K Street Cafe

The Purpose-Driven Website (ClickZ)
Is the content on your landing page ‘mission critical’ and easy to navigate? Find out how to make your website’s structure and content optimal for any user.

Social Video Can Build Awareness, Advocacy For Luxury Brands (Luxury Daily)
Regardless of whether you’re running a marketing campaign for luxury brand, all marketers should be aware of the ‘four As’ of social video creation and distribution.

David Cameron Considers Banning Suspected Rioters From Social Media (Guardian)
According to UK officials, people are using social networking sites including Facebook and Twitter to organize riots throughout England. The Prime Minister has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to end the violent unrest.

Charity Feeds Videos Across Web for Hunger Action Month (ClickZ)
Feeding America has created a customizable widget with video featuring celebrity supporters like Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Local food banks can post the widget on their site and add their own logo at the end of the video for a personal touch.

U.S. House Members Talk About Debt Crisis On Facebook (All Facebook)
Members are utilizing some of Facebook’s many features, including video question and answer sessions and livestream chats, to directly address voters.

How many governors are using social media? (Stateline)
A look at all 50 governors and links to their social media sites.

First published on Partnership for a More Perfect Union.

You know something has had an impact on you when you’re still thinking about it weeks after the fact. And what happened recently on YouTube got me thinking.

Members of Congress and their staffs have gotten used to a world where a constituent writes a postal letter or e-mail or calls the office and the office responds in written form to the citizen’s concerns. One of the challenges that social media creates for congressional offices is that they can no longer just wait for constituent communication to come to them. They now need to monitor external sources to capture it all.

As Congresswoman Cathy McMorris-Rodgers said in our “Inside the Hill” web series, “the world has changed.”

What punctuated this for me was the flurry of activity around a Senate vote regarding the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy. Regardless of what side of this sensitive social issue you come down on, something happened that should be instructive to Members of Congress, advocacy organizations, and citizens alike.

The Service members Legal Defense Network (SLDN) is an organization dedicated to ending DADT. They recently enlisted Lady Gaga, of…well…Lady Gaga fame, to create and post a YouTube video asking her considerable fan base to call their Senators to request an end to the ban on openly gay service members. This video is interesting from a number of perspectives, not the least of which is that, when she calls her Senators live in the video, she never actually gets through to either one because the volume of calls to the Senate’s phone system resulted in a busy signal from one and an at-capacity mailbox from the other. What happens next is even more interesting.

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America’s fiscal crisis is fueling activism in cities and town across America where Tea Party rallies shine the light on our national debt and out-of-control government spending. But there’s also a revolution happening online, particularly with web videos that tell the story of an economically challenged country.

Debt, spending and taxes don’t exactly translate into blockbusters. Over the course of the past couple weeks, however, web videos on each subject have illustrated just how significant those issues are for engaged citizens.

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Today YouTube announced the official launch of YouTube DIRECT, a tool that allows organizations to collect, moderate and then display videos from users directly on their organization’s web site or an associated YouTube channel. The stated intention of the tool is to allow news organizations to develop an array of user-generated stringers who can upload video reports and commentary to a news web site while maintaining the news site’s editorial control. (At the time of writing it was not 100% clear whether the tool was limited to official news services only – let’s hope not).

But let’s think outside of the box here. Why limit this to news organizations? Could you image what a forward thinking non-profit or advocacy group could do with this kind of technology? (more…)

I didn’t know I was running for president until I saw this new video from AARP.  The truth is, AARP is launching a new election campaign that lets you put anyone’s name into their video as the candidate for president. Why? Because this election is all about YOU.

AARP’s new campaign is really about connecting with voters.  The very essence of this video campaign is to give the people a chance to insert themselves into the message, and then insert their friends.  Very personal touch, indeed.

While not the first to do something like this (Job Jab lets you put your face on an animated character), this light-hearted campaign really gets to the heart of electoral politics–YOU.

Want to send the ad to your friends with their name in it? Click here and have some fun.

A few weeks ago Billy Hallowell of VoterWatch pitched me on the idea of annotating video of the presidential debates. Due to a bunch of distractions at work, I missed the first two presidential contests and the VP debate. But this morning I fully annotated the third debate with commentary and links from The Heritage Foundation.

By embarking on the project — and possibly continuing it with congressional video — I hoped to provide an important service to our readers who want more than sound bites from the candidates. VoterWatch allows you to do just that by blogging within video coverage.

The experience was rather enjoyable. After watching last night’s “Saturday Night Live” skit with Fred Armisen and Darrell Hammond, I even had a few laughs at the real Barack Obama and John McCain.

I’m cross-posting today to a blog I wrote the other day for Media Future Now about mainstream radio using streaming video.  (As if that makes any kind of sense.)

What amazed me is the power of interactivity actually realized by video coverage of the Democratic and Republic National Conventions last month.  I’ll simply refer for the immediate moment to coverage of KCRW radio in Santa Monica, reported on by Anne Eisenberg last week in the New York Times.  Eisenberg’s story in the Times ogled at 124,000 views of 67 convention clips shot by KCRW staffers the Democratic Convention last month in Denver. (more…)