The Dems Push Back with Social Media
To mark President Obama’s first 100 days as President he visited a small town in Missouri. This just happens to also be where the Dems are making a second push with social media to win over the minds of the people. Organize for America. Sounds great, right? No, this is just another Democrat grass roots movement that is being employed because of recent opposition.
USA Today put out on article today stating that Organize for America is using social media as a way to expand Obama support nationwide through grass roots efforts.
So far they have held 11 community meetings and Patricia Justice, Ph.D student from St. Louis says “I have not seen something of this magnitude.” The article’s author calls the movement a “first-of-its-kind effort.”
Seriously?! First of it’s kind? You’ve seen nothing like it? All because of 11 meetings and 600,000 supporters (they didn’t report how many of them were actual tax payers 
. There largest meeting thus far had an entire 200 people attend. Impressive. Especially compared to the 20,000 tea party protesters in St. Louis back on April 15th.
In all seriousness though, this movement is supposed to be grassroots. There is no link to a Facebook page. There is no link to a Twitter handle. There is no link to a website. There is nothing that shows a serious 21st century grassroots movement of any kind or the development of an online presence.
Grassroots movements in the 21st century encompass a powerhouse combination of social media and IRL (in real life) interaction. It’s about creating a two-way conversation that can be held online or face to face. The Tax Day tea parties are a perfect example even though the drive-by media is still somewhat unwilling to recognize its impact . First, we know we made an impact otherwise the left wouldn’t be scrambling like they are. Second, we haphazardly created this two-way conversation. There were websites, Twitter pages, Facebook groups, and more, that were entirely devoted to this single event. This naturally was picked up on the donkey blogs and drive-by media. Through this we were able to reach out to even more support. That is a grassroots movement at its best. It may have started out as some haphazard movement online but it’s becoming increasingly popular for conservatives to participate online. Now, it’s a strategy and one that will work.
Read more about the article here.
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Operation Red Ride for Conservatism
There is perhaps NO other event across the fruited plains that says “Grassroots Movement” like RAGBRAI. For those of you unfamiliar, RAGBRAI is the “Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa.” Typically, 15k-20k of your closest friends ride, camp and eat their way across the great state of Iowa. Well this year is different. We won’t have Lance Armstrong again because he’s doing a slightly different ride this year called the Tour de France.
So in conjuntion with the launch of OperationRedState, we’re putting on Operation Red Ride to rally conservative citizens and Congresspeople to share ideas, build realtionships, and find new ways to connect with each other through technology.
Those of us on Operation Red Ride will be using the Twitter hashtag #ORS along with #RAGBRAI to show our support, organize, and communicate during the ride. We’ll also have a support van providing RED Gatorade for our grassroots troops at the Operation Red Ride headquarters in each overnight town. Operation Red Ride jersey’s may be available as well if we get enough interest.
If you’d like to connect, please contact us directly at info@operationredstate.com. Otherwise, until then, stay in the loop and subscribe to our email or RSS updates.
Thank you for supporting Operation Red Ride 2009.
Operation Red State Will Revolutionize How Grass Roots Campaigns Use Technology to Win Elections
Hello and welcome to Operation Red State. Our team is busy building an amazing arsenal of material that will revolutionize how campaigns leverage technology to solidify grass roots support movements. If you’re thinking that “technology wins elections” you are partially correct. I’d say however that:
Communication through technology wins elections.
What we see out there in our post-election political landscape is encouraging. Just about every campaign and politician I’ve encountered locally here in our great state of Iowa now tells me that, “I’ve got a FaceBook page and I have 350 legitimate friends and I’ve heard of Twitter and I’m not using it but Chuck Grassley is.” While that’s good news, it’s barely the beginning. There is a distinct lack of true web strategy and execution in candidates online efforts.
We’ve also seen hundreds of what we call the “manifesto groups” out there. “Sign up here and voice your support for changing the party direction!” I love those groups and encourage them. But we’re taking this a step further.
Operation Red State is delivering an online education system to propel candidate and campaign understanding and leveraging of technology to the next level well ahead of other parties.
In its simplest terms, Operation Red State is:
- A membership based system or “Interactive Learning Environment” that will deliver technology training to campaigns and candidates through rich multimedia and online experiences.
- A system that will be affordable for all campaigns at all levels.
- A system that will be updated constantly in exchange for a monthly subscription investment.
- A community with forums that will help you get answers, strategies, tactics, and advice faster than you can possibly imagine.
- A valuable meeting point for politicos and strategists from around the United States so you’re getting the best information from the best in the business in real time.
For now, we’d just ask that you subscribe to our site via RSS or Email updates and we’ll get you in the loop when the membership portion goes live. You will need your entire campaign on this system so we’ll make it worth your while to get everyone on board.
Clearly, we can’t plunge in and digest the full scope of how technology can be applied to our campaigns in a day, a week, or even in a month. So begin educating yourself and laying the foundation NOW for your elections in 2010. If you’re under the impression that this is for the “big campaigns” (either big money, big markets, or big publicity) think again. Sure heavy hitters will subscribe but so will Joe Candidate for his local election to City Council in Anytown, USA.
We’ll also provide an a la carte menu of services for candidates but for now, our focus is on bringing education to the masses. Let’s see what we can do together.
Sincerely,
Doug Mitchell, Chief Online Strategist
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Social Media
