The state of campaign software and new media engagement

November 24, 2009 by John Burnley · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Campaign Technology, Red Alert Dossier, Social Media

(Please welcome John Burnley to the ORS family. John brings a vast amount of more traditional infrastructure expertise to our “cloud based thinking”. His knowledge and understanding of systems and architecture will certainly round out the ORS team as we move forward, expand, and bring you more content aimed at helping you developing a winning online campaign strategy.)

After being in the technology sector for over 20 years, I’ve developed a passion for finding opportunities to integrate technology in ways not envisioned by the original developers. One area that has recently caught my attention is political campaigning. Sure, if you Google political “campaign technology” or “campaign software”, you will get a laundry list of products, services and consultants. There are even some vendors who have built their offerings around cloud computing themes offering their products as SaaS (software as a service). The “Cloud” is another interest, but I’ll save that for a later time.

From the basic research that I’ve done, it appears that most, if not all offerings deal with the backroom functionality of tracking donations, voter lists, the general business of running a campaign etc.

What they don’t address is the integration of all the tools that may be necessary to successfully run a campaign whether at the local, state or national levels.

It’s important to efficiently run the ‘business’ of the campaign, but it is equally important to have an effective strategy for engagement. Constituent message delivery and adoption, volunteer motivation and fundraising are all part of the engagement process. This is where campaigns can fall short. How many times have you thrown away direct mail, hung up on the pre-recorded candidate message, changed the television channel to escape negative advertisements or vowed not to vote for the next candidate that called and interrupted your dinner?

New technology and media tools are changing the political landscape, and candidates who do not embrace these methods may not have sufficient fundraising, volunteer workers or voter turnout to compete with better managed or funded campaigns. Many still solely rely on traditional methods, although some have started to use social media tools. However, having a Facebook page or Twitter account without effectively using them to reach out to the constituency may lead to failure.

The best example of utilizing technology within a political campaign is the successful 2008 presidential election of Barack Obama. Dan Siroker, Director of Analytics for the Obama campaign has just released a video entitled “How we used data to win the presidential election”. Here is a great example of aligning technological tools with strategy and analytics to make good decisions, increase funding and engaging constituents and volunteers. (First 20 or so minutes is focused on the political side of things vs. private sector)

There are other examples of how campaigns are becoming more innovative. Alex Beam, in his article “Beam on politics: What’s Working” writes about candidates using tele-town halls to enable constituents “a chance to participate in a talk-show like exchange with the candidate”. In an interview with the University Of Michigan School Of Business , Michigan Republican Governor Candidate Rick Snyder says his campaign is leveraging cell phone cameras and databases in a ‘get-the-vote-out technology’ that he has dubbed “Rick’s Innovation Network”.

How successful will candidates be? No doubt, results will vary because of differences in the candidates, platforms, issues and specific strategies and implementations. Beam was skeptical on how effective using new media tools are, but did acknowledge there are success stories. The Obama campaign is the only case study I have found where analytics were used on measurement data. I’m still searching for more case studies at the local, state and national levels. However, many of these tools are free, and in the Obama campaign, the ROI was phenomenal.

Campaign managers will need to be careful about jumping onto the bandwagon. Instead of just opening a Twitter account or developing a Facebook page, an overall strategy must be developed that aligns with the campaign goals. As innovative technological strategies are implemented, some type of monitoring and measurement must also take place to help evaluate the effectiveness of actions taken. Sending out blast Email, text messages etc. without purpose or measurement is the equivalent of SPAM, and will in all probability be rejected by the recipients.

As far as our current political party system in the United States, it appears the Democrats are paying more attention and may be further ahead in implementing these strategies and techniques…but that’s where we at ORS come in. We’re changing the game and providing conservatives the campaigns of tomorrow…today.

Tags: barack obama, cloud computing, Google, political campaign, Software as a service, United States presidential election 2008

Listening to the Cloud

April 24, 2009 by Steve Schultz @GeniusbyOsmosis · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Campaign Technology, Social Media

I’m sure you’ve all heard of the cloud at some point during your online explorations. Well what is the cloud? What does it mean to listen to the cloud? How can the cloud help you? The cloud is aggregated content from websites, blogs, rss feeds, and anything online. Cloud computing software enables individuals to scan the content from the world wide web and use it to their advantage.

PR companies have been investing heavily in service clouds. These are programs and tools used to scan the internet to listen to what people are saying. I’m sure you all heard about the disastorously disgusting Dominos Pizza YouTube video that came out last week with two employees doing “weird” things to the pizza. ABC news did a piece on it two nights ago showing how Dominos reacted. During this video they met with PR Consultant John Bell (I think that’s his name) and showed exactly what listening to the cloud can do for you. Check out the video here and skip ahead to -1:06 in the video and see the analysis at work.

Listening to the cloud, or just listening online, is vital for your success as a politician. You need to know what people are saying, who’s saying it, where they are saying it, and how people are responding to it. If there not saying anything at all don’t think you’re safe, it just means you’ve failed because noone is talking about you. There are a number tools out there you can use to listen to your online brand, some are done manaully through searches, others are done automatically through alerts, and others are comprehensive aggregators.

If you’re still pretty new to this stuff just start out subscribing to Google alerts and blogs in your Google Reader or any other RSS reader you use. You can even do it through your Microsoft Outlook. This will take a little time to set up, but it does automate the process for you. You can even look at doing it manually with searches at places like search.twitter.com or socialmention.com.

There will be more on this inside the ORS zone. Subscribe now!

Here is a podcast from ORS’s Doug Mitchell @ ManageingTheEdge.com from 4/24 about listening on the web.

Managing the Edge – Listening on the Web