The other day, a familiar and moving picture appeared in my Facebook news feed, originally posted by a man that I had never met.

It's my favorite picture from the 2004 presidential re-election campaign. It changed the outcome of the race 6 years ago and -- in the process -- changed many American's feelings toward President George W. Bush.

Now, over one year after President Bush has left office, the picture had resurfaced on Friday - this time on Facebook. The photo caused a viral reaction - garnering over 2,300 likes and 2,600 comments within days.

As of one hour ago, the photo recieved over 5,000 hits.

I chatted (over Facebook of course) with the original poster, Ron Boat, about his experience after posting the photo. He offers a unique insight into the power that one unseemingly unpowerful person can have in the political process in this era of modern media.

Why do you think your photo attracted such a viral response - nearly one year after the Bush Administration's end?

I thought that there are many who, like me, actually like and respect this man. I felt he had a love for this country and while I don't agree with everything he did during his time, (for one reason or another) I felt he always did what he thought was best for this country with the information and resources he had. He made tough decisions, had some tough things thrown his way during his time and I'm thankful he was in office and not any other candidate we've seen running lately.

So it was posted strictly to show the humanity - the real compassion - I felt that he had for this girl, for the situation (victims of 9/11) and for the country.

How long ago was the photo posted and how long did it take to get to 2,000+ comments?

I put it up Friday I believe and somewhere on Saturday I saw 1,000 comments and around 1,200 "likes". On Sunday I think we hit around 2,000 comments. As of now we're around 2,300 "likes" and 2,600 comments. Some have been deleted if they contained hate speech, untruths, random ranting etc. Not to be a censor but to keep it clean and respectful. As I've said on my post several times, this was to remember a man and a moment, not to be a platform for hate speech.

Were you surprised by the response you received?

I was surprised. I'm not a Facebook junkie. I haven't been on that long and usually exchanged posts with some friends and like minded people I ran into. Never had a lot of friends, just some good connections. Again, I didn't put this up to make any major statement or impact - just remember a man. But when you do that, this and any opportunity can become a platform for people with personal and political agendas. I've had the chance to meet some very nice people through this and expand my own friends list and also have seen the dark side of some who are consumed with hate either for political reasons or no reasons at all. It was a real insight into humanity.

I still greatly respect this man for what he had to deal with. And while being human, everyone makes some mistakes, but to forget the good for the sake of hate is not a reasonable thing. I've had friends who knew him and his family and through this post I've met people that knew and met him and they all bear out the fact that compassion and caring was part of this man's make up - thereby proving my point and reason for the post. I'd still count it a honor to meet this man and his father for what they contributed to the country. Being president is not an easy job - not one I'd want - and most are probably unprepared for all that can happen once in the oval office - but some bring more organization, foresight and class than others.

What do you think? What caused this photo to go viral?

I believe it's important for campaigns and organizations to capture emotional moments like these. With powerful pictures come powerful messages that have the ability to motivate and activate 1,000s. 

At the recent Modern Media Strategies workshop at the Heritage Foundation, Patrick Ruffini focused his entire presentation on the eternal killer app: email (see here).

"Eyeballs" are everything for your online presence. As Ruffini put it: "Email is still the closest thing we have to mass communication on the web." He rightly notes that the famed Dean online revolution actually happened via email.

In May of this year, the Harvard Business Review published an excellent piece by Duncan Watts and Jonah Peretti entitled: "Viral Marketing for the Real World". In it they examine the elusive phenomenon where a single email thread or online piece replicates like wildfire across the Internet.

They point out that this type of "viral" event is really accidental, difficult to reproduce, and impossible to predict. Instead they advocate "big-seed marketing." Essentially, big seed marketing:

combines viral-marketing tools with old-fashioned mass media in a way that yields far more predictable results than “purely” viral approaches like word-of-mouth marketing.

They note that true viral marketing involved a "reproduction rate" of 1 or greater. That is, for every personal that receives the message he or she spreads it to more that one other person, thus leading to exponential growth. As the authors note:

By contrast, viral messages with an R of less than 1 are generally considered failures. That’s because purely viral campaigns, like disease outbreaks, typically start with a small number of seed cases and quickly burn themselves out unless their R exceeds the epidemic threshold, or tipping point, of 1.

Not everyone is into "forwarding like it's hot" (ala Michael Scott). Instead, your email send will slowly peter out to zero generation after generation.

However, the authors tell us that this "failure" can be seen as a boon if the initial seeding is large enough. For example, if you have a list of 10,000 and a email infection rate of 0.5 each generation would pass it on to half as many recipients. The math goes like this 5,000 + 2500 + 1250 + 625 + 312 + 156... After 6 generations your email infection burns out but you've reached an extra 20,000 in the process! Not a failure after all.

The authors note several examples of this type of viral marketing. An excellent read with great advice for any blogging marketeer.

On techPresident, Alan Rosenblatt asks if anything a campaign has ever produced has gone viral. I'd say this has a decent shot.

Only two videos this campaign cycle were worth me pulling my apolitical wife aside, and saying, "You've got to see this." The 1984 ad. And the Hillary Sopranos spoof.

The video breaks any number of First Laws of campaign web videos. It's "overproduced." And she's acting. It's nowhere close to authentic. But it's funny as hell. And self-deprecating.

At the end of May, the NRCC unveiled phase two of the Real Democrat Story. The site, which was first launched back in March, now includes 21 Democrat targets and new features such as web ads and a blog.

It’s our hope that The Real Blog can serve as a forum for discussing the issues that matter most to people and an opportunity to expose the broken promises and hypocrisy of Congressional Democrats. The NRCC would like to use this blog to create a two-way dialogue where folks come to participate in the process, share their thoughts and provide insights into what we at the NRCC believe is "The Real Democrat Story."

What makes this blog unique will not only be the content generated by NRCC staff and Members of Congress, but it will also feature contributors from across the country who have expressed interest in blogging on behalf of the NRCC. Already the NRCC has featured guest bloggers from Kansas, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

When we initially rolled-out the website, www.TheRealDemocratStory.com, in March, we asked people to sign-up to blog and the response was so overwhelming that we created a platform for their voices to be heard. Along with adding additional files on the Real Democrat Story, the NRCC expanded its viral marketing campaign and has sent targeted emails into each district and will run banner ads across the country. The banner ad buys, along with the emails, will reach nearly 8 million people in an effort to capture tens of thousands of additional email addresses.

The story on the expansion of the Real Democrat Story has already appeared on Drudge, and was featured on page one of the Politico.

* Josh Shultz is the New Media Director for the NRCC