Leveraging social media in politics

Book Review
Yes We Did
An inside look at how social media built the Obama brand
By Rahaf Harfoush
New Riders/Voices that Matter. 2009. 199 p.

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The White House provided a live stream on Tuesday of President Barack Obama’s press conference on Facebook allowing users to give instant feedback on his remarks about Iran, health care other topics.

Hundreds of Facebook members from around the world posted their comments on a message board next to a video of the news conference while it was being shown live by the White House at apps.facebook.com/whitehouselive.

This happened yesterday. And it’s nothing new.

Among the things helped Obama win the national election last fall were the campaign’s savvy use of social media.

Author Rahaf Harfoush disclaims any intent to provide a how-to manual, but you can bet that many of Obama’s online communication strategies will be common in all political campaigns from this point forward.

Harfoush says the campaign’s success resulted from refinement—not invention. The team improved on social media tools to build a scalable organization with national reach. That allowed Democrats to compete in areas they had been unable to penetrate before.

This book offers a behind-the-scenes look at the 2008 presidential election and was written by an enthusiastic Democratic activist. So you may (or may not) need to set your politics aside.

The hub of the campaign’s communications was the web site, my.barackobama.com. Early supporters adopted the platform to continue and extend the organizing they had already been doing. They connected with Obama supporters outside their personal networks and amplified their organizational efforts.

“Nothing is more convincing or more powerful than hearing a story from someone just like you,”  Harfoush says. “Keep it real and keep it local.” The MyBO web site allowed users to create events, exchange information, raise funds, and connect with voters nearby.  More than 3 million people created an account on MyBO. They uploaded contacts from their Outlook and Gmail address books and invited their extended social network to joining MyBO. They created special interest groups like Electricians for Obama,  Texas for Obama, and Women for Obama.  They used the site to organize more than 200,000 offline events.

Supporters from across the country could log in and write a note of encouragement to precinct captains and volunteers. Through a unique fundraising campaign, previous donors were asked to match someone’s first-time donation.

Howard Dean’s presidential campaign was notable for its online fund raising success, yet was unable to convert online enthusiasm into actual votes, Harfoush says. When the Obama camp built their online grassroots movement, they ensured that online organizing translated into offline action.

By design or by stealth

Book Review
SocialCorp: Social Media Goes Corporate
Joel Postman. New Riders: Voices that Matter.
2009. 195 pages.

The company website is no longer the center of the communications universe.

Now that everybody and their grandmother can set up a blog, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account, corporate web sites no longer seem quite so engaging.

All the while, social networking continues to make its way into organizations, either by design or by stealth.

Joel Postman argues persuasively that the new “basic business skills” now requires a basic understanding of social media and the ability to use social networks correctly, alongside presentation skills and the ability to create and understand an Excel spreadsheet.

Postman is the principal of Socialized and previously was EVP of emerging media at Eastwick Communications. His book SocialCorp provides several starting places for organizations that want to create social media initiatives specifically for each audience and to engage them on their terms, in a way that is relevant to them. A progressive, forward-thinking company adopts social media “in a way that accomplishes strategic business and communications objectives without compromising the company’s primary obligations as a corporation,” he says.

For example, Dell, Zappos, IBM, and Procter & Gamble are among companies using social media to reshape their relationships with their audiences. Dell’s IdeaStorm functions as a full-blown customer engagement program and a catalyst for change in the company’s products and services.

Postman emphasizes that each social medium (microblog, video podcast, social network group, etc.) represents just another tool in the corporate communications toolbox.  But what makes these tools so powerful is the way they interact. Many of them connect with each other to exponentially increase their usefulness. For example: Don’t use Twitter in isolation, he says. Link to and from your Twitter account to connect it with other communications initiatives like a company blog or social media newsroom.

Organizations should monitor conversations using social media. They can listen to potentially millions of people and learn, day-by-day, how their brand is performing, where the company is strong, and where there’s work to do. The organization can join in the conversation and influence the brand for the better. Postman’s search on Facebook groups for Bang and Olufsen revealed more than 50 groups devoted to the company and its products. More than 500 Facebook groups discuss Apple products, and most of these groups are not approved by the company. But if the results are positive, Postman asks, why not let consumers do your marketing?

How you measure the success of using social media depends on what you want your audience(s) to do. In her guest chapter, online measurement guru Katie Delahaye Paine emphasizes the importance of focused measurement: Do you want your audiences to request more information? Get more engaged with your brand? Make a contribution? Vote? Buy something? Then that’s what you should be measuring.

Social media strategy isn’t that complex, Postman says, but it does require a synthesis of traditional thinking, creativity, understanding of new tools and etiquette, and the willingness to take some chances.

Ten Questions to Consider when Considering Technology

I enjoyed talking with about 40 people who attended my session at the CASE V conference here in Chicago. As is often the case, some people were just getting started with social media while others were quite advanced. I hope my presentation generated some starting points for people no matter their level of expertise. We formed six small discussion groups and when I visited each one I heard a lot of information being exchanged.

As a followup I would offer the following set of points I shamelessley borrow from the technology gurus at Brown University’s AISR group. These can help guide decisions about incorporating new tools into one’s communication portfolio.

1. What problem are we trying to solve? What effect do we want to achieve? What specific benefit will the use of technology provide?
2. Can a tool grow out of an existing tool or existing work process?
3. What is the essence of this tool? Collect information, communicate externally, communicate internally, analyze data, facilitate collaboration?
4. How do we envision using this tool?
5. How will we know if the use of this tool is successful? Do we have a plan to follow up on implementation and evaluate success and effectiveness?
6. How do we get input from potential users before developing tool?
7. How do we anticipate working with Technology on design and ongoing research, development, and implementation?
8. What investment of time/effort will be needed to continue to add to, maintain the content of the tool?
9. What work will this tool save? What work will it create?
10. How do we anticipate ongoing development of technology use to facilitate, support and extend our work?

The starfish strategy

Robert Scoble’s piece in Fast Company (December/January) makes the case that expecting your Web site to be a destination all by itself is soooooo 1990s. Scoble notes that this season’s presidential candidates use what he calls a ‘starfish’ strategy. “A starfish has many legs radiating outward from its central core. It uses its legs to move toward its prey, which it will ultimately devour….”

Consider your Web site the belly of the starfish. Add legs to the starfish as new technologies emerge. For example:
Mitt Romney uses his blog to push audiences to other pieces of his communication ‘starfish’ where they can learn more.
Barack Obama’s campaign uses text messaging to send updates to (mostly young) people.
John McCain’s YouTube channel shares debate highlights, TV spots, and town hall footage.
John Edwards’s Flickr photo sharing site provides an inside look at his campaign.
Candidates also use social networking sites and Google Blog search to track what others are saying about them.

“Attract people into your sphere, entertain or engage then, and then close the deal,” Scoble says.

Improving research access and use

I’m already looking forward to next March, when I’ll participate in a panel of researchers and communicators addressing evidence-based strategies to improve research access and use. We will present at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA).

If all goes according to schedule, I’ll talk about measuring the effectiveness of social media.
Richard Colvin, Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media, will discuss cultivating education journalists in the context of recent changes in the news industry.
Ron Dietel of CRESST at UCLA will talk about improving research use: providing exemplars of research use; increasing teachers’ research knowledge, offering communications courses researchers before they enter the field; and the need for establishing a research center on research use.
Gene V. Glass, Fulton College of Education, Arizona State University, will discuss AERA’s role in disseminating facts and nurturing debate.
John Willinsky, Department of Language and Literacy Education, University of British Columbia, will talk about evidence-based strategies to improve research access and use, including encouraging journal publishers to provide open access.

How tech is changing PR

Kirk Hallahan is a former PR practitioner and now a professor at Colorado State University. In an insightful article for the Institute for Public Relations he summarizes his thoughts on the interaction between public relations and new communications technology. Here are some excerpts:

1. Public relations activities cannot be segregated from an organization’s other uses of technology. Communications technologies have altered PR’s structure and function. Customers and others are increasingly asked to interact with organizations through web- and wireless-based self-service technologies. As a result, technology-driven public relations activities are increasingly indistinguishable from routine organizational activities.

2. Public relations must redefine itself as a result of technology. The rise of new communications technologies makes even more irrelevant the traditional distinctions between communications activities. The critical question is whether practitioners are charged merely with producing, distributing and promoting messages that take advantage of new technologies (the traditional communication function of public relations); or should the real function of public relations be to advise managements at all levels (from chief executives to systems analysts) about maximizing organizational-user relationships regardless of who produces content?

3. New technologies are not the solution to all organizational communications problems. Organizations might be tempted to adopt every new medium that becomes available. But they must invest in new media selectively and strategically. New communications technologies must be combined into an integrated media mix that also takes full advantage of traditional media. The metrics for measuring many of the newest media are only in the developmental stage. More needs to be learned about new media’s impact on organizational relationships and reputation.

4. Technology poses new challenges to public relations and client organizations. New technologies can be incorporated into any of the four basic types of public relations programs involving promotion, relationship building and maintenance, crisis communications or issues management. The speed with which information can be shared with stakeholders during a crisis or controversy is obviously an ideal application of new media. Yet speed has placed new, unintended burdens on organizations as well. New media present new sources of crises that did not exist previously. These range from unfounded online rumors to malicious attacks by critics who enjoy unfettered access to a global audience.

Engaging audiences with social media

Social media, social networking, user-generated media: These have become crucial elements of strategic communications in business and politics. Educational organizations can adopt some of these strategies as well. The following observations come from media consultants profiled in the June issue of Fast Company magazine:

“In the television era of politics, the instinct was very much to control the message, to get the perfect sound bite. With the Internet, I think you have to release control as you do in a conversation. . . . the ability for things to go viral is in anybody’s hands. . . .”
Matthew Gross, senior adviser for online communications, John Edwards Campaign

“My prediction for ’08 is that user-generated content is going to force candidates to go positive with campaign advertising because the online airwaves will be flooded with negative stuff. That actually might be the biggest plus out of it all.”
Laura Crawford, media consultant, Republican National Committee

“We felt there were better ways to organize groups of people and get them to take action, rather than do all top-down organizing the way a campaign typically does. So we use existing social relationships, whether they are coworkers or friends asking each other to donate, or communities built around email lists of blogs.”
Matt Debergalis, cofounder, ActBlue

“Whoever came up with that Web site [www.barackobama.com/] was brilliant—the ability to completely network, get in touch with people who are organizing, and be able to set up events yourself.”
Kim Mack, cochair, Sacramento for Obama

“Other methods of communication are beginning to supplement television. Now you need to do television plus the Web, television plus bloggers, television plus social networking, so it all becomes part of a bigger piece. . . you always have to do things different and fresh. . . . What bloggers are saying today is going to wind up on the front page of The New York Times tomorrow.”
Russ Schriefer, media director, John McCain Campaign

“Because there are now so many more millions of people who are being engaged by politics online than in the last presidential election, our ability to control or fight back against media narratives is much stronger. We can create our own stories and push back against the ones that are BS. To me, the beauty of this medium is that there are so many centers of power in Netroots that no one can ever really dominate.”
Markos Moulitsas, blogger, Daily Kos

Public Relations = Google Relations

Maybe we should rename Public Relations “Google Relations.” Google’s search engine technology has changed the practice of public relations that much, says Greg Miller, President, Marketcom PR.

Every student of PR, and every practitioner, surely realizes that Google has upset the PR paradigm. As Miller points out, “every piece of public information about your company—the good, the bad, the ugly—lives on the Web more or less forever.”

Search engine technology makes every relevant piece of information available to anyone, at any time, as long as they have a computer and Internet access, Miller says.
Add-ons like Google Alert push information to the user instantly, and most of the content is not produced or controlled by the company named in the alert.

For PR and marketing professionals this means your audiences get information about your company as quickly as you do. It means that the media uses Google as a primary news source in its coverage about your organization. Blogs report, or distort, information about your organization in ways that are nearly impossible to prevent or, once posted, take down.

Miller recommends several things you can do, among them:
* Conduct an audit of how your organization is represented in the search engine database.
* Use the power of the new media. For example, post a video on YouTube. Consider a sponsored blog. Think about buying a Google Ad.

Thanks to The Daily Dog

Education research for the broader public good

Six years ago John Willinsky* wrote that the value of education research will be judged not only by the degree to which it is “likely to be used in practice” or whether it can “help with the communication problem” between researchers and policymakers. Education research, he argued, will also be judged on its contribution to the quality of general public understanding. It will be judged on what it offers to the larger public conversation over why and how schools matter.

Education research can and should be much more than a source of practical suggestions for teachers, Willinsky said. It should serve as an intelligible source of public education and political deliberation.

Education research should offer the public a source of information that’s an alternative to the increasing corporate concentration within the media, he argued. It should play a more dynamic role in “leveling the informational playing field of an educational politics that is increasingly swayed by interest groups.”

Education research can help raise the level of public discussion surrounding state referendums on topics like bilingual education and affirmative action. It can provide touchstones for debates over mathematics standards, the impact of high-stakes testing, and voucher programs.

The subtext of Willinsky’s article was: It ain’t happening yet.

Is it happening in 2007 ?

The improved diffusion of research knowledge that Willinsky proposed is not about informing every voter on every educational issue. Rather, it’s about “whether the social sciences could do more to counter the dumbed-down politics often associated with mass media coverage of election ‘races.'”

Improving student achievement, reducing achievement gaps, and reallocating scarce resources (good teachers, well-equipped classrooms, and other educational opportunities) calls for more than translating the best research into the best practice, Willinsky noted. It requires the advocacy of dedicated leaders and interests groups, all of whom could be better informed by better access to the relevant research.

In his 2001 article Willinsky pointed out that the technologies used by educational researchers have been largely directed at data-gathering and analysis, with some attention given to supporting scholarly collaboration and publishing.

Willinsky argued for a much expanded model of research communication and outreach. It would be supported by what he envisioned as a website portal for public and professional engagement with the relevant research in the context of policy and practice.

Now, six years later, researchers and communicators have tools including blogs, RSS news feeds, podcasts, videocasts, and wikis, among other things. They can be incorporated into a communication strategy that will make research findings more broadly available and accessible in the public forum.

“The question is not whether everyone has access to computers,” Willinsky said. “Access to information resources will always be unequally distributed. The question is whether the Internet can do significantly better than print, as now appears to be the case, in helping more people gain access to research that can make a difference to their lives.”

Of course it can. And every day more researchers and communicators are taking up the challenge.

* Source: John Willinsky, “The Strategic Education Research Program and the Public Value of Research.” Educational Researcher, Vol. 30 No. 1, pp. 5-14, January/February 2001

Monitoring your web presence

I guess we pretty much all agree that it’s important to know what’s being said about your organization on the web. How many sources do you check? Google Alerts? Technorati? Maybe you have time to go beyond that and track 5 or 6 or 6 sources regularly? How about 33? Here’s a list of tools you can be using now to track your organization’s web presence. Thanks to Shel Holtz and Constin Basturea for their work.