Over the past few weeks, I had the honor of being on a team of volunteer modern online political operatives for Saul Anuzis' effort to be RNC Chairman. I've learned some lessons from that race worth sharing in this space.

SUPPORTING SAUL

For me, the decision to support Saul was based on a three-year relationship of working with him to push-and-pull the Republican Party toward the modern world. The first I had heard of Saul was when it was reported by Hotline in August 2006 that Anuzis and I would make an interesting pair of GOP "innovators" in Michigan.

Indeed, the moment I met Saul I knew that we'd be close friends and colleagues. He was accessible, charismatic, one of the hardest working people I had ever met, and he always had an appetite for learning. Impressive traits for anyone, yet alone the chairman of a state party.

After the race in Michigan, Saul and I continued to stay connected via AIM and email. I pushed him to use Facebook where he made it a central component of his outreach strategy. Later, I urged Saul to check out Twitter - and @SAnuzis was born. While I certainly helped push Saul into Facebook and Twitter -- he immediately seized upon and understood the mediums and was constantly connected and authentically communicating with folks. (I can't tell you how many of his staffers told me that if they wanted to know what Saul was up to they would just check his Twitter profile.)

When Slatecard.com co-founder Sendhil Panchadsaram and I launched the site, Saul was one of the first folks we asked to be on the Board of Directors. Saul accepted as an honorary member of the board and his guidance on how to make the tool better was extremely helpful.

On tech policy issues, Saul and I also see eye-to-eye. In July of 2008, Saul and I wrote an op-ed in the Politico about the need for the Republican Party to embrace an Open Internet - a minority position in our party.

So long story short, when I found out that Saul was running for national chairman, I knew I was in his corner because I knew that Saul would make the smarter use of technology -- and the culture of the Internet -- central to the committee. He'd bring real reform and positive change to the RNC.

THE RACE: LESSONS LEARNED, CHALLENGES OVERCOME

Before joining the team, Team Anuzis already had a website in place at AnuzisforChair.com. Because I couldn't work directly with my dev team, tasks that should have taken minutes often took hours. This gunked up the process of being able to control the message immediately. (Lesson learned: Own the keys to the car if you're going to be the one driving.)

Without a doubt, the biggest challenge we faced was the fact that while most, if not all of the 168-Committee Members used email and the Internet, only about half checked in regularly. This wasn't exactly the BlackBerry-strapped crowd. Therefore our ability to communicate was a blend of email followed by print-and-mail via snail-mail. Further, emails were going out from all camps at a ridiculous rate. Add on to that a slew of anonymous hit pieces being sent to Committee Members and it was pretty easy to figure that folks were tuning out their emails. However, we still tried -- sending out an email a day (or more) -- tracking clicks, opens, forwards, bounces and other analytics to optimize our campaign everyday.

A group of folks who wanted to help Saul launched and managed RNCChair.com - a group blog of public endorsers. We pulled in the #RNCChair Twitter discussion and posted links of interesting blog items and news stories via delicious. Though the site was ready to go in early December, we didn't actually launch it until January 14 -- likely too late to become a necessary resource for Saul chatter. (Lesson learned: Stick to your guns, launch your blog asap.)

During the actual race -- at the Winter meeting at the Capital Hilton this past week, RNCChair.com contributor Lyndsi Thomas (a DAG intern) and I filled the blog with reports from the meeting and on those volunteers who supported Saul. While a "sea of blue Saul supporters" was clearly visible throughout the campaign, press was also reporting on folks who were "live-blogging, vlogging, and Twittering for Saul." By physically being a part of the process, it was one small way we were able to continue to push the narrative and Saul's message.

In fact, one of the most special events to happen was when Ohio Republican Party Chairman Kevin DeWine stopped by Saul's "reboot the RNC" open house and told us how our content from RNCChair.com had made its way to him when he was stranded in the Dayton Airport. (Follow @KevinDeWine.)

Regarding content, of the most effective contributions to Saul's efforts was the YouTube video created by Brian Donahue of Jamestown Associates. The video was spot-on message and helped provide a nice product to pass around to Committee Members, press, bloggers and supporters.

We used a slew of Google Groups to keep folks connected to the efforts and to make it easier to send out information quickly. We had a group for Saul's kitchen cabinet, his Whip Team used the day of the race, and another group for supporters and RNCChair.com contributors.

IF ONLY...

Looking back at the race, there are two tools I would have liked to have had in my arsenal knowing what I know now.

* Text messaging would have been extremely useful to communicate a message directly and quickly with Members and the Whip Team who was helping Saul. After each ballot, the dynamics of the race change and the team with the best floor game stands to benefit. Further, there were many times during the actual week of the race that I had thought how much of an impact it could have made like pinging Members to stop by Saul's open house. Texting is still a bit cost-prohibitive but the medium is so great for cutting the clutter, ensuring message delivering, and mobilizing / organizing troops.

* A Truth-Squad Site would have been helpful to diffuse rumors and lies that were being sent around by anonymous hacks. Team Anuzis did a good of member-to-member deflection and at countering attacks with Saul's record of results, but it would have been great to centralize the effort better and provide a one-stop shop for reporters and bloggers.

* Online Advertising, particularly with targeted Google AdWords, would have been a great return on investment. I don't want to dig too deep on the strategies I would have used but I'm convinced they would have helped control the narrative better.

CONCLUSION

At the end of the day, Saul was a great candidate who always made us proud. He fought hard, fair, and honest. Without a doubt, at least some of the other campaigns were engaging the online channel but none more than Saul. His incessant Twittering, emailing, and Facebooking helped pull in support from the grassroots and his hand-to-hand campaigning with Members was truly impressive to watch.

The campaign was extremely rewarding and I'm pleased to have been a part of it. I got to work with some great folks from all throughout the country who backed Saul and I expect great relationships will continue to grow from those experiences.

The RNC is now being led by a truly dynamic individual with Michael Steele at the helm. As a party, we're on the road to renewal and I'm looking forward to his leadership.