When the Staff Tweets, Who's Talking?

Among the many innovations that social media tools have brought to the world of campaign politics are new ways to conduct opposition research.

Like any employer, political candidates have a vested, if indirect, interest in how staff members express themselves on personal social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter.

But in the hypersensitive and competitive world of campaigning, the question is especially sharply felt: How many degrees of separation are there from a legitimate campaign issue and a campaign staffer’s personal views posted on their personal social media page?

Dan Riehl's take on White House Tweets Spread President's Message....

Twit-in-Chief Now Using Twitter for White House Spin

Given that White House press secretary Robert Gibbs seems to get into trouble, often putting his foot in his mouth when he tries to speak in full sentences, I wonder if they didn't decide 140 characters was probably the most he could handle at one time? If Rahm is tweeting and you want to see it, you'll probably have to drop any profanity filters you may have installed. heh!

Don't be the Next Toyota: How You Can Use Social Media to Make a Difference in a Crisis

Over the last few weeks, I have been monitoring the Toyota recall and subsequent Congressional hearings as well as reading some commentary and articles on the subject. It is all very interesting to me for a number of reasons. Not only did I grow up in Motor City with family members working in all aspects of the auto industry, but I also directed the grassroots and public affairs efforts for the American International Automobile Dealers Association for a few years and we have a Lexus RX in the household fleet. I feel close to this situation and know firsthand how this crisis is creating a serious economic and confidence challenge to Toyota's numerous stakeholders.

Chris Pirillo Debuts E-Book: 140 Twitter Tips

One of our favorite geeks has just released an e-book on best practices for Twitter use.

Chris Pirillo's 140 Twitter Tips, a 14-page PDF, is a concise compendium of useful guidelines and helpful hints for every kind of Twitter user, from doing-it-wrong noobs to social media addicts. From the best time of day to get retweets to how to process public criticism, the e-book also covers a broad range of common issues users experience.

Twitter Analysis: Influencers Still Signing Up; Lots of Followers Doesn't Equal Lots of Lists

Twitter launched lists in October 2009 and this feature has quickly become an essential part of the Twitter ecosystem. The power of lists isn't just in their ability to organize your followers, they also provide an an insight into how other users use Twitter. The number of followers an account has might show its popularity, but the number of lists called, for instance, "most influential" or "essential", that it appears on reveals just how important that account is.

Check out this informative presentation from Altimeter - Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management.

And this is an oldie, but goodie, that I failed to share with you when it came out. Conservative blogger, Adrienne Royer, was featured in the Washingtonian's Blogger Beat last week...

The Blogger Beat: Cosmopolitan Conservative

Adrienne Royer’s love affair with politics started in first grade. The class was learning about the 1988 Bush/Dukakis race when six-year-old Royer thought, “This is so cool. We get to pick our leaders!” She wore pro-life buttons in elementary school and a handmade T-shirt that said, “A person is a person no matter how small!” A right-leaning political junkie was born.

In college, Royer traded in her puffy paint for a blog. She started her first site, Girl From the South, as a way to keep in touch with family and friends back in Tennessee. Two years ago, she decided to delve into politics. “Cosmopolitan Conservative sounded like a fun name,” she says. “I knew it worked when I told a liberal former colleague at happy hour one night, and he burst out laughing.”

Campaign '08 never gave us that embarrassing photo-op of Obama in bright new orange hunting garb, the kind we saw John Kerry don for his best Elmer Fudd impersonation for the press back in 2004. I may have discovered why when talking with Ford O'Connell and Steve Pearson, now at ProjectVirginia. After stints in rural outreach with the McCain/Palin campaign, they're rejuvenating Virginia GOP politics from the ground up. And they're using technology to accomplish it. But their ultimate goal doesn't end there.

Obama was out there in rural America where distant farms and farmers now keep tabs on events and the latest crop news via applications like Facebook, Twitter and, of course, blogs. But only Web users and the tech-savvy might have known it. And that's only one cutting edge of technology in politics. But it's the one upon which Ford and Pearson are staking their claim.

It can be argued that, in part, states like Colorado went from Red to Blue due to tech and the spending it took to pull it off. O'Connell knows this first hand, having been bested at times by Obama and his tech-savvy gunslingers who could touch growing numbers of rural voters right in their homes. And they did it in traditional GOP areas where a genuine McCain campaign presence was rarely if ever known.

Some critics still attempt to blame Sarah Palin for what then-President George W. Bush described as a "five spiral crash" in the offing that eventually took place as McCain went down. But there may be a better case to be made that the race was lost by old hands whose entire knowledge of tech ended with looking like VIPs, campaign-issued Blackberrys in hand. When it came to the sophisticated technology-driven approach Obama's team employed, their Blackberrys simply couldn't keep up.

Driven by their McCain campaign and other relevant experience, O'Connell and Pearson started ProjectVirginia to ensure a future for Virginia that's Red on the political map where it matters most - from the ground up. If all politics is local as is so often claimed, there is nothing like technology to empower a campaign to be local everywhere, in essence being everywhere at once.

O'Connell and Pearson may be starting from the ground up but they have some very interesting top down views given their history and campaign experience. They're not only concerned with implementing the technology, but making sure end users on a broad scale are adequately trained and able to take advantage of it, as opposed to simply leaving it on the shelf.

Recent political events and the rise of Obama suggest that if efforts like ProjectVirginia aren't important to every candidate who wants to run for office at any level, they may be running in circles while their opponents use technology to run circles around them, instead.

To more fully understand what they're doing from the ground up in Virginia see here and see here for their blog. Or, simply click into the site and click around for yourself.

Going forward, more and more politicians who don't take advantage of the right technology may find themselves looking for another job. In those cases, perhaps ITT Tech, or some other re-training program might be best suited for them and their staffs.

It's a thought worth thinking seriously about. Or, I suppose you could simply buy a Blackberry to call home upset after the campaign you ran ended with a potentially avoidable loss.

This entry is cross-posted from Riehl World News.