K Street Cafe

I recently gave a lecture at American University’s Public Affairs and Advocacy Institute on how to use social media and other online strategies for advocacy. You can watch it here.

GOP Leads Media Charge (The Hill)
Republican’s social media agendas are becoming prominent in state elections and daily constituent outreach efforts.

Members Grapple With Media Trends
(Roll Call – subscription required)
House members are still trying to figure out how to effectively use new media to streamline internal communication as well as amplify their message to the public.

Yesterday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Communication Center hosted a panel discussion on calculating your ROI for social media campaigns. I was fortunate to join three terrific panelists presenting at the event including Adam Conner from Facebook, Laura Howe from the American Red Cross, and Paul Argenti, a Professor from Dartmouth. (more…)

By Chris Battle
Cross-posted at Security Debrief

Earlier this week, the Center for American Progress hosted a forum on Gov’t 2.0, a much-needed discussion now that President Obama has issued a directive to federal agencies to embrace new media tools in an effort to become more transparent and responsive to the public.

Unfortunately, not everybody is as enlightened as the President in this regard. If you live in Virginia, I challenge you to email your U.S. Senator. Either one of them. The response you’ll get: Shut up and bug off — your views won’t matter until the election cycle. That is the gist of a response I received from Sen. Mark Warner –  a long tedious form email that wasn’t even the kind of old-fashioned form email people come to expect from their elected representatives. In the “good old days,” politicians would at least send you a form letter that was on topic, say about gun control or the environment. Nowadays, the form letter is so canned and unthoughtful as to actually be campy. Whether you send an email about the war on terror, gitmo, health care reform or global warming, you’ll get the same exact mindless response — basically the Senator apologizing that he gets so much mail from needy constituents and he really appreciates your views — no really, he does — and he will keep them in mind, of course, but he can’t respond any further.

Uh huh.

(more…)

There is a great discussion going on about whether Twitter is a strategy, or not, on the Progress Exchange Listserv. It was launched by Jon Pincus’s blog post on Tales from the Net and rejoined by Colin Delany on ePolitics.

Jon’s post

Colin’s response to Jon

Here is my response:

At the risk of being inflammatory (no offense meant Jon)… come on folks… aren’t we past the days when we refer to a tool (or a communication channel) as a strategy? The internet is not a strategy. A blog is not a strategy. And neither is Twitter.

These are channels for communication and we develop strategies for using them.

I am a big fan of Twitter. And I am always developing strategies for using it. But that is fundamentally different from saying Twitter is a strategy. Twitter can be used to inform people about ideas, promote events, engage conversations, and mobilize actions. And for each of these you can adopt a variety of strategies and tactics (using hashtags to engage different groups, linking groups together, etc.).

I also believe, as McLuhan wrote, that technology is not ideologically neutral. Tools are not just tools that can be used for any purpose. Each communication tool has its own ideology. For example, socially dynamic tools like Twitter are inherently more democratic than broadcast tools like TV. Thus, strategies for Twitter that exploit the democratic nature of the channel will work better than command and control strategies. And vice versa for TV.

What makes Twitter inherently democratic? Well, 1) generally anyone can follow anyone else and 2) no one can restrict who uses a hashtag or how they use it. What makes TV inherently undemocratic? 1) only the producers of the content control the content, 2) access to the channel is restricted, and 3) no feedback loop.

OK… so the ideology of Twitter constrains what strategies work on it (or at least work better), but the bottom line is still: Twitter is not a strategy, but a channel that allows us to pursue a variety of strategies for how we use it.

Join me at the 2009 Politics Online Conference, April 20-21 in Washington, DC! I am moderating two panels you should definitely attend:

Panel #1

Title of panel: Advocacy 3-D

Description of Panel: We will explore the dimensions of online advocacy strategy, working our way from 1-D strategies for disseminating your message, through 2-D strategies for mobilizing action and interaction, to 3-D strategies for navigating advocacy in the social web.

Day/Time of Panel: Monday, 4/20/2009 3:30pm

Panel #2

Title of panel: Academic Research on Internet Tools in the 2008 Election

Description of Panel: This panel features new scholarly research on the use of online tools in the 2008 election.

Day/Time of Panel: Tuesday, 4/21/2009 10:00am

The 2009 Politics Online Conference

April 20-21 (Monday-Tuesday)

The Ronald Reagan Building

1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20004

See you there.

By Richard M. Fawal

I supported Barack Obama during the campaign, and I wholeheartedly support his commitment as President to continue organizing Americans. Presidents often try to rally public support for their positions, but this is the first time any President has tried to actually organize public support into direct actions that will have measurable impact. That’s laudable.

The task is by no means an easy one. Governing is very different from campaigning, and building support for policy is not the same as building support for a politician. If the Administration is going to be successful in its organizing efforts, those charged with the task need to remember that effective organizing is first and foremost about community. (more…)

While I enjoy many of the topics people tweet about—Redskin updates, fashion reviews, restaurant suggestions, and a recent dinner conversation between M.C. Hammer and Robbie Van Winkle (A.K.A. Vanilla Ice)—my favorite tweets come from policy makers. However, while some have learned the art of brevity by using 140 characters or less, others take three tweets to get their point across—the technological equivalent of a filibuster.

(more…)

Last week, The Cato Institute placed a full page ad in many major newspapers with a statement that showed there is not full agreement among economists about Obama’s stimulus plan.

But long before the ink was ever set to paper, thousands of people across the country had already seen the ad, and were commenting on it and sharing it with friends online.

By making the ad available to bloggers before it ran in the papers, Cato was able to generate a media buzz long before our main product even existed. Most of all, we gave bloggers the opportunity to scoop old media giants like The New York Times. (more…)

Cross-posted on e.politics

At a New Organizing Institute presentation this week, former Obama new media director Joe Rospars (last seen in the pages of e.politics talking about the importance of good content to the campaign’s work) made a really significant point — his department was NOT a part of the campaign’s tech team. Instead, it was coequal with communications, field/grassroots, finance, etc., and was in fact just as much a client of the technology folks as, say, the press team was.

(more…)