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… filling in the negative space with positively everything

How *NOT* To Win An Online Campaign : PT II

In How *NOT* To Win An Online Campaign : Part I, I cautioned any political candidate (or business or nonprofit organization) who wants to wage a successful online/social media campaign to heed the following advice:

  1. Do NOT Start Late.
  2. Do NOT Confuse a Presence with a Strategy.
  3. Do NOT Play Dr. Frankenstein.

I was going to write about specific tools for “Part II,” but decided that this next point is so critical and essential to a winning online campaign that it deserved a post devoted entirely to it:

4.   Get Your Team to “Get It.”

Not long ago, I wrote an article for AYN Brand on How to Get Your Group on Board with Social Media. It was a direct response to feedback from attendees of my social media and online marketing workshops. While the attendees themselves were enthusiastic about “joining the conversation” online, one of the biggest challenges many faced was a fear of new media among their organizations’ board members and senior executives. The people who ultimately decided when and where financial and human resources should be allocated did not understand the reach and use of online tools, so they decided to ignore developing anything beyond a basic website. Rather than learn how online networking could help their organization, those stakeholders chose to remain out-of-touch and dismissed social media as “just for kids.”

It’s NOT. As I wrote, successful campaigns like President Obama’s prove:

How *NOT* To Win An Online Campaign : PT I

Since the 2009 Houston mayoral election, it seems everyone has a theory on “why Locke lost.” It would be nice if some (any?) of those theories were informed by what actually happened at Locke headquarters during the period that led to the December run-off. (Before the run-off, everyone seemed astounded that a first-time candidate with little-to-no name recognition or campaign experience was able to beat out sitting City Council Member Peter Brown, who outspent both Parker and Locke throughout the race and achieved the greatest visibility of all the candidates on television.)

I have my own ideas of why Parker won. If you want to know what they are, send me a tweet and I’ll tell you over coffee some time. But for the benefit of all the political candidates running for office this year – including Bill White for Texas Governor and Gordon Quan for Harris County Judge – I’d like to share what I learned from the campaign trail.

In 2010, White and Quan will be running against incumbents for their respective offices. In the 2009 mayoral race, while it was open due to term-limited White vacating, Parker and Brown could be considered the “incumbents” Locke faced, as they were both seasoned politicians who had developed strong support bases over years (and even over a decade for Parker) of campaigning. Similarly, it will be an uphill battle for the “new” candidates to build online support that can effectively compete with their opponents’.

Facebook’s Free Tools to Promote Your Cause

Facebook isn’t just for kids: as a marketing tool, Facebook offers an endless variety of ways for you to promote your cause, organization, or business for free. Once you’ve signed up for an account, try any of the following tips to maximize Facebook’s branding and promotional potential:

  1. Profile: When you sign up for a Facebook profile, customize your page to reflect your business or organization, uploading logos, pictures, links and other information that reinforces your brand.
  2. Find Friends: Use this to find your friends on Facebook and import your contacts from AIM, Gmail, Outlook, and more. Then look for mutual friends whose addresses you may not have had.
  3. Groups: Use the site’s Groups feature to network with your target audience. You can join existing groups or create one just for your business to amp up the buzz about its services.
  4. Causes: Create a Cause to start recruiting members and volunteers, to promote events, and to raise funds for your group or mission.
  5. Marketplace: Not only can you possibly find needed items for cheap here, but you can also sell items to fundraise or offload excess inventory, and search for new employees.
  6. Networks: List your organization’s city, industry, neighborhood and any other relevant information to let potential customers and audiences know where they can find you.
  7. Badge: Create your own Badge to direct Facebook friends to your organization’s Web site.

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