Hi Bill,

Congrats on the new job! I'm sure you will enjoy it, there is a lot you can do and you are only limited to your creativity.

Here are a few things that I have done since becoming ED of the MassGOP a few weeks ago and you may find this helpful.

- coordinate a meeting/conference call with friendly bloggers to introduce yourself.

- establish a facebook, myspace page and a YouTube channel. Play around with Twitter, I have not adopted it yet but some people love it.

- create an online store for the diehards to purchase Tennessee GOP items...I am in the process of opening up one right now where there is no start-up overhead. I like the idea of treating a political party more like a political campaign.

- start a blog, use it to magnify the Tennessee GOP activities. If you drive 2 hours to meet with 10 activists....let people know about it. The blog is great to educate fellow activists and to motivate them into action. Our new blog is www.MassRootsGOP.com

- establish a blog system that the party can use to encourage Town Committees and County Clubs to use. I chose blogger and I have put together a 3 page manual on how to start a free blog in a matter of minutes. There are millions of blogs out there, but only 1 has is a blog dedicated to advancing the GOP cause in X town. Teach others your skills as a communicator and get them advancing the cause with you "many hands make light work."

- establish a private blog or an intranet for the party faithful (RTC Chairs, State Committee Members, GOP incumbents, Candidates, Known Activists). The idea is this - if you want to be trained on anything (Voter ID, GOTV, Voter Vault, Communications) you should not have to wait 2 months and drive 3 hours to attend the next training. All of the training materials (power points, videos, pdf's) should be made available on your private blog/intranet. We set up www.MassRootsAction.com

- Splash pages are powerful, it forces your visitors to focus on something that you need them to know about asap. Just recently, I used our splash page to have visitors sign a "Thank You" card for Jim Ogonowski, we collected a lot of data this way.

- Show the faces of the GOP. Tomorrow, I'm going over to the State House to interview one of our State Senators about a bill he is sponsoring. He's going to talk about it on the sidewalk. It's going to be raw and underproduced but it will be real and something that our activists have never had before.

People often tell me that the web is a waste of time because only a small percentage of voters go to political websites and an even smaller amount are undecided voters. However, my web strategy is not targeting voters. I'm going after activists. That is why MassGOP.com is not your traditional red/white/blue color scheme; the activists have been bombarded with it and they want something new.

One thing I want to explore is audio blog posts. I like the idea of describing a situation from an event with my cell phone and it takes very little time for me to do. If you're at an event where people are yelling and screaming, it's great to capture that energy so that the other GOP activists who could not attend could at least share a part of that experience. Again, it's magnifying your efforts at very little cost/time to you.

That's my two-cents. I hope you find it useful and have fun with the new job Bill.

-Rob

Bill - congrats on the new position. Rob above gave you some great starting ideas - i especially like the "private blog" idea.

I would encourage you to jot down (using bullet points) what your goals are for year one, year two, and year three - shouldnt be more than a page. The goals shouldn't be just a visitor total but should be things like having a post a day, making sure the site is a repository for documentation and announcements that is updated constantly, having a fresh content and website only content etc.

I understand that some state party jobs like yours may not last that long but one mistake I see a lot of people make is assuming that results can be had almost immediately from a website. In reality this is not the case and it can take several years before your site will be in format you like, have the content you want, and most importantly reach the people you want to reach. Hopefully this is not the case for your site but in case it is its good to keep some perspective and set some realistic goals.

I have found the key to building sites like yours is to adhere to the simple "build it and they will come" mantra. In other words even if you only get 2 hits a day throw up another post, update the pictures, make sure the events page is accurate etc. Remember content is what gets eyeballs and if you don't have fresh content up consistently there are plenty of other sites that do and thats where the people are. Obvisouly the content needs to be quality but I don't think that will be a problem in your case (the quality problem tends to be more for people who think blogging about they're job/school experience/cat/etc. are interesting but in reality its not)

Another interesting tool is the use of bulletin boards (such as vBulletin) which is a free BB tool that is fairly easy to install and customize. This kind of feature needs to be handled carefully and again realistic expectations should be made. If implemented properly, carefully tended too, and nurtered along the way this can be a feature that not only keeps people visiting every day but visiting multiple times a day.

Hopefully this helps and adds to the ideas you have already been given and good luck

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