Radian6, "a complete platform to listen, measure and engage with your customers across the entire social web," just launched their new dashboard this past week to private beta (set to end in April) that brings their powerful monitoring tool to your desktop via Adobe Air.

This new tool is quite powerful. It not only tracks the conversations happening on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Google Buzz, LinkedIn, mainstream news sites, forums, videos, blogs, boards, and public discussion groups but it also lets you engage your social communties straight from the interface. No more worrying about going to 10 different websites to track the latest comments on your newest YouTube video, it can be done in one place.

While the above is a strong feature, I believe the biggest benefit to any campaign team or new media shop is the ability to have a dedicated workflow. This allows you to tag, assign, and route posts to individual members of your team.

As expected it has the ability to break out the different media types into separate windows or to even break out on different keywords, tags, etc... This is very handy, if for example, you are tracking an individual item within your campaign that maybe separate from your specific message.

The cost for this product starts at $500 month for up to "10,000 net new monthly results (individual posts that match your overall profile keywords)"  From there the cost goes up to $1,000/month for 25,000 results, $1,500/mont for 50,000 results, and then $500/month extra for each 50,000 results.

So yes, it is costly but it can be a life saver if you are a smaller campaign trying to track a message within a large media market with only a few staff members.

Hattip to TechCrunch as they reported on this article, but also mentioned a few start-up companies that are challenging Radian6 in this space: ScoutLabs (starts at $199/Month), Visible Measures, Viralheat (starts at $9.99/month), HootSuite (Free), People Browsr (starts at Free).

Have you used Radian6 or any of these services? If so, were they productive for your campaign or organization?

I recently learned about a (new to me) service from PayPal that allows mobile contributions to occur for PayPal users. It is very simple and easy to setup, the only draw back I can see is that your donors must already have a PayPal account AND have their phone activated to use the mobile service. 

Below is an image provided by PayPal to show you how it works:

It is really quite simple for users - they text a Keyword (TechRepublican) to a specific short number that your campaign has created. Once that text is received the donor receives a phone call from paypal to verify the donation with their mobile pin number. Once this has been done and the process is complete - the donation is made. 

I have yet to see any political campaigns using this functionality - but I also do not know each and every single campaign out there. Have you used it for your campaign? If so, please let us know your experience with it. 

Yesterday M+R Strategic Services released their 2010 NonProfit Social Media Benchmark Study: An Analysis of Growth and Social Engagement Metrics for Nonprofit Organizations. This is coming from the same company that has performed similar case studies on email use for nonprofits (2008 & 2009).

The findings in the study, while not all that surprising, are quite re-assuring for some of the best practices we already know. 

Below are a few of the highlights:

• Organizations posted to their Facebook Pages an average of six times per week and tweeted four to five times per day.
• Each week, an average of 2.5% of each organization’s Facebook fans took action (e.g. contributed wall posts, “likes,” or comments).
• Facebook fan bases grew by an average of 3.75% each month, and Twitter followers grew by 9% per month.
• 2% of Facebook fans removed themselves or hid their news feeds each month.
• Facebook fan growth occured at a rate of 0.23% for each post by the organization.
• For every post by an organization, 0.56% of that organization’s fans viewed the Page 

A deeper read of the case study talks about the different types of organizations that were used for evaluation of Facebook and Twitter as well as a look into money raised via the 'Causes' section of Facebook.

Ever since the announcement of Square by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey I have been quite intrigued about the ability to run a credit card for donations at campaign events without the need of a computer.

Since the technology for square is not going to be ready for a few months I kept waiting for a payment technology - and low and behold PAYware has delivered. 

PAYware has come up with a complete package for taking online donations anywhere you can use your iPhone. They have created an awesome piece of hardware with a comparable web based back-end that does not tie you down to a desktop. It comes with a built in stylus (that fits nicely in the back of the hardware) allowing your donor to sign right then and the entire transaction is fully encrypted and secure. You can send e-mail receipts to the customer, run daily reports, and of course, grab all of the data for your Campaign Filings.

PAYware offers assistance in locating a merchant account service that supports its technology if you do not already have one for your campaign.

In comparison to the Square unit, it looks to me that running a credit card will be easier and more comfortable for me to do. While a small device might not protrude from the device as much, I fear myself or another campaign worker losing it. 

Nothing I write can do justice for the demo of this device. They have some great videos of each stage of the device in action from an overview, to the app, to the reader, and finally the gateway. Please check them out and let us know what you think!

One thing I have had many campaign staffers ask me about is the ability on Facebook to block people from tagging their candidate in photos. I tell them unfortunately there is no way to do so if they are already your friend. I then proceed into my rant about how I wish Mr. Zuckerberg and his team of experts would take the time to develop a approval process for photo tagging done by a "networked friend."

The usual response is then, "Ok, well how do we prevent some idiot from tagging our candidate on the picture of a [fill in your own bad picture scenario]."

Unfortunately there is no way to prevent this - but you can keep the photo tagging going viral in a few easy steps. 

If you log into facebook and navigate to your application settings page, you will want to click on the 'Edit Settings' link next to the Photos application (as pictured below):

From there you will want to deselect the option that states "Publish to Streams" (as shown below):

The same feature can be repeated in the Video application settings to prevent a video tag from being published to a news stream. 

Is this the perfect option? Absolutely not, but it can save you some headache when/if your campaign turns ugly. 

Chuck DeVore, candidate for the US Senate seat in California currently held by Babara Boxer, released his iPhone App yesterday.
It's the first iPhone app released by a candidate for the US Senate -
and of course I downloaded it immediately after seeing Justin Hart's tweet.

The app is very well setup and allows you (once you create your
account) to learn all about the campaign through news, events, photos,
videos, and chuck's twitter feed, as well as engage with the campaign
(via a volunteer survey and filling in your meta data). 

The Twitter integration allows you to perform certain searches on
popular conservative hashtags (#tcot, #catcot, #rs, #gop, #sgp,
etc...). It's very well done in the typical smooth iPhone menu design. 

The only piece that it is missing (which according to Justin Hart is being
developed) is a donation link. I think once that final piece is put
into place the iPhone app will be complete. 

In every campaign and cause I have worked/volunteered for we always collect email addresses for various reasons (updates, donation solicitation, GOTV, etc...) and each time we are left with a partial list of meta data on our subscribers for various reasons. As the campaign grows so does our disconnect of solid meta data on all of our subscribers/voters. To fix the issue we always had to spend time identifying our subscribers through various "profile update" emails or through basic voter identification. Either way it was expensive and time consuming. 

Thanks to a recent update/change to Facebook this process has become much simpler. 

Under the "Find Friends" section of Facebook you can now upload a CSV file (basic version of an excel document). Upon uploading the file you are then able to see the profile information that matches the email address(es) you specified. Furthermore, you can also then invite your supporters to be your friends on Facebook (another great bonus for your campaign). Quick, simple, and very effective way to update and complete your meta data on your subscribers. 

For those really geeky folks, you can also use a specific URL and screen scrape the data into a script to automate the process. The URL for this purpose is http://www.facebook.com/search/?ref=ffs&q=name@domain.com&o=2048&init=ffs You can give it a try here by searching for my account. 

UPDATE: From Facebook:

Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities says: “If you
collect information from users, you will: obtain their consent, make it
clear you (and not Facebook) are the one collecting their information,
and post a privacy policy explaining what information you collect and
how you will use it.” Additionally, the SRR states that: “You will not
collect users' content or information, or otherwise access Facebook,
using automated means (such as harvesting bots, robots, spiders, or
scrapers) without our permission. ” More details can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/terms.php.

Today former Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin launched her new Twitter account (which currently has an interesting background promoting her new book).

Surprisingly this was not a switch of her handle from her previous one (@AKGovSarahPalin), but a brand new Twitter Account.

This is quite puzzling to me as to why she decided to not just switch the handle/username to a new one OR do as @DavidAll suggested and start using the handle @SarahPalin that a supporter has so graciously stated they would give to her. Even a quick search reveals 'Sarah Palin' with her old Twitter handle as verified, but the link goes to a failed url.

So I ask, Mrs. Palin (or whatever staffer runs your Twitter account) why did you make this huge mistake? You had 1000s of followers and a great community behind you that you have now decided to give up.

What do you think is the reason she made the change? Ignorance? Forced to by Publisher?

Either way, I would be more then happy to help her understand Twitter better, all she has to do is send me an email and ask :)

As the Healthcare debate kicks up this weekend with a House vote coming as early as today the House Republican Conference has put together a great list of links to help you understand the bill better and more importantly respond accurately on the many false statements being stated by the left.

• The latest whip count on Democrat votes is here
• CBO: New House Health Bill Spending Estimate, $3 Trillion over 10 Years 
• Dems Still Short On Votes, “This Is A Much Heavier Lift Than We Thought It Would Be”
• Pelosi’s mega-bureaucracy exposed: Here’s the chart Speaker Pelosi doesn’t want you to see
• Boehner's office put together a GREAT side by side analysis of Republican v. Democrat Health Care plan.
• In their own words: Dems against the Pelosi health care bill.
• Barton: Dems’ New Health Bill Covers Fewer Citizens, More Illegal Aliens
• Links for Pelosi Health Care Bill if you Need Review
• If anyone tells you Republicans “have no ideas,” please send them
  directly to this link, which is the text the GOP Health Care
  Alternative

We are at a very critical point in this debate and we need everyone to come together to KILL THIS BILL!

For your R/T Pleasure:

R/T @TechRepublican: Important Links & Talking Points for the Healthcare Debate this weekend are online here: http://bit.ly/1PYthC #handsoff

The RNC launched their new website overnight. If you have not seen it, I would head over and take a look at some of the new features.

As my twitter friend @StanOlshefski said:

the @rnc's new website is a bold step forward

I cannot agree more that it is a bold step forward just be sure to avoid the pothole's on the step forward. Fellow TechRepublican blogger James Richardson wrote a great post this morning talking about the highlights of the website including the cool video from Chairman Steele, unfortunately there are some small bumps in the road that have to be addressed.

1. The header needs to be changed - it looks (to me at least) to much like the Chinese flag. I love the different faces of the GOP but the stark red with the blended stars (did you even notice those) has to be broken up somehow.
2. There have been reported to be a few broken links - most notably the pesky Future Leaders.
3. The site content looks ok on my iPhone but I cannot navigate to any of the menu links because it is flash. You are neglecting every single person who has an iPhone (or mobile device for that matter) and that is just a no no. 
4. Last thing to point out - there is no social media presence above the fold. While it is on the website, you have to scroll down to see facebook and then scroll all the way to the bottom to get the rest of the networks. Could it not be at the top to help break up the red in the banner?

These 4 points are just a few of the big things I wanted to highlight - but with all of that said the website is a major upgrade. The backend pieces that are now in place will make it easier for the RNC to quickly update the online world with the latest happenings as well as make it easier for people like me to network with locals in my area. 

Great Job Todd on getting the new website out the door - now lets polish the site to take it to the Next Level!