The last session of the day focuses on Grassroots Organizing Online and Offline. One of the themes I present is how most grassroots movements are viral and require a “host”. I then go on to say that Ron Paul was too weak of a “host” to carry his “movement”. Full disclosure – I was a mail vendor for Fred Thompson’s campaign (that is a whole other discussion) and I did not support Ron Paul. Having said that, I was constantly intrigued by his supporters and his “movement”. I work in the business of political campaigns and like to think I am a student of how they work on a logistics and business end. So for the purposes of this post lets skip by issues and just talk nuts and bolts.

First I have to take a dig at my strident Libertarian friends who loved Dr. Paul – learn a lesson from him

1.       Run as a Libertarian for Congress and lose

2.       Run as a Republican for Congress and win

3.       Run as a Republican for President and get to take the stage, be in the debates and air your issues

Pretty safe to say no one is accusing Dr. Paul of “selling out” even though he ran as a Republican. I can already feel the hate that point is going to draw…

Moving on, Dr. Paul raised over $34 million dollars of which over 99% came from individual small donors. This is a supremely impressive feat for a guy who, candidly, has below average public speaking ability, no message discipline, fairly inexperienced campaign organization and barely eked into double digits in most public polling. So his campaign was obviously not as much about the “product” of the candidate. He benefited from a couple powerful motivators;

1.       A disgruntled and angry free-market fiscal conservative base

2.       A weak field of Republican options for President

3.       A core Libertarian group that was already online

$34 million, unfortunately, is still not enough to get serious traction in a modern Presidential Primary. That is compounded by the fact that his campaign spent almost 50% of their cash on “Administrative” expenses. That is just unacceptable. Barely a third of the dollars spent went towards actual voter contact. Ok, now all my grassroots friends can holler and say “of course that is what an evil money grubbing political consultant would say!” But folks let’s get real, modern campaigns are not small mom and pop businesses any more…especially ones for President. They can start that way but at some point you have to bring in experienced folks to run the ship…having said that the grassroots are still vital and important to success, but they have to have experienced leadership.

Looking back at Howard Dean circa 2003…the guy almost became the democratic nominee and was much more viable than Paul. Both had strong grassroots movements but Dean had some adults in charge at HQ. Ultimately, I think both Dean and Paul were not strong enough vessels for their movements.  So what happened to many of those early Deaniacs? They became the base of Barack Obama’s underdog campaign in early 2007. So why was Barack successful where Dean was not?

1.       Obama is a FAR superior candidate “product” than Howard Dean

2.       Obama’s team of very experienced political folks had a whole list of lessons learned from the Dean Campaign

3.       The online left-roots had only grown larger and stronger since 2003

In short I would propose that Barack Obama would NEVER have gotten off the ground had it not been for Howard Dean.

So if you were a Ron Paulie in 2007 what should you be preparing for? Look for the well spoken Liberty candidate. Can you imagine if Dr. Paul had the TV appeal or speaking skills of a Mike Pence or Jeff Flake? There will be a Republican candidate running in 2012 (in all seriousness they have probably already started) that will carry many of Dr. Paul’s limited government issues, learned from his mistakes and have a more experienced team around them. Don’t know who that “Candidate X” is yet but if you find them let me know.

Candidate X is looking for your passion, your love of liberty and yes your dollars too. That candidate will finally be worth the absolutely incredible effort that so many Paul supporters poured into the 2008 primary.

Be looking for that candidate because they are probably already looking for you.

Alicia joined Target Point Consulting from the Republican National Committee where she most recently served as Regional Political Director. Prior to returning to the Republican National Committee, Alicia served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for External Affairs and Communications at the United States Department of Commerce.

Leading up to the 2004 presidential election, Alicia served as the Director for the Presidential Coordinated Fund for the Republican National Committee.  Prior to her return to Washington for the fall campaign, Alicia worked in Manhattan as the Republican National Convention’s Director for External Relations.

 
From 2001 to 2003 Alicia served as Associate Political Director in the White House Office of Political Affairs.  Before moving to Washington, Alicia worked for the Bush/Cheney 2000 presidential campaign and in Massachusetts for Governors Bill Weld and Paul Cellucci.

As my main man Ron Burgundy would say “She is…kind of a big deal.”

CF – What campaign on the GOP side showed real innovation in fundraising?
AD – I may be biased, but I believe that Mitt Romney’s fundraising team utilized innovative new tools and pushed the limit on all fundraising mediums.  From building out an online platform for lower dollar donors, to developing a tracking system that utilized tools seen in the business world, to creating interesting events like national call day to draw donors together to compete – they covered the spectrum.  More importantly, they made sure that each piece worked in concert with the others – so, for example, big events had an online, mail and phone component.

CF – What campaign on the GOP side had the most effective use of New Media?
AD – This is one area where we need to catch up.  Traditionally Democrats spend significantly more funds than Republicans on new media staff and resources.  Clearly Obama took advantage of his funds to maximize his reach and was successful at doing so.  There are a number of innovative ways to influence and motivate voters, we just need to invest.

CF – What candidate on the GOP side best leveraged earned media to get traction?
AD – Huckabee certainly used earned media to his advantage in the primary process.

CF – What campaign on the GOP side showed the greatest comeback?
AD – Clearly John McCain made quite a comeback in the primary process.  While he may have been the heir apparent in early 2007, his prospects weren’t looking so good the summer prior to the New Hampshire primary.  McCain continued to fight and won the reward of New Hampshire and ultimately the nomination.

CF – What campaign on the GOP side had the most effective GOTV organization?
AD – The push for the Saxby run-off was an intense and well run operation that mobilized supporters and got the vote out.

CF – What GOP candidate has the biggest ideas for the future of our party (even if they lost)?
AD – Again, I may be biased, but I believe Mitt Romney has the best ideas for our party.  He spoke out in 2007, stating that the we  “put our own house in order” and return to our principles.  With a foundation of our principles and a party that is constantly investing in modernizing and innovating its efforts.

CF – What GOP campaign was really good at the small stuff? (yard signs, bumper stickers, t-shirts, etc)
AD – This t-shirt certainly qualified as the most interesting approach – http://www.adn.com/ted-stevens/story/572441.html

One of my favorite parts is the Victory Department. What is the Victory Department? In a nutshell, they are the folks that plan, train and monitor GOTV and AB/EV programs around the country. Notice I did not say implementation, that is for the campaigns to do. Michael Beach has been the National Victory Director for the last two years. Michael got his start in Ohio, the mother of Presidents…and great political staff, as a field staffer he then moved to Nevada where he headed up GOTV and AB Chase programs for the State Party. In 07 he was brought in to take a hard look at the metrics of what we were (and were not) accomplishing with our voter contact activities. Few people in the building have killed, or tried to kill, more “sacred cows” in their time than Michael Beach. Here is the results of our chat.

CF – What were some of the biggest changes in application and technology that our side saw when compared to 2004 and 2006?

MB – There were many technical advances that were made this cycle, but the two that stand out to me were in data gathering and volunteer productivity. Despite only having a field operation active for 20 weeks in 2008, we were able to collect 10 times the amount of data that was collected in all of 2003 and 2004. Improvements in volunteer efficiency played a major role in the collection of data. Improvements such as our VoIP system allowed our volunteers to go from making an average of 30 calls per hour to an average that approached 38 calls per hour.

CF – Was the base engaged? How so?

MB – On the volunteer side the base was definitely engaged. The goals for our volunteer GOTV program were very aggressive and nothing that we accomplished would have been possible without the support of our base. Our volunteer program made over twice as many volunteer contact attempts during the post-convention period in 2008 as was made during the same period in 2004.

CF – Which states showed the greatest adaptation to new techniques and tech for GOTV?

MB – The majority of our states ran very effective GOTV programs, but the states that stood out to me were the ones that were not top tier targets in 2004, but were very competitive in 2008. North Carolina (1400+% increase in data collection over 2004) setup an excellent operation despite starting a few weeks later than the larger group of target states. Virginia (500+% improvement in data collection over 2004) was able to get buy in from a wide variety of down ballot candidates and integrate them into our GOTV program. California (1500+% increase in data collection over 2004) provided a great amount of output into the state during the summer and then provided other western states with significant help during the GOTV period.

Following the November election we moved into Georgia and setup a full GOTV operation for the Senate runoff. Despite not having a great deal of recent history running statewide GOTV efforts that involved the RNC we were able to work with the NRSC, GAGOP and Chambliss campaign to setup an excellent program in just a few weeks. The statistic from this race that sticks out the most to me is the fact that we collected over twice as many AB votes from our GOTV universe in the runoff as were collected during the general despite a significant drop in overall turnout.

CF – Which campaigns showed the best ability cooperate with other campaigns to achieve better turnout?

MB – There was buy in from day one from the majority of our targeted and senate candidates. By the summer of 2007 the RNC had met with over 35 campaigns to discuss the Victory program. The next challenge for us is to get better engagement with non-federal statewide races as well as state senate and house races.

CF – What was the most valuable tool in the GOP GOTV tool box this year?

MB – AB/EV data collection was the most valuable tool for our GOTV program this cycle. The RNC and McCain campaign devoted significant resources (labor and technology) towards the collection of AB/EV data. We were able to identify the majority of voters that had cast an absentee or early vote and then they were removed from our paid and volunteer universes.

CF – Which states showed the most improvement in GOTV from 2004 to 2008?

MB – Colorado, Maine, and Ohio are excellent example of states that made improvements across the board from 2004. These three states all made large improvements in their data collection over 2004, but their AB/EV programs were the ones that really stood out. Each of these states was collecting data for almost every county/municipality on a daily basis despite the fact that there was no statewide file. This allowed us to no exactly where we stood in terms of votes in the bank and also gave us the opportunity to be reactive to what was actually happening on the ground.

CF – Which states showed the most innovation and use of tech in their GOTV?

MB – Florida has taken all of their experiences with AB/EV to develop an excellent reporting system that allows you to identify the AB/EV broken up by several variables. Nevada tested a very aggressive online voter registration program that we feel will play a major role in future elections. Missouri utilized a phone from home program that had a few features that were more advanced than even the neighbor to neighbor tool that the Obama campaign utilized.

The list of states that stood out from a technology standpoint could have been longer, but our states did such an excellent job of sharing best practices with other states, that good ideas were quickly adopted on a national scale. The ability to move best practices out on a national scale is the main reason that I feel that we need to have a very strong national Victory team in DC to compliment the work that our state programs our doing.

Florida GOP’s Lessons from the Trenches

CF Tell me about Florida?

EV Due to its sheer size, the State of Florida necessitates more than retail politicking—it requires any statewide campaign to have a methodical and energized ground game that can conquer ten media markets and a message that resonates with an incredibly diverse population—Hispanics from distinct countries of origin, African Americans, Veterans, seniors, the Jewish community, and military families, to name a few.  This vast state compels campaigns to master a complex political strategy that incorporates the ever-critical I-4 corridor, “condo commandos,” Hispanic Little Havana, and conservative Northwest Florida.  As a political party, the Republican Party of Florida is here to provide support, guidance, infrastructure, and fundraising for campaigns, from the presidential campaign down to the Broward County Sheriff’s race.

CF What does Obama’s victory in Florida over the McCain campaign say about the political ground game in Florida?

EV It shows that this was a perfect Democrat year.  The Obama campaign simply had more resources.  The Obama camp out-spent McCain 7-1 in Florida, an extreme TV state where TV advertising is critical to success.  I would note, however, that because of the Republican team in Florida, McCain came within 21/2 points of winning Florida—which says a lot about the folks who worked tirelessly across Florida on behalf of the Republican ticket. Additionally, while Florida Democrats were awash in cash, political operatives, and newly registered Democrat voters, the Florida Democrat Party utterly failed to take advantage of it, defeating not one single Republican incumbent in the Florida House or Senate. Congressmen Gus Bilirakis and Bill Young both got 60+% in Tampa – an area Obama carried. In Miami – another area Obama carried – Mario and Lincoln Diaz-Balart both fended off credible, well-funded, DCCC-backed candidates. I think our performance across the board bodes very well for the Florida GOP.

 CF How did the Florida GOP stack up against the Democrats as far as mobilizing grassroots supporters and organizing GOTV?

EV Under the leadership of our Executive Director, Political Director, and 72-hour Director, Florida led the nation in the number of volunteer voter contacts six of the last seven weeks of the 2008 Election Cycle. Through our volunteer efforts, we contacted more voters in 2008 than in 2004, touching more than four million voters this year.  We made over one million phone calls and knocked on more than 100,000 doors during the 72-Hour Program. The RPOF also created a new Absentee Ballot Request Walk Program and implemented Absentee Chase efforts, which were nationalized by the RNC. Additionally, we installed VOIP phones and used bubble sheets with cell phones to better capture data on targeted voters.

On the grassroots communications front, we launched a text message pilot program of using text messages to contact volunteers and voters.  We also upgraded to an enterprise level blast email distribution system that allows for more segmentation in selecting email recipients. Additionally, each Victory staffer was provided with an account and personalized segments for each county to aide in volunteer recruitment and retention and to provide greater communication between field offices and volunteers.

 CF Do you think you utilized New Media effectively?

EV I think there is always more we can do. For example, we are going to have a hands-on training session at our Annual Meeting in January to show folks how to use text-messaging.  Keep in mind that many of our grassroots activists are older Floridians who haven’t necessarily had much experience with cell phones, the Internet, email, or social networking. 

That said, we’ve accomplished a lot this election cycle, especially this year, communicating to both grassroots supporters and the media via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, our Conventional Wisdom blog, and text messaging.  The challenge is to integrate them all together. We’ve done some comprehensive prospecting, cleaned up and built our e-mail lists, implemented the new email system I referred to earlier, and synchronized fundraising efforts.  We also advertised online on carefully-targeted sites to maximize the effect.

I am especially proud of our Conventional Wisdom blog (http://rpofconventionalwisdom.blogspot.com/), it was an instant hit and picked up by the media. Disclaimer—Mark Halperin’s The Page was our inspiration and I hope he checks our blog every now and then to see how we’re stacking up. We originally launched the blog during the Democrat National Convention (hence the name “Conventional Wisdom”) to provide a running commentary of video messages, articles/updates, and exclusive political cartoons to bracket the Democrats more creatively, but we ultimately kept it going because it was popular. 

We also created a Voter Action Center through our website, a one-stop shop allowing users to register to vote, request an absentee ballot, find Early Voting/Election Day voting locations, sign up to volunteer, find their local field office, etc.  The VAC utilized Google Maps so it was helpful for voters. 

 CF How did you leverage earned media?

 EV We quickly found that “earned media” is often synonymous with “new media” and we used it to our advantage to communicate with the grassroots and the media.  For example, we created a web ad once Tim Mahoney’s multiple affairs were exposed utilizing his own tape-recorded voice (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCp9mNtZkQM); the media loved it and it fired up the grassroots the way no email response ever could.  We had over 2500 hits the first day alone, which is pretty impressive for a state party web ad.

We also launched several microsites, including a Real World spinoff highlighting a Democrat congressional candidate.  Our Democrat fundraiser tracker microsite (http://rpof.org/dem/) garnered national attention; this was back when the Democrat presidential candidates were boycotting Florida because of the early primary.  Remember that they could come hold fundraisers in Florida, but the DNC forbade them from holding grassroots events. So we illustrated the hypocrisy and ensured that the negative narrative continued. 

Once Obama was the nominee, we rolled out the welcome mat for him for his first trip to the state, reminding people that he had not campaigned in Florida; the music was “Welcome Back Cotter” and it certainly got in your head. That microsite also got us quite a bit of national media. 

CF What new fundraising techniques did you use?

EV We tried our hand at low-dollar asks based on news and events.  For example, we launched a “67 Days, 67 Counties” 67 days out from the election, with a goal of  getting folks to donate a dollar for each of Florida’s 67 counties, based on the fact we only had 67 days left in the campaign.  As economic times got tougher though, we returned to more traditional fundraisers instead of asking mainstream Floridians to donate. That said, we will continue to identify news stories, holidays, events, etc. that we can take advantage of for non-traditional fundraising. 

CF What should readers/bloggers know about the Florida GOP?

EV We do things a little differently here in Florida.  Under Governor Crist and Chairman Greer’s leadership, we’ve focused on putting partisan rhetoric aside and instead running on our record.  It’s worked for us, keeping the Governor’s approval at record-breaking highs and allowing us to build the party during these Democrat-friendly times.  Florida was a bright spot on a relatively tough election day for the GOP, with zero Republicans defeated in the Florida Legislature and a strong showing among our Congressional candidates. Even in the extraordinarily-Democrat Broward County, the first Republican to win a countywide election in 30 years was elected Sheriff. 

Look, Floridians voted to maintain overwhelming Republican majorities in the State House and Senate, voted strongly to cut taxes, and voted to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman.  I think this demonstrates that we’re doing something right to get our message out, and I’m proud of that.

On page optimization is just one piece of an overall SEO plan, but it is the easiest to control….so let’s just cover that part.

This is “The Brian Horn Magic Formula”

To maximize onpage optimization’s keyword usage with these steps:

1. Use at least one time in the title tag, maybe twice (or part of a phrase twice) when appropriate and not clunky looking (Obama’s Technology Plan  | The Truth About Obama’s Technology Plan)
2. At least once or twice in the meta description tag – not for rankings, but to increase the click through rate from the SERP
3. In the H1 tag of the page at the very top – as the actual headline of the page (this is good for both visitors and search engines)
4. In at least one sub headline, possibly in a modified form
5. 1-2 times in bold on the page
6. 4-6 times in the body text at minimum, but only as it makes sense and looks natural. You really can’t go nuts with too many keywords as long as the writing doesn’t start to sound like you’re stuffing the keywords. It’s a tough call, but as with most things, you’ll know it when you see it.
7. In the alt tag of at least one image – this lets you pull in image search traffic, but it’s also another way of saying the page has multiple types of content about the subject
8. NOT in external link anchor text
9. NOT in internal link anchor text (unless it’s pointing to a more specific kw phrase that includes the target term, like “Obama’s technology plan for broadband internet”) This is called cannibalization and won’t help.

On page optimization is only a small part of getting a site ranked, but it is the easiest to control. After writing a blog post, just remeber to give it the “once over” to make sure you optimized it corectly.

This viral marketing push tries to equate saving Santa Claus with donating to Greenpeace.

Seems Greenpeace may be desperate for funds as there looks to be a concerted effort to get into the public consciousness again with this video and a new TV series on the Animal Planet called Whale Wars.

I am all for saving the environment regardless of one’s belief in global warming, but this just comes across as crass.

You think kids seeing a barfing Santa Claus (was that REALLY necessary?) over the stern of the ship will bug their parents to help (monetarily) the “heroes” of Greenpeace saving dear old Santi Claus?

I’ll post up some results next week.

Its interface and framework allow a person to spread news virally as quick as any other social media platform. We as free market capitalists need to take advantage of this tool to spread our message.

Facebook Groups, communities of friends with similar interests, are also becoming extremely popular. But, how many of us have created a local free market capitalist group and invited people to join?

Tips to Grow a Successful Facebook Group

The Right Configuration
Make sure you select a title, category and description that is relevant to our message because this will entice people to join the group. I’ve found that people are more likely to join a “Free Market” group as opposed to a “Republican” or “Conservative” group. This would be a great way to get people that are reluctant to lable themselves as Republican to listen to our message.

I also suggest that you be as transparent as possible and offer information such as contact information, website, phone number and location. This allows group members to associate the group to an actual person rather.

To offer a real community appeal, enable the ability for anyone to post discussions, wall posts, pictures and videos. Initially you should make the group public which allows anyone to join and invite people to the group; remember you do have the ability to remove members if needed.

Leverage Existing Facebook Friends
It’s important to attract a strong base of members to your Facebook group, so invite existing friends that may find your group valuable and who could become evangelists for your group. This is where the viral part comes into play: your friends’ friends will notice that they joined a new group which will spark interest from them to check it out as well.

Use Your Email Contacts
Don’t forget about your friends outside of Facebook because Facebook Groups provides the ability to import and send group invitations to your contacts from Outlook, Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail.

Press Releases/Blog Posts are other methods which you can use to invite new members to your Facebook Group. There are a number of free press release sites out there now.

Keep the Content Fresh
Update your group’s Recent News, photos, videos, events and links regularly so that members have a reason to return. Another simple tactic is deploying a welcome message which greets new members and enforces the ‘human factor’ of the group.

Since it will be a local group, you should attempt a “meet-up” once you get enough members. Keep it more fun than political.

Create Relationships with New Members
If you have a group which is open to the general public then you will notice people who are not your ‘friends’ join your group. These are the types of people are there to get a feel for the quality of the group therefore make it a habit to personally address them.

This is an easy way each one of us can start building a network of like minding individuals at a local level…which will be critical in 2010 and 2012.