Recently I’ve teamed up with three different people on three different projects to offer my advice to new politicos looking to launch aggressive web campaigns. It’s very difficult to organize so much into something so streamlined and organized. My thoughts are often all over the place because I’m used to thinking about a specific strategy and how to build tactics using various mediums, but while teaching a seminar a couple weeks ago, a young lady asked me “where should campaigns spend the most time and effort?”
It’s hard to think about just one medium and how it can singularly be used for success. That’s like asking how to win a football game with just a wide receiver and no backs.
Lately my thoughts have centered on Facebook. I love Twitter and YouTube and I have a renewed obsession with Google, but I always come back to Facebook. I think its because over the last few days I sat and watched my mother-in-law spend every free minute on the social network.
I don’t think she’ll mind me louding her out. All her friends saw her there anyway thanks to the snappy little chat feature in the bottom right hand corner.
A recent study showed that it didn’t matter if a person did or did not regularly read a print newspaper – they all are now more likely to get their news from online. A 2008 poll revealed that 80 percent of Americans over 17 say that the Internet is “a critical source of information.”
Here’s the big news folks – as people move toward the web to get their news, they are staying there to connect other people, something that cannot happen with television or direct mail.
According to Nielsen, “member communities” (social networking and blogging) are now the fourth most popular Internet activity, even surpassing personal email. Also, time spent on social networking and blogging sites has grown by three times the rate of the rest of the Internet. In terms of time spent, between December 2007 and December 2008, Facebook saw a massive increase of 566 percent. It’s not just teenagers and college students, either.
Facebook launched in 2004, primarily as a place for college students to get together, get in contact with each other and find students of a like mind. In the past six years, it’s grown and expanded, and now most new Facebook users are middle-aged.
Like my mother-in-law, people are spending much more time on the social networks and as I tell my clients “go where the people are.” People visit blogs, and watch videos, and even fly with little twitter birds, but they play on Facebook. That’s where they get hooked.
That’s what I told the young lady who asked me where to spend the most time and effort. A smart Internet strategy utilizes many mediums, but if you’re going to concentrate on just one, go with Facebook.
People say the political mood is anger. I don’t believe that. I think most people are scared. They’re scared because they see the status of our economy. They’re scared because they see no answers and no leadership. And they’re scared because so many people are angry.
I believe that most people are scared, but that doesn’t mean that a lot of people aren’t angry. People think the mood is anger because the angry people are loud. They’re real loud. They’re spewing anger all of the television and all over the Internet, but they’re doing very little to help matters. They’re offering no solutions. They’re just talking about how much they hate everyone and everything.
That’s making the larger majority more scared. Can you blame them?
The world would be a better place if the angry people would offer ideas, but it seems they’d rather concentrate on emotion than solutions.
“I can’t believe I can’t get on Twitter today.” I actually just said that out loud. “Life ain’t right without Twitter,” my father-in-law responded. He’s right. Or at least that’s the way it feels.
I’m in the middle of the woods at my in-laws home. Ridgeville, South Carolina to be precise. They left Daniel Island recently, a home in the middle of everything cool, for a secluded home 30 minutes from anything. Their French style home now sits surrounded by the most beautiful snow many of us has ever seen in these here parts. It’s been 21 years since the South Carolina lowcountry has seen anything like this.
We haven’t had electricity in 12 hours. We can’t leave because trees now hang over the long driveway and we can’t get the neighborhood gate open. I’m not sure our little BMW could make it through the snow covering the driveway even if that wasn’t the case.
We have no water because the pump runs off electricity. We have a gas fireplace but the blower also runs off electricity. It’s getting cold. I have no Internet and as I write this word, I have 18 minutes of juice left in my macbook pro. I didn’t bring any magazines or books, but I do have a healthy stack of my mother-in-law’s Coastal Living and Southern Living magazines I could read.
You could say that I’m in paradise. We can cook with our gas-powered stove. We have a full supply of wine and beer. We don’t have a coffee maker, but we were able to heat water on the stove and make coffee the old fashion way. I have my wife, my dog, and some cool in-laws to hang out with. And we are so secluded that all we can see are white trees.
Still, I find myself full of anxiety. What popped in the news this morning? Who else is without power? What’s happening on Facebook? I could be finishing that website. I could be catching up on all the geek news I haven’t had time to read over the past month. What are people tweeting right now?
I guess I could whip out a pen and notepad and write a couple campaign plans I’m late on. I could finish some Internet strategy plans. I will have about 6 press releases to write next week. I guess I could get ahead of the ball. Actually, I have 3 emails that need to go out on Monday and I haven’t written even one of them yet.
Or I could just write this blog post. Although I better type fast because my macbook pro will now die in 12 minutes. I love Apple products. I hate Apple batteries. My iPhone is completely dead. Elizabeth has juice, but she has no signal. I guess the phone towers in the area are down too. Who knows. I can’t get on the Internet to find out.
I love working. Maybe too much. The problem is that politics is much more than just doing work and making money. Yesterday I met with my financial advisor in Summerville who asked how many hours I work. We started talking about time vs money and while I’ve read just about everything there is to read about productivity, the fact is that in politics, most of the time, more time doesn’t mean more money.
Too much time is wasted reading news. Way too much time is wasted gossiping, reading bullshit blog posts, and just getting caught up in the rumor mill. The fact is that this career means you work too much, have no hobbies, become way too physically unhealthy, and even more mentally unhealthy. And you don’t make any more money.
In fact, in another career, I’m sure I’d double my current salary with the current amount of time I work. Why am I’m even sharing this on my blog? Well, I believe the large majority of this trend goes back to the Internet. We’re becoming more addicted and much less productive.
It’s 10 am. We just called the electric company and all they can say is that it’s “going to be a while.” By the time you read this post I’ll be back online, frantically trying to catch up on all I missed.
All this is showing me that we have become too connected. I’ve become too connected. There’s no time to just shut down. Even when I go on vacation, I’m hitting refresh on my email, twitter, and facebook apps every 5 minutes. Yeah, I’m just bitching now, but when I started this blog I said that I’m going to talk about what its like to be a political operative and an entrepreneur. This is what its like. So much anxiety about what I’m not doing that rather than spend my time escaping in a Coastal Living magazine, I write a blog post.
With the 4 minutes of battery life left, I’ll tell you about my dream. I hate Columbia, South Carolina. I’m there for two buildings – the South Carolina Statehouse and Williams Brice Stadium. That’s its. I long for the day that I can move an hour and a half southeast to Charleston. I want to live so close to the beach that I can smell the saltwater. I don’t have to live beachfront. I just want to live close enough to smell it, a 5-minute drive to a marsh front bar. I want to do politics from my porch, and while I might be too connected right now, I believe that connectivity will allow me to accomplish my goal.
I’ve been offered a few jobs on DC recently. I don’t want that either. No Washington drama. No Columbia drama. Just the beach, beer, good music, and real work, where my income is directly related to the material I pump out.
Is that possible in politics? I think so. We have cars, planes, and the Internet. I don’t see why it’s not possible from Key West either. This Coastal Living article says it has the most beautiful sunset in America. I agree. We went there on our honeymoon.
The snow is starting to fall from the trees and there isn’t a cloud in this amazing blue sky. Not one. My battery is gone in 1 minute. This blog post could have been written in 41 tweets.
