Updated January, 2011 The first thing to remember about working with the news media is that reporters are bombarded with information and that the good ones consequently quickly develop a sensitive bullshit meter. When you’re working with...
Updated January, 2011 A major part of online advocacy involves direct attempts to influence decision-makers such as congressmembers, governors, the President, state legislators and corporate boards and CEOs. I’m going to focus on Congress, but...
Updated January, 2011 Getting found on search engines is usually vital if you want to have any kind of online prominence, and search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the Holy Grails of online marketing (and marketing is what we’re doing...
Updated January, 2011 What good is a campaign if no one knows about it? Inadequate promotion is a painfully common problem in the online world — rarely can you hide your light under a bushel and expect your site to shine. Let’s look first...
Updated January, 2011 Cell phones, and particularly text messages, are the next political tool we’ll consider. If you’ve spent the past few years building up your thumb strength and agility while keeping up with which bars have good...
Updated January, 2011 RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Syndication) is an easy way to keep your readers abreast of updates to your site content. At their simplest and most common, RSS feeds send subscribers the title and a brief blurb...
Updated January, 2011 Though online video has really broken out big in the last five years, campaigns and random citizens have been using short video clips (live-action or animated) to promote their ideas and pummel their enemies for years. But...
Updated January, 2011 Social media is a broader concept than social networking, though people often put them together — it refers generally to content that is created by random internet users rather than by a central person or group. YouTube...
Updated January, 2011 Blogs, one-time sweet darlings of the political internet world. I can still remember the first time I figured out what a blog WAS, back in the spring of 2003 (I was at South by Southwest, listening to a presentation and no...
Updated January, 2011 If you’re an online organizer, your activist list is often your most precious possession outside of your website — its members are your supporters, your regular readers and frequently your source of precious cash...