AlexWhite.org » social networking

Tony Abbott on Facebook

admin — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 07:16:05 +0000

A quick search of Facebook reveals that Tony Abbott has a massive presence on Facebook. Tens of thousands of people are fans.

Unfortunately, most of those people aren’t fans of Tony’s, but of sanitary napkins or of leaving the country if he’s elected. The biggest fan page for Tony Abbott is “Friends don’t let friends vote for Tony Abbott” with over 27,800 people a fan. The official Tony Abbott page (which hasn’t been updated since June 30 as of the writing of this post) has a mere 8,900 fans – far fewer than the negative ones combined.

Like John Howard before him, Tony Abbott doesn’t really understand the Internet or social networking. The Facebook page is used as a repository for photos, and the Liberal Party’s new whizzbang web page is used for little more than showcasing Youtube ads and media releases.

Tony Abbott really is old fashioned.

Book Review: “Yes We Did” by Rahaf Harfoush

admin — Sun, 16 May 2010 22:46:04 +0000

Yes We Did: An inside look at how social media built the Obama brand

Over Xmas, I purchased and read “Yes We Did: An inside look at how social media built the Obama brand”, by Rahaf Harfoush, a volunteer new media campaigner on the Obama 2008 election campaign.

This 185 page book promises to give an insiders account of how the Obama campaign used social media and social networking sites to turn Obama’s presidential campaign into the most successful in history. The blurb offers “strategic insights organizations can apply to their own brands” and how “email, blogs, social networks, Twitter, and SMS messaging” were used to elect “the world’s first ‘digital‘ President.

Before you get started, here are two important links:

Rahaf’s blog: The Foush; and
Techpresident: the essential website on all political tech news.

The good

Overall, Yes We Did is an excellent account of working inside the Obama campaign. Harfoush mixes the book up with part narrative, part reflection and part interview with other key players in Obama HQ. As you read, you can’t help but feel a bit of her excitement as she moves to Chicago to work on the campaign, or when she participates in phone link ups with David Plouffe and Obama himself. Similarly, you can see the evolution of the campaign: it is a living thing that learns and adapts to changing circumstances.

In particular, Harfoush’s lessons are worthwhile, and are carefully presented. Most of the major digital elements are in the book: the use of email, neighbour-to-neighbour contact, the creation of my.BarackObama.com, the role of videos and more. Each chapter has a summary of the lessons and tips, followed by more detail.

While many people may focus on the use of social networking, I think the most important chapters are those focusing on email, and the use of analytics. The ability for Obama’s campaign to “iterate” – to repeatedly make minor improvements and customisations to their communications (website and email) is in my view one of the most powerful elements of the campaign. Certainly as important as using Facebook or blogs.

The bad

This is not a warts and all look at the campaign. Harfoush is clearly an Obama devotee, and there is not a lot of details about when things went wrong. Often the most interesting and powerful looks at campaigns are how they deal with mistakes. For example, the Obama campaign mess-up with the MySpace fan-page creator is not really covered. Harfoush was a volunteer, so to some extent it could be that she was not ever involved in handling a crisis, or being a decision maker. However, few of the interviews cover negative aspects or mistakes.

Similarly, while solid, the advice given is fairly generic – most of it is available on countless other websites looking at using different online marketing or engagement techniques. Admittedly, a lot of what is out there is based on “what the Obama campaign did”… which leads my to the next downfall.

The Obama campaign had enormous budgets. While the online elements were nowhere near as well funded as television ads, the campaign was a multi-million campaign, with a large web team. This makes it difficult for smaller campaigns to follow through with most of the advice, simply because they do not have the manpower. The Obama campaign captured the imagination and passion of tens of thousands of people who volunteered and donated. Few campaigns will ever replicate a tenth of this mobilisation.

The verdict

“Yes We Did” is an excellent addition to your online campaigning bookshelf. If you’re involved with any kind of online campaigning, whether for a non-profit, union or political candidate, it is well worth reading. It is a solid foundation for building a checklist (or wish list) of online activities and engagement tools, and highlights some important lessons to do with engagement, fundraising and mobilising supporters.

Adding Twitter’s @Anywhere

admin — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 11:44:07 +0000

Twitter has launched a new feature, called @Anywhere, for websites to integrate elements of Twitter onto their websites.

This allows you to use your Twitter login to join or log into their website, as well as add Twitter-style popups over names that are Twitter accounts (such as @alexanderwhite, @UKLabour, or @climateprogress). This means you can follow people directly from the website you are on.

This is a fairly simple feature to add, and I hope that it adds a bit of neat functionality. Let me know what you think. Worthwhile or annoying?

Connected candidates: Beyond Twitter

admin — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 21:13:44 +0000

Most political candidates are on Twitter and Facebook – using these social media tools to reach out to younger voters, and instantly communicate with supporters, the public and the media.

I’ve written previously about how political candidates can use social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook, Google Apps and how campaigns have made use of mobile technology like SMS and iphone apps.

Lisa Johnston, Democrat candidate for Kansas Senator has put her Foursquare profile on her web page.

Now, iphone-enabled Democratic candidate Patrick Kennedy is using new social media tool Foursquare to let voters know his location.

Foursquare is a free iphone app (available on Android phones also) that lets you update your friends about your location. It’s designed to help friends meet up if they are nearby, such as at a cafe or bar. It can link into Twitter as well.

It is a little “weird” that people can follow a candidate’s every move, Kennedy admits. But he said it makes him stay active. “If I say I am going to be out there representing people this holds me to account. I can’t hide with this tool.” Kennedy said he was recently contacted by someone who saw he had checked in down the road and wanted to know why the candidate did not stop by his group. A visit was quickly arranged.

This example shows the potential usefulness of Foursquare, as it focuses in on one of the applications of Twitter for candidates: letting local constituents and media know about your attendance at community events. Candidates could easily use Foursquare like Kennedy has: to link in with locals, and promote their activities. Opportunities to get local media also arise, as local journalists can link in to the candidate’s activities (sometimes the sheer fact that the candidate is using social media is newsworthy).

Key to this social media tool is the smart phone – an iphone, android phone or Blackberry. Political candidates and their key campaign staff should all have smart phones of some kind that can easily update a variety of social media sites – Twitter, Facebook and others like Foursquare. There should also be the ability to take photos and videos.

Unions and Twitter

admin — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 22:26:58 +0000

The open, conversational nature of social networking offers the perfect elixir to turn this around.

Check out my first Media140 blog post, discussing how union leaders can promote themselves, their unions and their activities socially using Twitter.

Young people don’t blog

admin — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 21:24:01 +0000

For my Project 52 post, I thought I’d comment about a recent Pew report has come to my attention via DownloadSquad that says that young people are blogging less:

Pew Internet released a report yesterday called Social Media and Young Adults that shows teen blogging down by 50% over the past four years, even as blogging increased among those over 30 years old.

The report also shows that teens are not very likely to be Twitter users (only 8% of internet users between the ages of 12 and 17 report using the service), even though they are heavy users of almost all other online applications; in fact, 73% of “wired American teens” are social networking website users. Twitter seems to stick out as a service that younger people are not as interested in.

The report is really talking about teens – 12 to 17 year olds – and I have to say that the conclusions follow my observations. While I grew up before the Internet and social networks became ubiquitous, I remember MSN and ICQ were used widely. With Facebook and MySpace (and their in-house chats), it seems to me that most young people are more interested in talking with each other.

DownloadSquad also concludes that young people aren’t “content creators”. I’m not sure I agree with that. Rather, I think young people only share their content – photos and videos – with their friends, rather than putting them on Flickr or a blog.

Seven online campaigning activities you should already be doing

admin — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 21:33:24 +0000

In Australia, most elections take place during the normal, general election period. The accepted wisdom is that local campaigns make up, at most, 3 percent of a candidate’s primary vote. The rest comes from the central campaign from party head office: television ads, the leader’s personal appeal, the party’s policies and so on.

There are some simple things that local campaigns can do however to maximise their vote and try to reach that 3 percent boost.

Many of these ideas are more widely applicable for running online campaigns in general, and for unions in particular.

1. Have a presence on the main social networking sites

Set up a profile or page on Facebook, and depending on your campaign’s demographics, on MySpace, and Twitter.With over 6 million Australians on Facebook, 2.3 million on MySpace and around 670,000 Australians on Twitter, these are social networking sites you cannot afford to ignore. If you already have a profile on Facebook, consider setting up an official Facebook page, so you can benefit from the many extra features that pages have over groups or profiles (see here for an example of the benefits).

Just because Facebook and Twitter are the flavour of the month, don’t neglect MySpace. MySpace is still used by a large number of young people (high-schoolers), and it can be a way for you to build a longer-term relationship with teens, especially if that is a big demographic in your electorate.

If someone on your campaign team has a video camera and some experience, set up a YouTube and Vimeo channel (check here for how to do this on YouTube, and go here to set up a YouTube politician’s channel). Recording and broadcasting short campaign messages is a good way to directly talk with your electors, and sites like YouTube can be easily shared by your supporters on Facebook and Twitter. Make sure you have a call to action, such as donating, volunteering or joining your campaign mailing list.

2. Have a blog on your website

Get a campaign website if you don’t already have one. In addition to your policies, biography and how to subscribe to your mailing list, you should also make sure you have a blog. There are many easy options to install a blog on your website, and most of them are free. Using WordPress, Moveable Type or Google’s Blogger are easy to set up, and most offer a way to install or embed the blog into your own website. I personally prefer WordPress, but depending on what content management system your website uses, you may have to use another blogging platform.

Blogs are very important for search engine optimisation reasons. Blogs help you draw traffic to your site through online search engines. When most people want to find out information about a candidate, they got to their search engine (e.g. Google, Yahoo or Bing). Most blogging software is optimised for search engines, which means that it pushes your website higher up the search page. Blogs also give you an opportunity to engage with your electors and supporters. Many voters will appreciate the transparency – and you can use it to promote your events and activities.

You don’t need to personally update your blog every day. Get someone on your campaign to add blog posts – but make sure they don’t pretend to post as you. Keep your posts and the posts of your staff distinct.

Don’t expect to be getting hundreds or thousands of page views or visitors, or scores of comments on your website straight away. Promote your blog and your website in all your other communications – emails to supporters, ads in the local paper, on flyers you hand out while door-knocking. You can also advertise online…

3. Build a campaign email list

Email is still the most effective online campaigning tool. Having a large list of supporters and electors means you can directly communicate with them, without the filter of the local news. Email is very effective at building engagement and directing people to your website.

There are lots of email service providers that allow you to create email campaigns, and get data about opens. I’ve got a post here (Email is the “killer app” for online campaigns) that goes into some detail about using email.

Early in your campaign, you should be aiming to build your campaign email list – have a sign up form at all of your campaign events (fundraisers, street-stalls, etc). The people on your campaign list will be useful as volunteers, donors and of course, eventually they should vote for you.

4. Advertise online with Facebook and Google

Online advertising is an increasingly effective way to get your message to your target audience. Most online advertising lets you micro-target your ads using key words. Google Adsense and Facebook Ads are probably the most effective online advertising vehicles, although there are others (e.g. MySpace and Yahoo). Most of them allow you to set a daily, weekly or campaign budget, so you can carefully manage your advertising spend. Even a small budget of a few hundred dollars can pay big dividends. Google has a page especially for political ads – so they’ve made it easy for you.

Facebook ads can let you target people in your electorate, and also target people who share your values. Your ad can direct potential supporters to your Facebook page, or to your website.

Each ad should have a specific purpose (“call to action”), such as building your campaign email list, getting people to donate, or volunteer, or vote for you on election day.

You can also use online ads to respond to attacks against you by your opponent. By putting your response online (such as on your blog or as a YouTube video), you can use key words search terms on Google to make sure that when an elector looks for more information about the attack, they will see a link to your response. Generally, there is no more than a 3 day window for this kind of response, so act quickly.

5. Use Google Analytics or other analytics programs

There are lots of analytics programs out there, some free, some paid. The bench-mark is Google Analytics, a free service. By setting up a Google Analytics account, you can get detailed information about who comes to your website and how they use it. Google Analytics can be integrated with most email service providers, as well as Google Adsense. Google also offers other free services for websites, such as Website Optimizer, that allow you to experiment in changes to your website to make it easier to use.

UPDATE:

I should also mention a few useful resources for website testing and optimisation that can be used by relative novices. A useful tool that I’ve used on the Creative Unions website is Usabilla, an excellent free website usability testing service. They allow free testing for up to 25 users. Jackob Nielsen, the father of web usability, suggests that you only need 5 test subjects to find around 90% of the problems with your website. Testing your campaign website has never been easier (or cheaper). Just make sure you act on the findings.

6. Monitor the media and social networks

There are many free tools that allow you to track news stories about your candidate, opponent or other important topics. Google Alerts can give you immediate email notification of news stories based on key words you choose.You can also get alerts for blogs, allowing you to respond to criticisms online, reply to questions or thank supporters.

Twitter has excellent tools to allow you to monitor key words in people’s updates. Twitter Search is basic, but there are other tools, such as Twendz, which gives you more information about what people are saying about a key word. This can be very useful to get up to the minute information about what is happening locally, or what people are saying about your, your opponent or the election generally.

7. Make it easy for supporters to donate, volunteer online

Wherever your campaign is online, you need to make it easy for supporters to get involved and help your campaign. There should be a clear way for a supporter to offer to volunteer to help your campaign. You should set up an online donation account. Your communications, online and offline, should emphasise how people can get involved.

Beware and be careful

Everything you do and say online can be accessed by anyone with an Internet connection. Once the campaigning starts, be aware that your opponents will be scrutinising your online activities as well as everything you do and say on the campaign trail.

Something will go wrong. Whether it is a misinterpreted comment on your blog, or a “tweet” taken out of context, it is highly likely that something will go wrong.

The best way to handle this mishaps is, like all crisis management, to be honest, acknowledge the mistake, explain how you are remedying the problem, and move on. Ensure your response is timely – within 24 hours is a good benchmark. If possible, break the story on your own terms rather than wait to be called by the local paper or news outlet.

Do not try to hide it. Don’t delete the comment or tweet and hope that no one will notice – there are several websites that scan web pages and cache them, allowing people to look at stored versions of your website days, weeks or even months after you have removed the content.

Google Alerts and similar services will allow you to monitor what is being said, so you can make further responses as time goes on. Internet advertising will also allow you to keep your message on the front page of searches.

Some good rules of thumb to help prepare you for a crisis are:

Brainstorm with your campaign team some worst-case scenarios: Sit down and think about the worst that could happen. Try to think of ten things that could go wrong – for example: accidentally “friending” a known criminal or other undesirable person; running foul of spam laws; running out of money or a problem with fundraising; accusations of hypocrisy in the campaign (such as having a policy of supporting local businesses, but getting material printed outside the electorate, or supporting strong environmental standards but using unrecyclable paper)
Make someone responsible for responding to a crisis: Whether it’s the campaign manager or someone else with media/PR/communications experience, make sure there is someone who’s job it is to get on top of a crisis if or when it arises. This will mean that if something does happen, you won’t waste time figuring out who should respond. This person should be responsible for having a plan to respond to campaign hiccups. They should know who to talk to about getting a response out as soon as possible, such as the campaign website maintainer, and the candidate to make a media comment.
Pre-prepare some online keywords: Think about what keywords people will use to search online for more information about the crisis. Use positive words as well as negative ones. Your press releases, blog posts and videos can be optimised for these search terms, and it will save you time when the crisis hits.
Have a design, mailer or other material ready: Ask your campaign designer and/or webmaster to have a template ready for you to respond online and offline to the crisis. Having half the work done will mean you can respond much more quickly.
Find allies: Finding a third party to stand up for you is essential to crisis management. For online mishaps, getting a blogger to comment positively on the crisis, and link to your online response is a good way of getting your message out. Having the third party gives your message increased credibility. Hopefully, through your online engagement, there will be several people you can rely on – even if they are not local constituents.

Remember, online campaigning is not a silver bullet

Just because you have set up a Facebook page or joined Twitter, don’t neglect all of the other important activities of campaigning. You still need to fundraise, door knock, make phone calls, hold street stalls, and engage your electors in the flesh.

We Are Social opens up their analytics

admin — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 07:58:29 +0000

If you are a social networking junkie then you should make the time to read an enlightening post by We Are Social – a leading UK social media agency – which opens up their site metrics for 2009.

Their article is a very insightful addendum to my post from the other day about email being a key driver of traffic to a website. We Are Social suggests that RSS/Email (they don’t distinguish) makes up on 18 percent, while search and social media make up around 24 percent each.

Use your union’s Facebook page to build your email list

admin — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:45:58 +0000

Facebook is a tremendous communications tool for unions – especially white-collar unions – and with only a small amount of technical know-how, it can also be super-charged for organising and campaigning.

If you haven’t already, check my earlier articles about unions using Facebook: Best practice use of Facebook for unions and Using Facebook as an organising tool.

Many unions now sporting a Facebook Group, Profile or Page. What few unions know however is that Facebook allows you to add HTML into a Page to embed mailing list applications.

Build your union’s email list with Facebook

There is no doubt that Facebook is an essential place for unions to be present. With over 100 million monthly users in the USA alone, there is little point for unions to try to recreate their own social networking site (although unions should of course be aware that different demographics use different sites). Many union members and potential members are already regular users of Facebook.

Similarly, email is the most cost-effective means to reach large numbers of people – whether they are members, supporters, non-members and the general community.

The screenshot above is from the Creative Unions Facebook page. With only around an hours worth of fiddling, we were able to add a sign up form from our MailChimp account, with a nifty little graphic. This means that anyone who fills out the form will be automatically added to our MailChimp database.

By no means are we the first to do this. The SEIU Facebook page has a splash sign up form – presumably attached to whatever email service provider they use.

Facebook fans can be passionate fans of their union. Facebook allows fans to easily interact with your union – through the “like” feature or comments. By cultivating these fans, you can build a group of passionate online advocates. By keeping a regular stream of content, events and activities for your fans, you can keep them engaged, and build relationships with them. Facebook users are far more likely to use the “like” function than leave a comment – so it’s a good idea to treat comments like you would an email.

By adding an online email sign up form to your Facebook page, you can start to turn your Facebook fans into real campaign assets. While many unions will already have email addresses for members, the Facebook page can attract supporters and non-members as well. These are crucial groups to have contact information for.

Facebook pages are also easy to promote online. Once a person becomes a fan, it is far easier to encourage them to sign up for emails than if they had no other contact with your union.

Tutorials

There are two great tutorials on how to set up an email sign up form on your Facebook page. The MailChimp one is obviously focused on how to add a MailChimp form, but the theory is the same.

Note: this only works for Facebook pages. It does not work (yet) for groups or profiles. If your union does not yet have a Facebook page, I suggest you set one up as soon as possible.

MailChimp: Adding a Newsletter Subscribe Form to Your Facebook Fan Page

Return on Subscriber: Add a Newsletter Opt-In Box to your Facebook Page

Email is the “killer app” for online campaigning

admin — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 04:30:31 +0000

The Massachusetts election has blown open the mainstream media’s infatuation with social networking tools, with headlines like “the iphone app that killed Coakley“. On the techblogs, there is also detailed examination of new tools that aided the winning Mass. Senate candidate Scott Brown. I am hardly immune to the temptation of writing about the exiting new online tools and their applicability for union campaigns.

The fact remains however that email is the “killer app” for online campaigning, and will remain so for a long time.

Campaign Monitor, a well-respected SAS provider that allows companies to create email campaigns, has crunched the numbers in a very interesting article:

Unlike Twitter and Facebook, email’s capacity to drive traffic has a long tail. Whereas the traffic from Twitter and Facebook comes in bursts lasting as long as it takes for the message to fall off the bottom of the feed (2-3 days), email continues to collect clicks and opens for days (if not weeks) to come.

Campaign Monitor points out that email not only provides the bulk of website visits, but that visitors via email are more likely to visit the site days or even months after the original email was sent. This compares to Twitter and Facebook (and anecdotally Digg) which sees a spike in traffic over a day or two, without any “long tail”.

I recommend you read the entire post here.

Thomas Gensemer, managing partner of Blue State Digital, who was intimately involved in Obama’s campaign, is a big proponent of email as a campaign-winning tool. He makes the point that building a large email list was key to the victory in 2008. Of course, building the email list took hard work using “old” methods – campaign rallies, street stalls, and so on.

While social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter allow for two-way communication, most people are familiar with email as a means to have a conversation. This is certainly borne out by an article from ShareThis, a large provider of “link sharing” apps that people can add to their websites. ShareThis tools allow readers to share links with friends using a range of social networking tools, like Twitter, Facebook and by email. ShareThis found that:

Despite reports of its demise, e-mail is still the most popular method of sharing, and despite its meteoric rise of late, Twitter is still not a very popular sharing channel. In our research, we found that 46 percent of shares came via e-mail, 33 percent from Facebook, 14 percent from other channels such as Digg, del.icio.us, LinkedIn, etc., and just 6 percent from Twitter.

I recommend you read the entire ShareThis article, as it also suggests that while most people share content using email, the click-through rate for Twitter is much higher.

Email also allows you to have a simple, direct call to action. You can engage the reader, then ask them to do something. Having that call to action – join, donate, buy, protest – is essential to effective email campaigns. You can see the success of the email in whether the people who open it do what you ask. An email without a strong call to action is wasted.

Using analytics tools made available by services like Campaign Monitor (and Mail Chimp, which is what we use for the NTEU and Creative Unions) allows you to better use email. You can track things like open rates and clicks; and when used with Google Analytics, you can get a good idea of how people use your website. For unions wanting people to join online or take some kind of online campaign action, this can be invaluable.

Read my post on “the art of writing better union emails“, which also goes into the value of analytics for email.