You've probably heard of homeschoolers in 1994 melting the phone lines over H.R. 6 or run into interns from Patrick Henry college but how do you reach out to them?

As a homeschool graduate and the marketing director for a company that sells to homeschoolers I often get asked by politicians, "I've got some homeschoolers in my district, how do I reach out to them?" here is the brief version of my answer.

The homeschool community is a fast growing, diverse and well networked group of parents who have taken it upon themselves to teach their children at home.

In 2007 there were 1.5 million homeschoolers in the United States. The numbers keep increasing and the growth of homeschooling has created a niche market that many politicians see a value in communicating with.

Before I jump into the nuts and bolts you need to have a basic understanding of the history of home education.

A Brief History of Homeschooling

In the early 1960's and 1970's three streams emerged that catapulted homeschooling into the national sphere.

In the 1960's John Holt wrote "How Children Fail", 1964; "How Children Learn", 1967; "What Do I Do Monday?", 1970 these books coupled with his appearance on the Phil Donehue show pushed the ideas of homeschooling into the national dialogue. Holt also started the magazine "Growing without schooling" and in my mind represents the secular homeschooling world.
Wikipedia | Amazon | Website

In the 1970's Raymond and Dorothy Moore authored several books, "Better Late Than Early: A New Approach to Your Child's Education", 1975 and "School Can Wait" in 1980's they were interviewed on James Dobson's focus on the family radio program which helped spread the message of homeschooling into the conservative Christian community.
Moore Foundation | Amazon

Rushdoony wrote the book (The Messianic Character of American Education) in 1963 and was frequently called as an expert witness by HSLDA in court cases. Some of the leadership of HSLDA has been influenced by Rushooney's theology of Christian Reconstructionism which summarily influences their political involvement.
Wikipedia | Amazon | Chalcedon Foundation

The impact of the theology of christian reconstructionism on politics and the religious right is a fascinating topic but will have to wait till another time, or just google it.

In the early 80's these streams flowed together bound by the necessity of numbers and the need to lobby for the legalization of homeschooling. Homeschooling as a legal and accepted form of education has only enjoyed a very brief history.

Growth

As the homeschooling movement grew in the late 80's and 90's the growth of the christian homeschool community outpaced the growth among secular homeschoolers. With this shift in power homeschool organizations began to disassociate with people they didn't agree with and created "christian homeschool organizations". These state organizations ran the state homeschool conventions, published newsletters and became the defacto legal defense of home education. The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). Also began to grow and unite the state organizations and has become a very powerful political
unit.
Wikipedia | Website

Changes

In the 2000's two changes impacted the homeschooling community. In the early days there was more of a individualistic pioneer spirit, these are the people I refer to as the first generation or the pioneers. They had shown that parents could successfully educate their children at home, they had fought for legislation to make it legal, they had begged, borrowed, cobbled together and even written their own curricula. In essence they made homeschooling culturally acceptable. The pioneers opened the doors to the second generation of followers. While the pioneers were more ideological the followers were more concerned with, religious instruction, cost, test scores, quality of public schools, schedule, etc.

The second big change was the growth of the internet. It was now easy to find information and purchase products online. You could also read and write personal reviews to help you decide what to buy and from whom. In the early days you had to make a phone call or attend a seminar to find out the homeschooling legislation and requirements, now it's only a mouse click away. Before you had to go to the state convention to buy your curriculum for the year. Now there is more than enough information online and it's usually cheaper.

Reaching the Homeschool Community

With this brief history in mind here are some practical ways to reach this very diverse homeschool community. Politicians and political organizations can use these tools to reach out to the homeschool community with either their message or in search of volunteers. Traditional marketing means spending money to borrow someone else's audience. The internet and non traditional marketing lets you spend time and money to build your own audience. I recommend using both methods.

Traditional Methods

Magazines

Some of these magazines have overlap and some hit different segments of the homeschool community contact them to find out who they reach. Along with selling advertising space most of these magazines also maintain email lists which you can rent.

• The Old Schoolhouse
• Practical Homeschooling
• HSLDA Court Report
• Homeschool Enrichment
• Homeschooling Today
• Home Education Magazine
• Home Educating Family
• Homeschool Digest
• Creation Illustrated
• The Link

Direct Mail

You can advertise in card packs, essentially you are buying a postcard slot in a large stack of post cards, these generally have a large reach and are mailed several times a year. You can also rent their mailing lists to send your own direct mail pieces. They usually maintain rentable email lists as well.

• National Response Marketing
• Tri Media Online

State Conventions

There are conventions in every state and sometimes several in a state. The old schoolhouse magazine maintains a good list. You can also google your state to find one near you. Some conventions only allow christian curriculum vendors, others only homeschool vendors while others have an open door policy.
Old Schoolhouse 2009 Conventions

Support Groups & Co-ops

I have yet to find a central database of local support groups and co-ops. Buy a google search for support groups in your state will point you in the right direction. Here is one example of support groups in Pennsylvania.
PA Homeschoolers

You can reach support groups and co-ops by calling or emailing the leaders and asking for an opportunity to speak to the group.

Online Outreach

The homeschool community has always been very connected and self organizes in a way that would make most political parties jealous. A hot button issue can quickly spread among homeschoolers and shut down switchboards in Washington D.C. (HR 6 in 1994 for example) Homeschoolers are also extremely well networked online as well. "Homeschool Mommy Bloggers" talk about child rearing, teaching, curriculum choices, politics, faith, recipes, hobbies etc. on a regular basis. They also quickly adapt to new technologies and can be found wherever social media will take you.

Blogger Outreach

Blogger outreach is a very nebulus term that basically means reaching out to bloggers. You can reach out in a variety of ways. You can email the author and pitch a story (doesn't work to well), purchase advertising on the blog (hard to manage more than a few), become a member of a group blog, link to the blog, write comments on the blog, offer free stuff in exchange for a blog post (i.e. review materials, exclusive interview, etc.). The best thing to do is appeal to the blogger's self interest. What do bloggers want?

1. Attention
2. Exclusive Information
3. Money

The best method I've found is to slowly build relationships with bloggers, it doesn't have to be complicated. Read their blogs, comment on them and offer them information that they would find useful.

Some examples of good homeschool blogs

• Spunky Homeschool
• Homeschool Blog Watch
• Corn and Oil
• The Homeschool Cafe
• Trivium Pursuit
• About Homeschooling
• Home Where they Belong

To find more homeschooling blogs check through the past winners of the homeschool blog awards. Also check blogrolls to find out who bloggers like to read.

Twitter

Yes homeschoolers use twitter, if you want to reach out on twitter start an account and start following people. Use the search function to find people talking about your issues/products and join their conversation.Tip: search for the homeschool hashtag #homeschool

Facebook

While there are a lot of homeschoolers on twitter there are even more on facebook. Start a fan page and joint the conversation on facebook. Also facebook advertising is very effective at micro targeting your audience. Tip for Facebook advertising don't send them to your website with your ad, keep them in facebook, either on your page or one of your events. Build your community of fans and talk with them regularly. Have them ask questions and respond via video.

Other Ways to Reach out

Have a homeschool day at your office. Parents are always looking for a good educational field trip and coming and talking with their elected officials is a great way to start building relationships.

Have a volunteer sign up sheet and ask if they want to get involved in local politics. Homeschoolers tend to be well read, respectful and they don't have the same school hours and they can count it as a civics class.

Here are a few good examples I've seen.

Governor Bobby Jindal developed a relationship with the Louisiana state homeschool group and began speaking at their conventions prior his becoming governor. He had a large amount of support and volunteers from the homeschool community in Louisiana and he still maintains the connection by speaking at their conference every year.

Here he is with a bunch of students at the CHEF Homeschool convention. He delivered a great speech and made the time to shake hands with and talk to every person there.

When I was growing up in PA our homeschool group would visit the capitol in Harrisburg and Congressman Joe Pitts would take us on a tour and talk about how government worked. Senator Rick Santorum would do the same for field trips to Washington D.C. Both of whom have enjoyed lots of support from the homeschool
community here in Pennsylvania.

Thanks for reading and please leave a comment or a question if you have anything to add or ask.

How have you reached out to homeschoolers in your district?

More Websites

• The Homeschool Lounge
• A-Z Home's Cool
• Homeschool.com
• HSLDA
• Homeschool Legal Advantage
• National Home Education Legal Defense (NHELD)

Information and statistics

• National Home Education Research Institute
• National Center for Education Statistics
• Wikipedia article on Homeschooling
• Cato Article on Homeschooling
• Barna research - Diversity among homeschoolers
• Article on homeschooling from the Economist

Recommended Reading

• Homeschooling: An American History by Milton Gaither
• Kingdom of Children: Culture and Controversy in the Homeschooling Movement by Mitchell Stevens
• Write These Laws on Your Children by Robert Kunzman

cross posted at KeystoneConservative.com

CIA Invests in Social Media Monitoring Firm

If someone told you that the CIA was spying on you by way of your Twitter updates, Facebook posts, YouTube videos, or Amazon reviews, you’d probably chalk it up to a conspiracy theory.
But today we’re learning from Wired that the CIA’s technology arm In-Q-Tel has invested an undisclosed sum in Visible Technologies, a firm that provides software to companies like Microsoft for social media monitoring.

How Local Politicians are Using Social Media

Former Speaker of the House of Representative Thomas “Tip” O’Neill famously said that “All politics is local;” and social media is making that more true than ever before. It used to be that most of us couldn’t point out our local representative, councilman, alderman, or public advocate if we tripped over him or her, but that’s starting to change, thanks to social media helping us raise our civic literacy levels and altering the way politics are done. We now expect our local representative for our state or town Assembly or Senate or Council to connect with us on a more personal level. And it’s happening.

Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Others Outline Support for Net Neutrality Rules

This week, the FCC is expected to reveal the details of its Net Neutrality plan, which Chairman Julius Genachowski has discussed numerous times over the past month.
Now, a coalition of 23 of the world’s largest Internet and technology companies are formally offering their support for the new rules in a letter to the Chairman, posted to the Open Internet Colaition website.

I could barely believe my ears today at the Heritage Foundation’s blogger briefing. I thought we had declared victory over the Acorn scandal, only to learn we are far from it.

Did you know that Acorn is only defunded through October 31st?

Since the Defund ACORN Act, introduced by Republican Leader John Boehner, passed mid-September, the rhetoric has led all to believe there needn’t be more action. Not so according to Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN). The IRS severed ties with ACORN and both the Senate and House voted to strip them of funding. However, according to Bachmann, “these votes haven’t stopped one dime from flowing to ACORN.”   

Apparently two votes on two entirely different bills from two separate
chambers don’t mean much. Bachmann says in order to get our promised
result of entirely disabling ACORN, “each chamber needs to pass the
same language and get it to the President’s desk--language intact--for
his signature into law.”

In fact the HuffingtonPost.com reports, “Obama, himself a former community organizer, has long-standing ties to the group, which he represented in 1995 in a lawsuit against the state of Illinois over the "motor-voter" law.”

Also, ACORN has received over $53 million dollars of federal money since 1994, and could be eligible for another $8.5 billion through the Obama endorsed stimulus package and other government programs.

For Obama to casually say he is unaware of these numbers is negligence of duty.

I am glad my fellow media friends were in attendance at the briefing today so we can push out this much needed message. You too can spread the word by sharing this and other similar blog posts, tweets and articles. Help continue putting pressure on Congress and our President to sign defunding ACORN into law!

It would be a tragedy for this truly inspiring, ACORN exposing, brilliant campaign of undercover journalism and grassroots communication to go to waste!

Facebook has a lot of great applications, but by far one of the coolest is Causes. Not only can you use it to raise money for nonprofit organizations, there are a ton of other great features that can help organizations get their message out and engage their supporters – and Causes is constantly coming up with new ways to improve the application and help people make a difference.

Sarah Koch, one of two Nonprofit Coordinators at Causes, stopped by DAG to talk about the best ways to utilize the application. Afterward, she was kind enough to answer a few questions about why organizations should use Causes and the successes she’s seen during her time working there.

Some highlights:

Sarah describes Causes as a community of people that are coming together, rallying around an issue and working together to make a change. There are a number of ways that Causes can help to mobilize the community and get them involved.

As for her favorite success story, Sarah cites The Race to End Cancer cause. It was started by a 17-year-old named Michelle who wanted to do more volunteering at the Arkansas Children’s Hospital but didn’t have the time between work and school. So she started the cause to help the hospital out. It now has more than 5.7 million members and has raised over $62,000 for the Arkansas Children’s Hospital.

Personally, Sarah thinks the coolest feature of Causes is the new media board. Now you can post a media item that can spread beyond the cause – you can post it to your profile and send it to your friends via Facebook message. This, Sarah says, is a great tool to get that media item out there in a personal and impactful way.

If you have any questions about Causes and how to use it effectively, you can email partner@causes.com or support@causes.com. And be sure to check out more about Causes and its new features at Causes Exchange.

Political campaigns are changing. Or they should be.

The influence of television commercials is dying. Yes, TV ads have historically been effective in shaping public opinion. But with the introduction of time-shifting technology (specifically DVR devices) and the increasing availability of TV shows on the Web, less and less people are actually watching TV ads.

As of March 2009, 30.6 percent of households have a DVR, according to Nielsen. This is compared to a mere 12.3 percent in January of 2007.

At the same time, broadband penetration is surging - the national average is 89%. Even people in rural areas are quickly adopting broadband technology - penetration rates in rural areas have been growing at a 16% rate over the past two years.

Of all Americans who are online, more than 80% are active in social media - either creating, participating in or reading some form of social content at least once a month.

Corporations have already begun to realize the increasing power of social media and the diminishing value of TV ads. For example, the Gap recently decided to dump its TV advertising campaign for Facebook marketing. Be sure to check out its awesome Facebook Fan page.

While TV ads still bring some value-added to political campaigns, a television advertising campaign cannot be the fulcrum of a long-term campaign strategy. They are most valuable when used in a media blitz during the last few months of a campaign. This is when passive voters begin to pay attention and decide who they will cast their vote for. The problem is that 8 weeks of TV in the fall do little to raise money and less to organize the activists and influencers who play an increasingly important role in our electoral process.

Social media, on the other hand, should be viewed in the same light as a field organization – it should be used heavily for the entire duration of the campaign. Social media strategy should be invested in sufficiently from the very beginning to identify and harvest solid grassroots supporters who will volunteer and spread the world about the candidate and the candidate’s message. These activists will not only spread information to their online networks, they will also use word-of-mouth techniques to encourage friends, parents, and grandparents who are not active online to support their candidate – much more effective than television advertising.

Of course, TV ads still have a place in the campaign. After defining your argument with polling, using social media to spread message and building solid grassroots support, then TV ads can be used in a media blitz in the last few months of a campaign. But letting the short term media budget cannibalize budgets and strip campaigns of much needed infrastructure around the worlds largest water cooler is myopic and bound for failure. A system to attract grassroots supporters through social media will be a more valuable aspect of victory or failure in the 2012 Presidential race than TV ads if for no other reason than the market is saturated with good Media vendors that, with some exceptions, churn out largely equivalent products; however, there are only a handful of firms that do solid work at building and mobilizing donors and activists online.

An obvious example of the power of social media in political campaigns is the success story of the Obama campaign, which relied on online social networks from the beginning to help them topple the Clinton machine:

[B]y bolting together social networking applications under the banner of a movement, they created an unforeseen force to raise money, organize locally, fight smear campaigns and get out the vote that helped them topple the Clinton machine and then John McCain. –The New York Times

Investing in social media strategy is especially important for lesser-known candidates who have significantly less money in their campaign coffers than their competitors and need to introduce themselves to voters and get their message out.

Of course, having a strong, convincing message is the most important part of a political campaign. Without a message, there is no real campaign.

But the bottom line is that political campaigns are changing. The influence of TV ads is dying, and social media has proven itself to be a significant part of impressive and successful political and corporate campaigns.

Let's start with a simple question...

What is the ideal way for a politician to use twitter?

Answers may vary but here is my ideal twitter use for a politician.

1) Have the politician himself send a few personal updates, where he is and what he's working on.

2) Have the staff post relevant links to articles about the politician, post upcoming travel plans, post a few personal updates as the staffer.

3) And most importantly, respond to peoples queries on twitter, run constant twitter searches for the politicians name, important bills etc. and respond to each one.
This dream list is unattainable with just one person, so is it possible to use one twitter account with multiple people while still keeping it personal, relevant and timely?

Enter CoTweet, CoTweet allows you do do all of those things, and very easily I might add.
You can have multiple users, scheduled tweets, personalized tweets, record of who replied to whom and when, the ability to assign responses to other people, excellent search features.

Think of CoTweet as a CRM for twitter.

From the CoTweet website

CoTweet powers brands on Twitter. Designed for businesses using Twitter to engage existing customers and attract new ones, CoTweet is a comprehensive Twitter business platform that supports both proactive marketing communication and response-driven customer support.
CoTweet allows multiple people to communicate through corporate Twitter accounts and stay in sync while doing so.

You can read a great review over at microblink.

I've been using CoTweet for several weeks now with the company I work for and it has been simple and amazing.

Not only is it a great tool for corporate brands but I believe CoTweet could change the way politicians interact with their constituents on twitter.

It's currently in private beta but I would wager they open it up with a few more options soon. Take a look and post any comments below.

Cross posted at KeystoneConservative.com

Last November, I made it clear I would immediately get to work on building a more aggressive, energized and modernized NRCC.

This week, we launched our new Web site — another step in our path towards modernizing the NRCC.

When I assumed my role as Chairman of the NRCC, I cited the need for the Committee to update our messaging and technology capabilities in order to show America that we are the party of better solutions. The updated NRCC.org Web site enables us to relay our message in ways that have increasingly become the primary mode of communication for Americans across the nation. Whether it is through videos on YouTube, tweets on Twitter, updates on Facebook or posts on our official blog, our new site allows us to reach out to people in a way that we never could before, while also allowing people to reach out to us letting us know what issues and solutions are important to them.

Rest assured—our work doesn’t end here. As new technology developments and innovations occur, it is imperative that this Committee continues to find creative and useful ways to effectively communicate our message.

Please visit www.nrcc.org to learn more, let us know what you think and also, connect to us through other outlets.

With your help we can take back the majority in 2010.

Thank you,

NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions

Today and tomorrow, at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, George Washington University's Institute for Politics, Democracy, and the Internet is holding its annual Politics Online Conference in conjunction with Politics Magazine. 

Besides the obvious networking and educational benefits that come from conferences like this, this year's conference is particularly important in the life of this blog as it accepts the Golden Dot Award for Best Blog for National Politics at the conference's cocktail party later tonight.

I will update later with flip video and pictures from the conference and awards ceremony, but here are a few observations from my morning at the Reagan Building:

- Twitter is assuming a larger role than ever in forming unique conversations: this year's conference organizers, in addition to creating the #polc09 hashtag for the entire conference, have assigned unique hashtags to each of the breakout rooms, encouraging participants to communicate with each other and the panelists during breakout sessions.  Walking around the Reagan building, it's almost impossible to avoid the myriad of signs informing participants of Twitter's vibrant presence at this year's conference. 

- The "Geek Lab," hands-on demonstrations of technologies hosted by, among others, Google and Politics.com, will be open in the Atrium for the remainder of the conference.  This seems like a great way to translate theoretical knowledge to practical use, and I'm planning on stopping by later tonight to try it out.

-  It's clear that people attending the conference come from a wide variety of backgrounds.  During this morning's breakout session on reaching people via the internet, the woman to the right of me was from the National Association of Realtors and, after I left, I ran into a friend who works in a district Congressional office in Michigan. 

In addition to receiving an award tonight, TechRepublican will also be popping in during tomorrow's session as Joe Mansour participates in a panel on Social Media Analytics at 2PM in the main ballroom.

See you there!

Someone in my local party approached me and asked matter of factly, what do I need to keep in touch with social networking without getting overwhelmed? I thought about this and thought that while some of us just do everything, what are the top five platforms that conservatives can't go without?

1. Facebook.com

A good platform for groups, causes, and friends. It is also broad in the use by members, unlike MySpace, and doesn't attract nearly as many "spammers."

2. Twitter.com

Even IF you never want to tweet, the ability to follow major players in the conservative world AND actually coorespond with many of them is outstanding. In fact, put that together with the outstanding links and research by some groups like #tcot or #techgop and it is a social networking package combined with news and research.

3. YRNetwork.com

Ok, even if you are not a Young Republican, you need to at least take a look at what Moshe Starkman has done on his own with his own money. Great platform, constant updates, and the functionality of connecting with YRs nationwide is indespensible.

4. Flickr.com

A really great service for photo sharing. Whether through your website, or through social networking, an indespensible service that provides easy use and sharing of photos that are important to you as well as seeing photos of friends or random people on flickr as well.

5. StumbleUpon.com

So, you come upon a conservative website that you love, what do you do? You click a thumbs up button that you have downloaded on your toolbar, and now your friends and like minded strangers have the ability to stumble on that site you selected. I know that there are other services out their that do similar things. Delicious.com, Digg, and technorarti, being among them, my favorite is SU. However, you need at least one of these to make a difference!