Harnessing the Power of the People in Government – Will President Obama Lead With the People Using Social Media?

Posted in Wendy Troupe's Perspectives by Wendy Troupe on January 22nd, 2009

 

Candidate Barack Obama has raised the country’s awareness about the use of social networking to rally a cause, to harness community involvement, and to open pocketbooks. His campaign masterfully demonstrated how to use a multi-channel approach to connect on a personal level.

President Obama wants to stay connected even more now that he’s in a bubble. I doubt he’ll be giving up his blackberry anytime soon. So what are his plans to expand his engagement into social policy? I’m very excited about the possibilities. Every President has wanted to reach out to the people but no president has ever been able to do it successfully. Today the technology is available and President Obama has already proven its potential during his campaign.

“The Obama campaign harnessed the wisdom and passion — and the pocketbook — of the crowd as no other campaign has. They knew a lot when they started and learned a lot more. They understand the power of new technology and the ways people, especially young people, use it. They know how to convert enthusiasm and interest into actions — small donations, volunteering to send e-mails around or handing out leaflets. They will most likely use this as a tool of governing as well as campaigning. — The Wisdom Of Obama’s Crowd, Against The Grain by Dick Meyer“

I hear that President Obama will be hiring a Chief Technology Officer in the Whitehouse. His website has more transparency than any in history (and the promise of more) and the “contact us” form is prominent in the main navigation signaling that they want to hear from the people. There’s a blog (but without the acceptance of comments) and clear outlining of the political agenda they plan to pursue, and a weekly video address (instead of a radio address).

Obama wants to bring his administration and government into the 21st century. If he can harness the people’s direct support and deliver transparency, Congress is in for a rude awakening. Let’s take a look at what can be leveraged.

• Email: Obama’s compiled upwards of 13 million addresses, sent more than 7,000 different messages, and more than 1 billion e-mails landed in inboxes.

• Text-Messaging: A million people signed up for Obama’s text-messaging program and supporters on average received 5 to 20 text messages per month, depending on where they lived and what kind of messages they had opted to receive.

• Community Website: MyBarackObama.com, or MyBO, Obama’s own socnet created 2 million profiles which produced 200,000 offline events, about 400,000 blog posts were written and more than 35,000 volunteer groups were created. The virtual phone-banking platform produced 3 million calls during the last four days of the of the campaign. 70,000 member “MyBO” fundraising pages raised $30 million.

• Independent Socnets: Obama has 5 million supporters in other socnets (social networks) and maintained a profile in more than 15 online communities, including BlackPlanet, a MySpace for African Americans, and Eons, a Facebook for baby boomers. These social networks allowed him to reach out to independent groups including Facebook where about 3.2 million signed up as his supporters and organize them to his cause.
  A group called Students for Barack Obama was so effective at energizing college-age voters that senior aides made it an official part of the campaign the following spring. Facebook users came through in the end when more than 5.4 million users clicked on an “I Voted” button to let their Facebook friends know that they made it to the polls.

Clearly President Obama is in command of his agenda and is skilled to pick up where he left off and use his connection with the people to move change. I’ve never been more excited about the changes we will witness using the tools of edemocracy as I emerge from the darkness of the last 8 years.

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Newpapers in the Age of the Internet ~ Getting Back to Basics

Posted in Wendy Troupe's Perspectives by Wendy Troupe on January 14th, 2009

 

Seth Godin blogged about newspapers and their eventual demise today titled “When Newspapers are Gone, What Will You Miss?“. Well, I argue that we have a lot to miss! What is written in the blogosphere is just that — opinion. More importantly, let’s not forget — without high quality journalism, blogs can’t exist.

What makes these institutions so valuable is their high standards for responsible, objective journalism in a well written form. What Seth has done is to make us stop and think about something that is important in our lives; something that we take for granted. Seth brings up some good points about what is good about newspapers and what has become irrelevant.

News institutions are finding it difficult to sustain the expensee of generating news in the printed form. But there might still be a market for it if the approach to content changes. What newspapers need to focus on is providing just the highest quality of investigative journalism there it…and that’s it. Leave the internet, TV news and the bloggers to handle the rest.

Seth writes, “What’s left is local news, investigative journalism and intelligent coverage of national news. Perhaps 2% of the cost of a typical paper. I worry about the quality of a democracy when the the state government or the local government can do what it wants without intelligent coverage. I worry about the abuse of power when the only thing a corrupt official needs to worry about is the TV news. I worry about the quality of legislation when there isn’t a passionate, unbiased reporter there to explain it to us.”

Newspapers need to become “official” in their mission to support the common man’s awareness of what is important in his circumstances and not try to be anything else. This is why they came to be. They should support the proliferation of intelligent journalism in both the online and printed form. However this unfolds, I’m going to do everything I can to figure out new sustainable business models so that they can flourish in the age of the internet.

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Republishing: 25 Signs You’ve Got a Strong Social Media Consultant or Agency

Posted in Wendy Troupe's Perspectives by Wendy Troupe on January 10th, 2009

 

This blog post came from The Buzz Bin, Livington Communication’s blog. Authors Beth Harte and Geoff Livingston did the good work of assembling a list of social media business practices that would be useful for their clients and prospects to consider when they’re choosing to work with an agency.

We thought it was worth republishing for the same benefit for our community and to put into practice (see #9) promoting the good work of others. We see our relationship with our clients as a long lasting relationship, like a good friendship ? one that is collaborative, supportive and long lasting. It is all about giving back to your community and continually fostering the relationships you have. These relationships are what sustains us.

Keep in mind that one agency does not have to possess all of these qualities because social media is an emerging industry and there are no experts or proven methodologies that have been tried and tested. The authors furter purport if “many qualifiers are missing in your potential partner’s offering, as a marketer, PR or communications professional you should probably be concerned.” Note the examples that are given which helps to illustrate the idea.

Check out Charlene Li’s wiki of social media consultants, too.

1. Believes in the generous web and practices cross-linking in their blog (example: Kami Huyse)
2. Highlights others’ work in their blog (example: Chris Brogan)
3. Integrates social media as part of larger marketing strategy(example: Razorfish)
4. Doesn’t pretend to be an expert in all things digital; instead simply focuses on what he/she/they do best (example: Common Craft)
5. Gives away best practices in an effort to educate, grow social media in general (example: Todd Defren/SHIFT Communications)
6. Understands that Radian6 and other monitoring tools are vastly superior tracking tools in comparison to Technorati (which really isn’t an indicator of much these days) (example: Fleishman’s Matt Dickman)
7. Will tell you that there is no magic bullet for determining social media ROI and that you need to go further to accurately monitor, measure and determine the effectiveness of social media. (example: K.D. Paine).
8. Understands that social media is an important part of the larger word of mouth marketing principles (example: Ogilvy’s John Bell)
9. Others cite this person/agency’s work (example: see the many here and here)
10. Realizes that search engine optimization represents an absolutely crucial part of social media (example: TopRank’s Lee Odden)
11. Understands that social media expands beyond search engine optimization tactics that lead to Diggs, Stumbles (StumbleUpon) and link baiting (example: Key Relevance’s Li Evans)
12. Integrates brick and mortar events with social media activity (example: Voce’s Josh Hallet)
13. Has and continues to work on notable social media projects (example: Andy Sernovitz)
14. Understands that conversations are the starting place and not the end game. And though ROI is critical, knows that without conversation you’re not going anywhere (example: Paul Chaney).
15. Understands that social networking and conversation is more than collecting followers and subscribers (example: Mack Collier)
16. Listens to you when you are discussing your challenges (example: Connie Reece)
17. Helps and guides clients so that they can understand the benefits of social media and implement it properly (themselves) (example: Amber Naslund)
18. Knows that social networking works best when they are conversing, sharing, and being human (i.e. doesn’t self-promote) (example: Jason Falls)
19. Educates clients on understanding that they no longer own or control their brand and educates them on how to create customer evangelists (example: Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba)
20. Won’t act as your social media ‘voice’ or ghostwrite for you (example: Laura Bergells)
21. Understands the difference between social media tools and communications strategy (example: Ogilvy’s Rohit Bhargarva)
22. They won’t recommend blogging as a first step into social media (example: David Armano) and when you are ready to begin they consult you on how to be successful (example: Drew McLellan)
23. Doesn’t allow clients to be affected by Shiny New Object syndrome (example: Beth Kanter)
24. Understands that social media is more than just creating and delivering content or regurgitating existing promotional copy Joseph Jaffe
25. Understands that social media isn’t the sole terrain of marketing or PR and helps clients educate internally to other departments
    (example: Media Badger)

We encourage all hat tips!

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Top 10 Tips for Blogging from the Huffington Post

Posted in Wendy Troupe's Perspectives by Wendy Troupe on January 3rd, 2009

 

As a follow up to my earlier post titled “Blogging tips from Arianna Huffington and her cohorts on the Huffington Post, courtesy of Jon Stewart” I promised to read the book and come up with some quick suggestions for bloggers. Well, I finally got the chance after taking some time off after Christmas and what I’ve learned is that the statement “content is king” has finally lived up to its meaning. Here are my top ten takeaways:

Top 10 Tips to help you Write a Blog

1. Answer the question, what is your point? in one sentence.
2. Add an example or illustration of that point and put it before the main point.
3. Provide a history of the debate below the main point.
4. Argue the point from evidence.
5. Address those who might disagree.
6. Write a good walk-off line or promise to post again when you learn more.
7. Proofread and double-check facts and admit to making mistakes.
8. Write like you speak (avoid the passive voice) and be your most witty, entertaining and relevant self – be who you are!
9. Keep it short and break the text up with quotes and/or pictures.
10. Study the successful bloggers that you like and ask for their critique.

The last big takeaway, one that I’ve always lived by but found it hard to implement, is to own your content and let it be king. Content to me has always reigned important but before blogging and social networking, the emphasis was clearly on the technology itself. The Web application worked but no one cared if it was easy to use or if the content could be refreshed on a regular basis. As technology has become more available to the masses (both intuitively and financially), the emphasis has returned to the content itself.

As the book purports, content can proliferate in all the traditional ways but now everyone else in the world can fact check, expand on it, and have an impact on things.

Happy New Year! Please weigh in on my observations. I welcome your input!

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