Fred is Dead

Fred Thompson's presidential site is dead. Nothing there. Given the negligible cost of a redirect, why not push the occasional user somewhere, the RNC perhaps? JohnMcCain.com? I know there isn't much traffic, but isn't it worth a little effort to direct the user to something more useful than an error page?

This makes me wonder what is going to happen to the hundreds of thousands of connected supporters that exist among the various groups for each of the major candidates? Campaigns are known for leaving nothing behind - everything is spent by election day. However, these communities will still exist. What should be done with these assets?

Voter data (aka, the voter file) is another similar asset that at one time never lived beyond election day. Then, first by the Republicans and now slowly by the Democrats, the data each election cycle is being collected and stored for use next cycle. This data has become a powerful tool, as it has grown far beyond a simple list of those registered to vote. The data set now supports everything from ad buying to fundraising, and more innovations are on the horizon.

Given that most of these networked communities are locked within their respective social network, this data cannot be appended to the voter file. How can additional value be extracted after the balloons fall?

Traffic may not be enough to invest resources or thought, but Obama's 780,000 Facebook supporters, or McCain's 49,000 MySpace friends warrants at least some thought... What are your ideas?

Groundswell: Dems Dominate

I added another book to my list - Groundswell. Each of my clients is getting a copy - it's a great discussion of the social media opportunity. Most important, it looks at the phenomena not from the technical perspective, but from the direction of how social media is changing the relationships people have with their friends, colleagues, family, etc. Ultimately, these changes will also impact a brand, presidential campaign, or any other organization that relies on marketing and public relations to get its message out.

Li and Bernoff discuss their Social Technographic Profile, a breakdown of the various behaviors exhibited by users within the social web. Marketers (and campaigns) can use this breakdown to focus their social media efforts, as each tool and technique provides value to a different type of social media user. From a political perspective, the breakdown is:

The data suggests Democrats have a healthy advantage over their Republican counterparts in the areas of Spectators (those that primarily consume the content) and Critics (those that enjoy opportunities to react). Thus, providing opportunities for your community to view and digest new and interesting content will feed the Spectator (i.e. content aggregation). Ensuring your efforts provide ample opportunity to comment and discuss is necessary to feed the Critic's needs (i.e. comment tools, discussion boards, etc.). I am just scratching the service here of what this data means, but you get the idea...

I have long had the sense that Democrats & Progressives dominate the social web, as the Republican & Conservative movement has long dominated talk radio. This, in conjunction with the tremendous opportunity brewing on the business & marketing front, has driven me to help major Democratic political organizations realize and seize this growing opportunity. It's always nice to find empirical data to support your gut.

There is a ton of great information in this book, for anyone curious about the social web and how it will impact your organization, if it hasn't already. More to come on this one...