at the entry point of good equipment and I’ve found nothing else that matches its performance at any lower price.  There are cheaper options from what I’ve seen…but reports from many freelancers I’ve spoken with don’t bode well for them.

Shure Wireless Lavalier System PG14/PG185 – Wireless audio delivery system (At point of this posting price is $299 which it has been seemingly for a couple years now)

Email Marketing Is Alive and Well in Campaigning

We’ll be doing some courses on and bringing you interviews with email marketing company leaders soon. But interestingly I’ve had numerous people in the last week tell me that “Email Marketing is dead” and it’s all about social media. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’d counter that,

Bad email marketing is dead (but not gone) and good email marketing is still thriving…and growing.

Do a survey in your group of friends.  Ask them how they receive information and marketing.  You’ll find a sporadic “RSS Feed” answer but we’re still in the tiny minority on that one.  Email still rules the kingdom of Internet Marketing.  So when it comes to running for office you must engage early and put a good amount of focus on building quality lists of people who are engaged. Then give them what they’ve asked for.

Fire Your Campaign Manager

If you’re a candidate or campaign team ready to hire a campaign manager…or you’ve already hired one please take note:

If the first thing your Campaign Manager tells you to do is to get on Facebook and Twitter…show him/her the door.

Sounds odd coming from we tech centric uber geeks who live inside the Matrix eh?  Not really.  Here’s why.  Although Twitter and Facebook are obviously KEY tools in the overall campaign arsenal…they are merely part of a multivariate marketing equation that will drive you to victory.

When a campaign manager is obssessed with Twitter and Facebook first without having an overall content / web strategy…that means there are serious gaps in their approach.  Okay, maybe you don’t have to fire him/her…but absolutely call us and we’ll do a 2 day immersion camp that will blow their minds.   It will be a good save for you campaign manager and the best thing for your candidate.

Campaigns Need to CRUSH IT!

If you’re running a campaign as a candidate or staffer or simply contemplating your political fate…you MUST read Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk.  Sure this book is about cashing in on your own passion…but the book is a great guide to how YOU MUST be thinking with regard to your political brand.

We often say that the political scene isn’t much different from the business scene.  You’re trying to sell yourself, build a personal brand, build and organization that’s effective and connected.  If you’re smart you’re trying to create content and leverage new media to build online momentum…the list goes on.

You MUST read this book.

If you buy this book using the Amazon link below I’ll subtract the price of the book from your ORS quarterly subscription…not once but FOR LIFE so bring it on…and CRUSH IT! with me. Just email me or @ me (@operationred) and ask for a code and tell me, “I’M CRUSHING IT!” and you’ll get the discount.

What the Apple iPad Means For Politics and Campaigns

As Huffington Post Tech and Innovations Editor Jose Antonio Vargas says regarding Apple’s launch of the iPad device, “It’s the Content Stupid”.  The device itself is a pretty slick and relatively affordable content platform that campaigns should become hyper-familiar with.  Vargas hits it right on.  Here’s what the Operation Red State team sees for the iPad in Politics.

1. The iPad (and the iPhone/iTouch for the matter) are perfectly suited to have custom apps for field data gathering, door knocking, and polling. We haven’t seen much attention paid to this area of app development yet but it will come.  We want to see a google maps mashup that can assign door knocking grids to campaign staff/volunteers that allows for simple data point recovery in real-time like:  ”no one home”, “definite YES vote”, “definite NO vote”, “approximate talk time with voter”, “undecided” , etc.   Imagine sending out 5 volunteers to hit 5 grids in an evening, getting a 70% “at home” rate and knowing that of those 70% hits…that 65% said “definite YES”. ORS will build this if a campaign or campaigns fund it FYI.
2. The iPad is large enough for campaign operatives to engage people in the field and have them touch the screen to answer questions.
3. The iPad has an always on wireless data option that brings a nearly universal metro area connection for real time data transmission via the cloud back to campaign HQ.
4. The iPad is a convenient device to bring along to house party and other fundraisers for people to sign up for your updates…or more importantly CONTRIBUTE to your campaign.  Mobile optimized donation pages are a big plus and we don’t see too much of that on smart phones.

What other uses to do you see for the iPad in the coming years politically speaking?

Campaign Technology Leaders and Campaign Website Developers: This Post is For You

The ORS tech team strongly believes that candidates running for office should frequently put out compelling content (positions, opinions, refinement of position relative to challengers, getting to know you, etc.) Articles, press releases, blog posts (all about the same anymore) are a part of the equation for sure…but you must leverage video and audio.  If you’re using WordPress like we believe you should, here’s a recommendation that took a bit of nerding out to get right.

1. You must install the Blubrry PowerPress plugin for Wordpress.  I won’t handle configuration of this plugin in this post but I’m telling you right now that this plugin makes the distribution and display of podcasts and video an absolute charm.
2. Create your video content and edit it into something meaningful if necessary.  STOP:  You will likely be in .MOV, .M4V or .WMV format here if you’re using iMovie or Windows Movie Maker (basic editing software choices). That’s OK in this plugin.  The player says “Supported Media Formats: mp3, m4a, ogg, wma, ra, mp4a, m4v, mp4v, mpg, asf, avi, wmv, flv, swf, mov, divx, 3gp, midi, wav, aa, pdf, torrent, m4b, m4r.”  So technically you can use just about any common video and audio file format and the player will just “work”.  I’ve not tested all the formats.
3. If a file format doesn’t work well or doesn’t work in all browsers (my gut says .wmv…that’s a windows media file) may not be the best choice for universal “workitude”) use a conversion software like Any Video Converter to turn your .wmv into something else like .mov or .m4v.
4. Here comes my favorite part.  If you want to distribute your audio and video casts to iTunes, PowerPress has that support all built in.  It will send your content off automatically once configured properly.  BUT if you’re using video you’ll want to convert your video into “iPod/iTouch/iPhone ready” format!  Any Video Converter software does this for you.  It creates a size and dimension of video that can be viewed on the phone.  If you don’t shrink your video accordingly you will get your video submitted and viewable on iTunes…but it can’t be taken mobile.  That’s a big difference. You want to be portable.

I will probably do a screen cast soon (available on our iTunes video cast feed here) showing the complete configuration of this plugin since it has taken some pretty serious time to get right.  I can only imagine how long this would take if you’re in the “I know how to check email” category as a candidate on a budget.

We try to make the technologically challenging a walk in the park as we show candidates and campaigns how to run for office.  If we can help you accelerate your efforts, please subscribe to our membership site or at least grab our free stuff to fuel your campaign technology efforts.
deo Converter iPhone Format Screen

Checklist for New Candidates

If you want to run a technologically savvy campaign and one that wins, we recommend you compare your actions to the following:

1. Buy your domain name(s) and get cheap hosting from godaddy.com
2. Build or have someone build you a graphically pleasing but inexpensive website using the hosted WordPress.org platform using a free or inexpensive template that has light graphical modifications.
3. Set up your social sharing accounts (twitter, facebook, etc.) if you don’t already have them.  (You should have been building your brand online all along but in smaller campaigns sometimes this isn’t the case).
4. Write at least 10 blog posts on various topics of interest in your race including statements on your key issues.
5. Make a “Why I’m running” video and an “About Me” video.

This is only the beginning and there are about 100 other steps but if you execute on these and want more help, read our blog, subscribe to our email news alerts/video tips and you’ll be well ahead of most of the field.

Website Review – TimWalberg.com

Enter FULL SCREEN mode if you’d like to get up close and personal as we review candidate for Congress Tim Walberg’s Website.  You can also get these videocasts in iTunes.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (82.0MB)

Red Alert Webcast review Mike Cox 2010

This weeks randomly selected website for review was MikeCox2010.com.  Mike has some great stuff going on with his site and you’ll even see that I caught a live webcast being broadcast on his site. Nice touch.  Please take a look at this webcast and see what you can take away for your site.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (238.5MB)

Callfire Call Bank and Auto Dial for Your Campaign

Today on the Red Alert Podcast I spent some time with Jacob Weiss from CallFire.  CallFire gives campaigns the ability to streamline their outbound call bank activity OR get very affordable auto-dialing (we probably still call them RoboCalls).  After a great interview I am very impressed with this offering.

Here’s the basic premise:  You the candidate want to run your campaign and keep costs low.  You’d like to arrange for a “Call Bank” or in simple terms, “You’d like to allow volunteers or paid people make outbound calls to lists of numbers on your behalf.”  You might consider having your friends, family, and volunteers do this for you on their own time.  This is possible…but it’s pretty inefficient especially if you’d like GOOD data on who was reached, the consistency of the messages left, capturing what WAS said about the candidate or the likelihood of voting for him/her, etc.

CallFire lets you have an army of people login to a central “mother ship” in the cloud…anywhere…anytime via their computer.

1. The volunteer or staffer dials into the mother-ship on a cell phone, land line, or VOIP (skype or whatever they have available).
2. The caller is fed calls through a queue and can hit the “leave a message” button on their console (that saves a ton of time without actually having to leave the message each time.)
3. If the call recipient answers the caller can capture notes and ask a series of questions according to a script or work flow and those answers are captured.
4. The caller then pushes “End Call” and the next auto-dialed phone call can be accepted.

It’s really quite slick.  So here’s the deal…listen to our Podcast and get the big picture.  Then, definitely watch this CallFire video demonstration.  This video will give you the lay of the land.  Very impressive.  Oh and pricing…is fantastic!  The system will absolutely spike your efficiency for as little as $2/hour.  How about sending an auto-dial message out to ONE THOUSAND NUMBERS for as low as $35! (details on their site)

And…as always…in my quest for deals to run your campaign more efficiently and inexpensively…we’ve gotten a sweet deal from CallFire.  If you’re looking to do a robocall or “voice broadcast” as they say in the business,  just mention that you’re a non-profit that heard about CallFire in Operation Red State’s podcast and receive a 16% discount off your Voice Broadcast campaign.

More value. More efficiency. That’s how to run a campaign online.  Please join us.  If you enjoy our free information…consider getting MORE delivered to your inbox and sign up and our latest course FREE on developing a Hyper Local Twitter following.  To victory!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 18:14 — 16.7MB)

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