Cross-posted from e.politics
Originally posted on November 3, 2011
Do recent changes to Google and Facebook affect political and marketing communicators? Potentially a lot, so let’s take the sites in turn. First Google, which announced today that it’s making major changes to its search algorithms to update its main search index more frequently. Also, results pages for many queries will feature more recent content (including breaking news) over information that might have grown stale.
Overall, this change in emphasis is potentially really useful for users, particularly if Google can follow through on the idea of separating searches for evergreen content (“learning from Obama online campaign PDF“) from those for ephemeral content and recent news (“Herman Cain harassment suit“). One implication for political communicators: this emphasis on the new and the now gives us even more reason to jump on news stories quickly, since Google’s main search function should have a better chance of highlighting relevant recent content. Crank up those blogs and rapid response machines, kids: catch a news wave, and your words might spread far and wide. (more…)
Many Americans are consumed with football in the fall. But the budget and economic crisis has advocacy professionals obsessed with a slightly different group—the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction—or the ‘Super Committee.’
The Super Committee is charged with recommending how to reduce the U.S. deficit by at least $1.5 trillion over the next ten years, and has until Thanksgiving to do so. Committee members say comments from the public are being taken seriously (here’s the web form to prove it), though some of them are also limiting participation: for instance, Senator Baucus (D-Mont.) is not taking messages from any one who doesn’t live in Montana — even though the mission is national in scope.
The limited time frame for decisions and the committee’s difficult task makes advocacy especially challenging. What’s an advocacy group to do?
Hopefully, most organizations have plans in place to handle a sudden grassroots need. But if your organization was not quite as prepared as others, don’t despair. Even in this Internet age, all politics is still local. (more…)
Cross posted from e.politics
Google+ went live for the masses today (assuming you got in before the system stopped taking new users), meaning that the search giant has taken another stab at social networking — and at staving off the threat of Facebook. How should political and advocacy communicators approach this new platform?
First, as Steven Levy points out in Wired (via Matt Stempeck), today’s launch is just one piece of a process that will stretch out for months, so we’re only seeing the bones of what should be a much broader set of tools. But what’s out there now is already interesting, and definitely check out Amy Sample Ward’s excellent overview for a glimpse of how it works. Two elements jump out: first, the platform’s integrated ten-person video chat feature (“Hangouts”), which should be extremely useful for volunteer-organizing, for media/blogger calls and for campaigns whose staff is scattered across the country or the world.
To read the entire article on e.politics, click here.
When AT&T announced its $39 billion bid to buy competitor T-Mobile in March, theWashington Post wrote breathlessly of the firm’s “fierce lobbying clout” that includes an army of well-connected advocates and a powerful PAC. Experts and consumer advocates agree, said the Post, that the influential telecom company is “well-positioned to make its case.”
Then the Post mentioned an important detail in the seventh paragraph of the story. It seems that “Congress does not have direct oversight over the deal.” In fact, AT&T needs approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Justice Department, not from Congress.
Yes, Congress holds the purse strings to the FCC and can weigh in on the proposed merger. But this is not shaping up to be an old-fashioned lobbying battle. The proposed merger, and the process that will be followed to determine its fate, are far more complicated than that.
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Cross-posted from The Partnership for a More Perfect Union
I recently made an historic discovery regarding what is probably the first system to track relationships between Members of Congress and organizations that seek to influence them. Any grassroots or government relations professional knows that it is essential to have an understanding of Congress, and one of the best ways to do this is to set up a customer relationship management (CRM) system to track relationships between supporters and legislators. The tools also are used to note important characteristics or interests of the legislator that may either connect him to your cause, track meeting discussions, and note follow-up actions.
But one does not need to be a masterful 21st century practitioner of CRM software best practices to create this kind of system. In fact, I believe I recently stumbled onto the first CRM of Congress. The group had a vital issue pending before the Congress; they had a motivated and well-organized grassroots base; and they created a system for tracking every detail of their interaction with legislators as well as the interests of congressmen (and they were all men). The time was 1900. The issue: whether women should have the right to vote.
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Cross-posted from The Partnership for a More Perfect Union
Managing high volumes of constituent calls is a challenge for many congressional offices, but the office of Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) is taking matters into its own hands to help New Mexicans get their answer when they first call the office.
Most of us take the telephone for granted—myself included—but I remember as a kid (here we go, right?) calling my friend’s house to see if he could go do something. If the line was busy, I’d hunker down, exercising my redial finger until my call would finally go through. I’m happily pushing 40, but I suspect other people can also appreciate what life was like before voicemail, call waiting, texting, and all the other amazing things we now can’t picture our lives without.
Congress has experienced and leveraged a great many of those advances in telecommunications, too, but still congressional offices struggle with how to effectively manage what can—at times—be an overwhelming volume of calls. I was in Sen. Bingaman’s office recently and his staff told me how they were handling some of the challenges they face on the front lines with phones. I thought one approach, in particular, was innovative.
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Cross-posted from the Public Affairs Council blog
Large, diversified companies – especially those that are tightly regulated – are more likely to be politically active, right?
While everyone in public affairs knows this to be true, it took a major study analyzing 78 research projects on corporate political involvement to prove the point. What’s newsworthy is that the study, “Mixing Business with Politics: A Meta-Analysis of the Antecedents and Outcomes of Corporate Political Activity,” made another important conclusion – firms become more profitable when they become politically active.
In the study, published in this month’s Journal of Management, researchers at the University of Tennessee (Knoxville) and the University of South Florida say companies that lobby or contribute to political campaigns “enjoy about 20 percent higher performance.”
The authors conducted a “meta-analysis” of studies from the past 40 years to identify reasons why businesses are politically active, including a company’s size, level of regulation, amount of government sales and extent of foreign competition.
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Grassroots advocacy in the first quarter of 2011 – a new year and a new Congress – presents some challenges, but even more opportunities for your organization and its members.
Let’s acknowledge that, in the first three months, it will be a bit difficult to deliver your messages to Congress. What do you do when some offices haven’t been filled yet (some Senate offices won’t be filled until March) and many House offices aren’t yet fully staffed?
That said, the first quarter also brings tremendous opportunities to educate and engage members of Congress, particularly the freshman class, early on.
As Brad Fitch rightly noted in his post, New House Calendar Benefits Grassroots Advocates, the 2011 House calendar currently has 13 District Work periods – more than double from 2010. This means your organization and members have more opportunities to engage with your member of Congress at home, and your member of Congress has more face time with constituents from the district. This is a win-win situation.
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Cross-posted on the Partnership for a More Perfect Union
The newly released House calendar for the 112th Congress presents a fascinating opportunity for grassroots advocates seeking to build relationships and influence legislators. The calendar makes good on part of a promise the House Republicans made when they took office that they would operate differently than Democrats, and even previous Republican leaders.
The schedule is mostly a two-weeks-on and one-week-off schedule. It includes five days of voting when legislators are in Washington, no votes after 7 pm, and consistent end times on Fridays. Whether incoming Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor can pull it off is still a question. (The Senate tried a similar calendar during the 104th Congress and punted it after 10 months.) But, for sake of sane scheduling, increased efficiency, and hot meals at 7:30 pm for Members and staff, let’s assume they can. What does this mean for those seeking to influence legislators?
First, legislators will likely schedule more town hall meetings. The 2010 House calendar had 5 District Work periods – the 2011 calendar has 13. This means Members of Congress have more certainty and time to schedule town hall meetings in the district. It also means they’ll likely schedule more events as well – visits to businesses, schools, and groups. Great photo op’s, but also great face time with constituents.
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Posted by: Guest Contributor
By David Almacy
Last Thursday, Edelman released the findings of our 2010 Capital Staffer Index during an event hosted in the Washington, DC office. Edelman’s Public Affairs & StrategyOne teams interviewed senior legislative staffers around the globe in several capital cities including Berlin, Brussels, London, Paris and Washington to determine the role and influence of various communications channels both online and off. Below are some of my initial — and personal — thoughts about the survey results.
Citizen Engagement in the Digital Age
When Barack Obama was sworn-in as the 44th President of the United States in January 2009, much was written about his campaign’s effective use of digital and social media tools to build support, reach new audiences and engage younger voters. Many credit those efforts as being critical to his successful bid for the White House.
Once in office, it was largely expected that the Obama Administration would utilize similar digital strategies for government application. They set out to build on the foundation laid by their predecessors by seeking to leverage emerging digital outlets to better serve and connect with Americans while simultaneously adapting to a rapidly evolving media landscape. The same was true for Capitol Hill.
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