facebook

Changes in Facebook Create Uncertain Future For Other Networks

March 22, 2012 by admin_push Leave a Comment

Facebook’s anticipated IPO sends fear among those who use its free services to generate revenue or influence- but could that create competition among other networks?

As the initial public offering for Facebook draws ever closer, many companies that have used Facebook to advance their own agenda are attempting to veer away from the social service. As the company goes public, many anticipate changes in organization, service provision, and usage requirements. One of the concerns for many who have benefited from the popularity of Facebook is the potential for this service to institute user fees, especially for corporate accounts. As companies fear once the company becomes public it may levy fees, some in the corporate world are looking for solutions.

One insight is based on basic economics. If Facebook were to operate on a fee basis, would this open up the market for a free, user-friendly competitor? Sites like Google+ and Myspace have shown less than thrilling results, mostly due to the fact that they do not offer a distinction from sites like Facebook. They have not created the niche, and have suffered as a result. Something such as fees could bring back the appeal to these sites. But, as Facebook becomes more profit-driven as a publicly held company, one could expect to see changes occur.

If this change does happen, one could expect steep fees in order to get one’s message out. Would that benefit other underutilized sites? Who knows. We’d say yes, but if done strategically it might be a trend worth studying. For instance, if Facebook were to keep personal accounts free, but charge for pages and corporate accounts, a high level of competition could be achieved. The growth of personal Facebook pages wouldn’t be affected, but corporations and other organizations would be paying for the service. The benefit of doing so would be the same- and people would have no reason to turn to other social media outlets. Will these changes have an impact? Probably, to some degree.

It’s an interesting observation, and for now, only time will tell.

The Impacts of Technology on The 2012 Race

December 7, 2011 by admin_push Leave a Comment

Social media is changing the face of the modern campaign.

If one thing is clear, it’s that the role of technology and social media platforms is growing with increased prominence in political elections like never before. Connectivity is the keyword, and even candidates in the most rural areas have opportunities to get their messages across to voters in a manner that could not have been conceived 15, 10, or even 5 years ago.

Cutting edge communications strategies have been developed using the advantages of mobile formatting to not only keep potential voters constantly connected, but also to receive feedback and establish dialogue in a manner unimaginable until today. The era of writing letters to your Congressmen in support of a tax measure, or to your City Council member to complain about potholes is quickly going the way of the Dodo. Now, interested constituents can post on their Congressman’s Facebook page or tag them in a response on Twitter- and chances are, someone is going to see it. This is the evolution of communication right in front of our eyes.

Communications strategies have also affected other areas of political campaigning; fundraising has been revolutionized and mailers are no longer the standard. Political fundraising has been taken to the next level through outlets such as Rally and Fundraiser7. Rally is a tool used for integrating other forms of social media, and serves as a hub for supporters to connect. Like Rally, Fundraiser7 works in sync with other social media platforms, but allows for the promotion, payment, and attendance of events to be monitored through a user-friendly solution that benefits not only the operator, but the consumer as well. Event promotion has never been easier. Now, political campaigns can simply log on and check their balance, rather than having to tear through envelopes and keep detailed paper records of their receipts. This minimizes paperwork, frees up resources, and most importantly, minimizes the effort needed to have a successful event.

Social media has also influenced the opposition campaign. Nowadays, it seems that a candidate comes under scrutiny for not what he says in a speech, but for what is mentioned in a Twitter post. This year, Twitter proved to be a powerful tool for not only connecting with Representatives, but also for stirring controversy and eventually giving some elected officials the boot. Twitter is a conversation rather than a form of art. It allows for a campaign to express ideas or a vision, and get feedback from both the supporters and opposition. Most of the time, campaigns have found twitter to be an effective measure of constituent concerns. Other times, negligence and misuse of social media has been a powerful tool for the opposition. With the scandals of 2011 ranging from “Weinergate”, to the ousting of political regimes in the Middle East, Twitter’s effect on the political environment has been recognized as both positive for many and negative for some. The only question that remains is: Has it been fully recognized and implemented on the campaign trail? Twitter proves to be an effective tool, but one that officials must monitor with utmost attention. Online outlets other than Twitter have also proved to be an excellent tool for feedback and data analysis as well.

Online data analysis lets candidates know who is tuning in to their message and what ideals their constituent’s value. This is important as it allows messages to be tweaked, and crafted based on constituent feedback. Platforms such as WordPress have allowed the user to not only see the amount of web traffic, but also to see exactly who the consumers are. Facebook has allowed consumer data to be used in ways that prior technology couldn’t begin to allow- the simple function of the “like” button can give page owners the age, gender, and location of their subscribers, along with other valuable insights to better craft their product. In Politics, the message is the product, and demographic analysis offered by these platforms give campaigns a better idea of what their base demands. By taking these details into consideration, a campaign will have more effective constituent outreach, and further builds support by tailoring their message to the local political environment. The benefits of online trend analysis give campaigns immeasurable advantages, and campaigns still using traditional avenues will suffer in 2012.

Ladies and Gentlemen, politics has reached the digital age, and trends show that the influence of web-based media will only grow from here. So, are you ahead of the curve?

-RAS

Filed Under: Blog, Geek Links, Uncategorized Tagged With: analysis, campaigns, communication, cutting edge, data, donehue direct, elections, facebook, fundraiser7, geek, platforms, rally, social media, tech, twitter, wordpress

Scrolling Through Your Awesome Life

October 5, 2011 by admin_push Leave a Comment

For years I’ve been complaining about the lack of a great service on Facebook to track all the cool things we do. There is just no telling how many games Michael Rentiers and I have tailgated at together and it would be cool to have some way of looking back at all those games. Elizabeth and I are always traveling, yet we have no timeline to view all those trips.

Now we have it.

The new Facebook lets us scroll back through our lives. And I LOVE it!

Now we have it.

The new Facebook lets us scroll back through our lives. And I LOVE it!

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: facebook, wesley donehue

Quit Spamming Facebook Groups

September 3, 2011 by admin_push Leave a Comment

I am very excited to be blogging on this new site. This is definitely a website that’s needed because we all have so much to learn from one another. Sure, some of us are competing against one another for business. Some of us are even competing against each other on the campaign trail, but we are now discovering new territory, and we can all do amazing things when we tell each other what works and what doesn’t.

A quick introduction – I haven’t always been an Internet strategist. First, I was a political operative and political consultant. Our firm runs about 20 campaigns each election cycle. In 2006, I started realizing that the Internet wasn’t just “a fad,” as some people were calling it. As we now know, it is a fundamental shift in the way we communicate and activate. While my firm still runs the nuts and bolts of many campaigns, we now concentrate on Internet development and strategy. On this blog, I will be talking to you a lot about what works for us and what doesn’t. I’ll tell you about some big successes and some monumental screw ups. I hope I can help you a little bit.

Over the past weeks, I’ve been in quite the pissing contest with South Carolina Rep. Alan Clemmons. You see, because of my past work with the South Carolina Republican Party, I am a member of nearly every county party’s Facebook group in South Carolina. It’s been helpful knowing what’s going on with each county organization. However, over the past few weeks, I’ve been overwhelmed because every time Rep. Alan Clemmons is in the news, he posts the article on every single group’s wall. Today, I received about 15 different e-mails, within the span of 2 minutes, alerting me to Rep. Clemmons’ actions.

Folks, this is spam. Electronic communications without permission is spam. There is no difference in posting your news article on every single groups’ wall and sending e-mails without permission.

When it comes to e-mail spam, I have been known to be pretty liberal. Most online strategists would tell you not to use purchased lists at all. They argue that the open rate is so in credibly low. They are right. But I use purchased lists just like I use frequent donor lists. They are for prospecting purposes only. You do not e-mail these people every day. You e-mail them sporadically and occasionally with action items meant to get them onto your organic lists. A lot of strategists don’t even agree with that. I tell you that so that you can see how liberal I am when it comes to spam.

People join Facebook groups to get information about that specific group. I am a member of the Charleston County Republican Party Facebook page because I want to know what is going on in the Charleston County Republican Party. If I wanted to know what was going on with a specific campaign, I would join that campaign’s Facebook group. I am not a member of the Charleston County Republican Party Facebook group for every campaign to contact me. And now to think about it, there is nothing stopping every single candidate in the country from joining that Facebook group and spamming me all day long.

Some of Rep. Clemmons’ supporters started attacking me immediately, saying they want to hear from their representative, and that I’m just being shady and launching Internet attacks. Well, we all know that I’ve been caught in some shady Internet attacks; however, I often critique the Internet activity of both national and local campaigns. If these people want to hear from their representative, they should join that representative’s page. One person even said “Every representative is my representative.” If that’s the case, every state senator is that person’s state senator. Every congressman is that person’s congressman, and every US Senator is that person’s US Senator, not counting all the city and county council members. In South Carolina, this line of thinking opens up a Facebook group to 708 (every state rep, state senator, congressman and us senator) people that can spam us daily with nothing stopping them from spamming us multiple times each day.

If you are an elected official, a candidate or a campaign operative, and you want to reach out to people in a specific group, it is very easy to do so. All you have to do is post to a Facebook group’s wall asking them to join your group. In fact, nothing is stopping you from doing so multiple times. Now, don’t do it every single day or obviously more than a few times a week. But it’s not going to anger too many people if you ask politely every 2 to 3 weeks.

Joining a bunch of Facebook groups and broadcasting your message on each group is disingenuous, ineffective, rude, annoying and nothing more than spam. How would you feel if someone robocalled every single day? How would you feel if someone e-mailed you without your permission every single day? This practice is spam, and it must stop.

- Wesley Donehue | @wesleydonehue

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: facebook, Net Conservative, Spam, wesley donehue

Facebook hits 51 percent

March 25, 2011 by admin_push Leave a Comment

Arbitron and Edison Research conducted a study of more than 2,000 people and extrapolated that a full 51 percent of Americans aged 12 and older are on Facebook. Not only is your mom on Facebook, but evidently your niece is, as well. It marks another milestone passed in the skyrocketing rise of the site and foreshadowing of the future of the Internet. People can doubt that, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s true.

Facebook arrived here in South Carolina in 2004, still wedded to the college-only idea when USC was added to the mix that started at Harvard. As the site changed and opened up, more people joined up, but had just eight percent of Americans in the same universe had accounts by 2008, when Barack Obama used social media to catapult his candidacy. A jump from eight to 51 in three years shows that something big is afoot.

The Internet is moving in a direction in which Facebook is as omnipresent as AT&T or going further back, Sears. The age of websites is coming to an end. Not immediately. Not now. We’re not going to chuck half our business at Donehue Direct and just concentrate on Facebook apps and social media management, but that’s definitely in the cards for the future.

Let’s begin at the beginning. Technology is all about early adapters and broad-based acceptance. Whether it’s PCs in the ‘80s or the Internet in the ‘90s. By the time someone who signed up with Prodigy or Compuserve made the move to AOL and then to an independent service provider, it seemed like the whole world was on the Internet. But even in the mid-’90s, there were articles in places like Time and USA Today talking about “hyperlinks” and the “World Wide Web.” Multimedia meant being able to watch a 10 second video of a lion on your copy of Microsoft Encarta. It’s the early adapters who have to slog through the fits and starts and mistakes.

Once the product or service gets nice and shiny and easier to use, the rest of the public is drawn in. In a decade, the world went from people screwing with BASIC to get certain programs to run to the brilliance of the Mac OSX series. The average person isn’t going to want to fiddle with a config.sys or autoexec.bat file, but “drag and drop” works quite well. It’s that computer operating systems were rough-hewn until enough people began owning computers and having different needs to where the evolution of those systems took off.

And so has Facebook. While seven years ago, people were creating and joining groups, now it’s about liking fan pages, sharing all manner of multimedia and quite honestly getting your news. It’s like the Borg, but not as evil, though some people look askance at anything that gets large and successful. Everything is being integrated into Facebook. And not just bits and pieces. We’re on path to complete integration. There will be a point at which anything you do online can go through Facebook, or originates there.

This is where we’re heading. Time to get on board for the big win now, because it’s coming.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: arbitron, edison research, facebook, internet, modern media, new media, social media

Sharing, support and campaigns in social media

March 21, 2011 by admin_push Leave a Comment

The Pew Research Center, each weekday, releases a number of the day. Today’s number was seven, as in seven percent of American adults last campaign cycle friended a candidate on Facebook or followed them on Twitter. That’s incredible, for a number of reasons. When you consider that campaigns are won and lost on the margins, seven percent means a great deal.

Certainly not all friends or followers are supporters, but even with observers and opponents cut out, that should still be a big deal. You’re not going to have seven percent of supporters turn out to volunteer. With people friending or following, updates regularly appear in the news feed on Facebook or the regular feed on Twitter. These updates can be easily shared by supporters in one or two clicks. That goes out to all the people who follow them, and so on.

And it’s not just “the kids.” Seventeen percent of social media users between 30-49 years old discover what candidates their friends support through social media. Eleven percent gained information on a candidate and 10 percent friended a candidate or cause. Overall, 54 percent of people in that demographic use social networking.

That’s not as good as the 74 percent among the 18-29-year-olds, but the universe of people is more likely to vote, so the quality of user is better even if there are fewer of them. However, it should be noted that 23 percent of younger users find out about friends’ support of candidates through social media.

Not to pitch our own product at Donehue Direct (OK, never hurts to throw in a plug), the Share Our Campaign application is perfectly set up for this kind of social media campaigning. If so many people are getting in contact with the campaign, this bumps it up a notch. With the addition of a simple widget to the Facebook page or the website, a supporter can immediately change their background for Twitter and avatars for Facebook and Twitter to pictures the campaign chooses, along with a message encouraging others to do the same. Simple, cheap, easy and effective.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: facebook, pew research center, share our campaign, social media, twitter

Davis, Grooms, Pope and the way to act on Facebook

November 30, 2010 by admin_push Leave a Comment

Elected officials are starting to get the hang of social media, but it’s more than just signing up for an account and putting up generic updates. Social media are tools, and can be used only as successfully as the person operating them. Success is all about being personal, constant updating and interacting with your voters. It’s nearly impossible for another person or a web firm to do that for you unless you completely let go of the reins. If you don’t, you will end up with boring crap like “had a great time at the Fun County Funfest today” and “it was great seeing everyone today.” That’s not creating success.

Sens. Tom Davis, Larry Grooms and Rep. Tommy Pope have all taken strategies to use Facebook as more than a static campaign sign. Davis has been interacting with voters through sharing news stories about important topics, not just stories involving him. It gives an idea on what he considers significant in the policy discourse, and allows people to interact. He’s been working on both his personal page and the one set up for his campaign.

Grooms has been more active sharing his activities, including a recent trip that he and Sen. Chip Campsen took to Joint Base Charleston. He’s posted pictures and short updates, and it’s personal touches like that work to make people a little closer to their officials. People who feel a little closer to the person in office are more likely to reelect that person. It helped keep John Spratt in office for well past his expiry date.

What a lot of people tend to forget is that for all of Facebook’s sameness – a nice departure from the old MySpace days – there are facets you can use beyond the wall and updates and friending 4,000 people. Pope is taking full advantage of the video feature. A post with the video will go on the wall, but it’s also slated for a box on the left column, and Pope has 30 up right now. A lot of candidates have been using video on their Web sites. It almost looks prehistoric to not have a multimedia presentation now. But the videos on Facebook take out the extra step of going to the campaign site. Instantly, Pope can talk straight to his constituents.

There needs to be more of this style in how politicians look at social media. You shouldn’t be viewing it as another device added to the list of tactics to win an election. Taking stock of what can be done with the page – and by extension, Twitter – is important in figuring out what you want to do with it. If you don’t know, then ask. Or better yet, bring in a Web consultant who knows what they are doing. A commitment to more than a slap-dash effort will pay off at the polls.

Filed Under: Blog, Strategy Tagged With: davis, facebook, grooms, pope