7 Things the GOP Can Do For the Right Side of the Blogosphere

On a semi-regular basis, I get asked by Republican "new media" staffers how the GOP can better work with the Rightroots. As a general rule, I find that these new media staffers are well meaning, get the blogosphere, and have a pretty good idea of what needs to be done. Unfortunately, these very same new media staffers almost universally have almost no real power whatsoever.

Down Home Digital: Minding Your Social Media

While everyone is trying to figure out the changing media landscape or even what to call it, we can agree that a campaign’s ability to share information online—via blogging, e-mailing, twittering, social networking, video sharing, etc.—represents a growing opportunity to shape public perception to its advantage. How much of this potential can be realized is up to the campaign. That pretty much sums up the fundamental difference between “traditional media” and “new media”—no one is waiting to receive your press release in the new media. You’re on your own.

Why Facebook Friends Are Worth Keeping

NOTHING personal, but I don't really want to be your online friend. I'm sorry, I'm sure you are very nice. It's not you, it's me: I'm feeling grumpy and a tad antisocial, so perhaps we are all better off.

And that goes for you too, annoying ex-classmate who just "friended" me on Facebook. Get lost, media-type I met at a party; your all-too-frequent status updates are pretentious. Trusted colleague, please stop judging my professionalism by the posts on my wall. And mother, you know I love you, but instead of getting upset, please just stop looking at my late-night pub photos.

Keys to Facebook Advertising Glory: Monitor Stats, Reinforce Success

“Never reinforce failure” — an old military adage that’s equally applicable in the world of Facebook advertising. Why? Because Facebook wants it that way.

Here’s the deal: Facebook charges for advertising on a sliding scale, with the cost going down as ads perform better (i.e., higher click rate = cheaper ads). As an example, we’ve been running ads lately for an NMS client and keep finding that creativity actually hurts — the “clever” ads under-perform their more pedestrian colleagues, with real financial results. Two ads we tried recently had relatively low click rates, for instance, and Facebook penalized us by charging more per response, in the 50-60 cents-per-click range. By contrast, our more generic, more successful and longer-running ad cost only 13-14 cents over the same time period, meaning that we got FIVE TIMES as much value from the same expenditure.

The Paradox of Promises in Age of Word of Mouth

Word of mouth is generated by surprise and delight (or anger). This is a function of the difference between what you promise and what you deliver.

How Intel Connects with Consumers Using Social Media

In this video I interview Michael Brito, a former social media manager at Intel (he is now a VP at Edelman Digital).  Michael shares how Intel uses Twitter and video to connect with consumers.

You’ll learn Michael’s unique technique of leveraging his personal and company Twitter accounts.

Kindle Sales Outstrip Hard Covers

Amazon announced today that its sales of e-books for its Kindle reader have passed those of hard cover books.

Over the past three months, according to Amazon, it has sold 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardbacks; over the past month the ratio is 1.8:1. Unfortunately, the company did not provide overall figures for those time periods. 

Google, Facebook Prepare for Political Ad Bonanza in Midterm Elections

Google and Facebook are expanding their political advertising sales teams as mid-term election campaigns around the country start to mobilize.

The two companies are among the most recognizable Internet brands to consumers, and both firms have the ability to place highly-targeted ads on the computer screens of millions of voters based on the browsing habits and personal data they’ve collected.

Obama Blames Blogs for Extremist Rhetoric

"The president said both Democrats and Republicans have a responsibility to tone down the rhetoric, but that much of it has to do with the current media environment in which extreme comments are echoed in the blogosphere."

Death of the White House Press Corps?

With a Twitter-savvy president and their own ailing media companies, Lloyd Grove finds the boys in the briefing room more depressed than ever.

Is the White House press corps teetering (possibly tweeting) on the brink of obsolescence?

That is, are Twitter, Facebook and YouTube—to say nothing of slick video vignettes and candid shots of a triumphantly appealing President Obama on WhiteHouse.gov—poised to supplant the often-skeptical journalistic stylings of CBS, CNN, and The New York Times?

Twitter Creator's Credit Card Scanner Comes to the iPad

The iPad already has an app for credit card transactions thanks to Twitter creator Jack Dorsey’s Square project.

Originally planned for the iPhone (iPhone), the app works with a peripheral credit card scanner that attaches to the headphone jack. Once the scanner is in place, you can use your iPad as a mobile cash register.

20 Essential Social Media Resources You May Have Missed

It’s that time again — time to tap into all the tips, tricks, apps, and expert advice that may have flown under your radar this past week. We’ve corralled these must-reads into one handy list for your browsing convenience.

This edition is ripe with valuable info, including the biggest trends to watch on Twitter, some creative advice on keeping your business strategy social, a list of the best new web apps built for Google Buzz (Google Buzz), and plenty more. And if you’re in the mood for a bit of web-based entertainment, see below for some fun YouTube (YouTube) compilations and amazing iPad video demos.

Why Twitter & Facebook Will Never Kill Email

Fast Company reports: Twitter's [1] on every tech-fan's lips, half the World's teens seem permanently plugged into MSN or Facebook, and seemingly every gadget's getting wired [2] to a social network. With these big changes afoot, is email slipping into history?

From some Nielsen research published in The New York Times, you could certainly be forgiven for thinking so: In August this year, 276.9 million people in the U.S., Europe, Australia, and Brazil used email (that's equivalent to 90% of the U.S. population). Last year the same figure stood at 229.2 million, meaning a rise of 21% has occurred. But, on the other hand, this August some 301.5 million people used a social-networking type of site, outstripping email use and equating to a rise of 31% on last year's figure.

Look at Me: Effectively Pitching the Blogosphere

When you're bootstrapping your startup from your basement suite, media relations is often the default responsibility of the non-tech cofounder. For those who haven't already navigated the emotional peaks and valleys of a PR job, the effort can be daunting. Nevertheless, when you finally get through to someone, you forge a lasting and mutually beneficial relationship. In the past few weeks a number of startup companies have asked for feedback on their pitches. Rather than getting into the gritty details, we thought we'd offer a couple of helpful tips

And to further yesterday's debate --

Which Social Media Expert Are You?

These days, it's not hard to find an expert on social media. Well, to rephrase, it's not hard to find a self-proclaimed expert on social media. With the semi-recent craze for all things Twitter, Facebook and web 2.0, everyone seems to be coming out of the woodworks announcing their know-it-all status when it comes to online marketing and poking around the deep dark corners of networking websites. But how knowledgeable are these "experts"? What makes a social media expert to begin with? Which social media expert are you?

There are a few types of “experts” on the web that you may run into when looking for a professional in the social media world. Heck, you may very well be one of these social media experts. Read on to investigate the inner workings of online “specialists”…

How To: YouTube "Autoshare" on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Reader

It has come to our attention that YouTube has this potentially useful option where you can set your YouTube account to automagically post to Twitter, Facebook, and Google Reader each and every time you upload a new video. YouTube turned on "autoshare" this summer, but that must have been when we were out flyfishing and we missed the news. No matter. It's still current, and potentially helpful if you or your organization regularly works with video

And last, but not least...

Check out the new GOP.com --

Stay tuned for our take on the new site later today.

(A crosspost from eyeon08.com)

An important discussion is emerging on the role of social conservatives in the righty-blogosphere. Joe Carter, who organized the blogger row at FRC's Values Voters summit, had this to say about the experience:

Anyone who wonders why the audience for the right-side of the blogosphere is stagnant at an estimated 200,000 readers should look at the supply and demand curve. The right side of the blogosphere continuously focuses on secondary issues and ignores the primary concerns of American conservatives.

I talked to the bloggers on the panel, many of whom are the same bloggers I read daily and interact with here in DC. Then I talked to the people from the audience, most of whom are not political junkies. The differences in the discussions was eye-opening. The top four issues that voters said were important to them are "life" (e.g., abortion, euthanasia, embryo destructive research, etc.), marriage, tax cuts, and permanent tax relief for families. Aside from tax cuts, these issues are rarely talked about by the bloggers on the Right. Three out of four issues are ignored--and this is just the top of the list.

The stark contrast between the heartland conservatives and the DC-centric bloggers became apparent in the panel discussion I moderated on Political Blogging. Although most of the panel members could be classified as moderately social conservative, few of them focus primarily on social conservative issues.

Several things strike me here. First, and in my own experience, I started blogging to impact politics, not discuss the issues of the day. The metric that I have used in doing that has not been "readers" it has been the more amorphous concept of "quality readers". And I am quite pleased with my results. In the same way, Redstate has an objective: to discuss the right side of Capitol Hill. Let's be clear. These are elite projects. They try to move members of Congress and the media.

[Continue reading after the jump...)

Last week, tech bloggers compiled Google Reader subscriber data to build a compelling ranking of actual influence in the tech sphere.

I would like to do the same for political blogs, but I need your help.

I've started plugging in data in this Google spreadsheet, but the task before me is so massive that I can only hope to have a comprehensive data set by crowdsourcing it. Basically, for any given blog, I need you to look up two things: number of subscribers in Google Reader, and in Bloglines. You don't have to look up many blogs -- just the ones you read up and down the tail. I'm also interested in local bloggers and lefty bloggers.

Once we're done collecting the data (though will we ever be done... really?), we'll have a model of blogosphere influence that's arguably better than traffic numbers or inbound links, giving us a reliable measure of how many readers reward any given blogger with prize position in their feedreader.

To join in, please email me and give me your Google account email address. Or better yet, contact me through Facebook or LinkedIn so I'll know you're a trusted user.

The sheet has specific instructions on what to do.

In the end, I'm hoping to aggregate this data on hundreds (if not thousands?) of political blogs, and keep the data open for anyone to view or edit, including academics, PR professionals, and general students of the blogosphere.

Can you join in?

We're starting to see momentum change on the web, but the Internet isn't the only medium that conservatives need to utilize. For far too long, the left has taken advantage of documentaries and swayed public opinion through films like Sicko, Jesus Camp and An Inconvenient Truth.

Earlier this week, The Moving Picture Institute announced that Indoctrinate U will premiere on September 28 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Directed by Evan Coyne Maloney, Indoctrinate U is a documentary examining the lack of diversity of thought and enforced speech codes across college campuses in America.

If you're in DC, tickets are only $10 to see what promises to be one of the best documentaries of year.

This film has an interesting history with blogs and technology. As a senior at the University of Tennessee, my College Republican chapter was featured in Maloney's original version, Brainwashing 101, which was then expanded into Indoctrinate U.

The fall of 2003 was the early days of blogging, but as Bill Hobbs noted earlier, Tennessee has a highly organized blogosphere. Through the efforts of what's now the Tennessee Politics Blog with Adam Groves, a former officer of the club, Bill Hobbs and Glenn Reynolds, we were able to communicate our message to a wider audience than just the student paper. Thanks to the help of Tennessee bloggers reaching UT alumni, our local chapter was finally able to make a change on campus.

This is just a small example of what can happen when conservatives work together across all mediums to get a message out. Because of blogging, a small group of college students were able to change a liberal haven on campus. Four years later, the tools in our arsenal have only increased. Immigration was a good example of what happens when Republicans unite their grassroots efforts. If we continue to rally together, a revolution truly will occur.

David All wrote in the post just before this one about the growing Republican revolution.

It is with great excitement that I announce that I will be joining the headquarters staff of the Tennessee Republican Party in late October to serve as the party's communications director.

Democrats currently control the state House 53-46, while the state Senate is split 16-16-1. It has Republican leadership thanks to one Democrat who voted for a Republican to lead the Senate, offsetting the one independent who was a former "Republican" who regularly voted for the Democratic leadership.

Gaining a majority in the state House and solidifying Republican control of the state Senate is a good goal and one I'm happy that I'll be on the front lines of pursuing. Indeed, the job feels like a calling to me. It also feels like a natural progression for me as more than five years ago I combined my interest in politics and state-level policy issues with my 15 years of experience in journalism to create BillHobbs.com, a blog that went on to impact policy debates at the state level and help usher in a new era of citizen bloggers watchdogging state government and politicians in Tennessee.

Tennessee has one of the most robust political blogospheres of any state in the country, and I look forward to now applying my more two decades of combined experience as a reporter and editor, in media relations and with blogs and the new social media, along with my political knowledge and policy involvement on behalf of that goal.

I start on Oct. 29.

Here are a few notes from today's Conservative Bloggers Briefing host by Robert Bluey at Heritage.

Congressman McCotter
Congressman Thaddeus McCotter (MI-11) fielded a slew of questions on Iraq, the war on terror, government spending, and fashioning a winning vision for the GOP. McCotter is the Chairman of the House Policy Committee. Since the committee describes it's purpose as, "the principal forum for the consideration of forward-looking legislative initiatives," it shouldn't be surprising that McCotter is focused on "putting forward a positive agenda" for the GOP as opposed to simply opposing everything that the Democrats do.

He said that Republicans have a choice between being,

a transactional minority, or a transformational movement

Another interesting insight from McCotter was on President Bush's legacy.

President Bush will be the Republican harry Truman. He’ll be remembered better in 40 years, then in four years.

$1 Trillion
Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute came by to talk about his recent report explaining why federal regulations cost consumers over $1 trillion last year.

CPAC
Lisa De Pasquale, CPAC's director solicited advice for next year's conference, which they're already hard at work on. Lisa was inspired by yesterday's YouTube/CNN debate and is looking for ways to include user-generated content (i.e. questions on video) into next years conference. If you have any ideas, send them an email.

Personally, I'd like to see a question from the guys at RedState Update...

Via many tipsters, the following WSJ article has landed in my inbox on the growing influence of the conservative blogosphere:

How Conservatives Enhanced Online Voice
Talk Radio Blends With Blog Postings To Boost Message
By JUNE KRONHOLZ and AMY SCHATZ
July 3, 2007; Page A5

Political activism on the Internet -- and in the so-called blogosphere, in particular -- has long been considered a liberal stronghold. But conservative bloggers show increasing signs of their own coming of age.

They took a major leap forward by playing a central role in scuttling the Senate immigration bill. Meanwhile, many of the most popular talk-radio hosts are now posting on blogs, and the frequent collaboration of the two media is creating a unified conservative voice that is likely to be an important factor in the 2008 elections.

One example: Fred Thompson, the actor and former Tennessee senator, was posting his ABC Radio commentaries and other opinion pieces on popular conservative opinion sites for several months before he took the first steps toward a White House run.

But the immigration bill marked the first time conservative Web logs could claim to have targeted and derailed a major piece of legislation. The triumph underscored their increasing influence and signaled that the balance of online power may be evening out in the political arena.

The confluence of blogs and conservatives' dominance on radio is an especially potent mix. Talk-radio and conservative bloggers don't always work hand in hand, but they have been effective when they do.

Read the full story.

This. Is. The. Revolution.

An interesting online communications coup from France was the blog opened by François Mitterrand, Socialist President of France 1981-1995, a hero of the Left who's been dead for ten years.

You read that right.

Obviously it was not the real Mitterrand but a pseudonymous commentator, and a pretty good one at that. The articles were written in an elaborate and ironic style somewhat reminiscent of the highly educated, Machiavellian politician. More importantly, they showed a strong inside knowledge of French politics.

Unsurprisingly, the effort generated a lot of buzz, first online and then in the MSM. Questions as to the identity of the author, obviously someone well aware of the Left's byzantine inner struggles, raged.

As for myself, I actually heard about it not through blogs but through Facebook. The author of the blog created a pretty good profile for François Mitterrand, complete with "It's Complicated" as his Relationship Status, a hilarious reference to the late President's famous philandering habits and secret family.

I think this actually marks the first political initiative in France that leveraged socnets, and not just blogs/video, to generate feedback.

As for the author's identity, the blogosphere's ruthless power exposed it pretty quickly. After idle speculation by some journalists, a blogger at Nuesblog exposed the author as Bruno-Roger Petit, a former journalist and now communications director for Arnaud Montebourg, a young hot rising star of the Left. This was done by first comparing some hints from the blog's content with movements by Mr Petit, such as tales of attending certain meetings, etc. — true detective work.

Then the blogger posted the following comment on the Mitterrand blog: "What a good writer that Bruno-Roger P" ("ce qu'il écrit bien ce Bruno Roger P"). The comment was quickly deleted and the comments section locked, a perfect giveaway.

It later emerged from people close to Mr Petit that the blog was an idea by Mr Montebourg and jointly written by the two, even though they both still vigorously deny involvment with the blog (for some reason). A few days later, "François Mitterrand" announced he was shutting down his blog.

I can see three lessons from that story.

Lesson #1: Leveraging socnets works. I heard about this blog from Facebook before I heard about it from the blogosphere, YouTube or the MSM. I suspect this is going to be more and more the case as time passes. Mark Zuckerberg wants to make Facebook "the social operating system of the web," and I think he can do it. For me, Gmail is now an online data storage vault, when I want to reach someone I use Facebook. For politicians, that means socnets should be their #1 platform.

Lesson #2: Don't be afraid of crazy ideas. The dead president blog is a far out idea, but it turned out to be great. Who wouldn't love to read a blog by Reagan commenting on the weak GOP field, dropping delicious bits of insider info here and there? And how much leverage would it generate if it later "emerged" (on purpose or not) that the blog was written by say, Fred Thompson or Newt Gingrich?

Lesson #3: Buzz is there to be exploited. The outing of Messrs Petit and Montebourg as the authors of the blog should not have prompted them to shut it down — on the contrary! They had built great buzz, and they should have used their outing to increase the blog's popularity. Obviously, it is embarrassing for them since they used the pseudonymous platform to publish some off the record stuff, but hey — c'est la vie. This stuff is online, now you can't take it back. You might as well make the best of it.

This also shows what I say all the time: no matter how eager politicians are to tap into tech, they just don't get it. Messrs Petit and Montebourg should not have acted so rashly when they were outed by the blogosphere — hell, they should have been expecting it, and preparing for it all along. We all know it was bound to happen. When your buzz machine is generating the most buzz, that's not the best time to shut it down. It's time to expand it. Videos? MySpace? The potential was incredible.

Even though it was poorly executed, I still think the Mitterrand blog idea is great, and I hope politicians, in Europe and in America, put out more wacky, interesting initiatives like that.