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

February 15, 2010 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Campaign Technology, Red Alert Dossier

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.

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.
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.
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.
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