Skip to main content

Blogs & political campaigns, what do bloggers want?



Last week I took part at the 6th International Political Marketing Conference, you can read the full abstract of my presentation: Blogger Outreach strategies and New Media Engagement. It was great to talk with fellow political marketers, and academics, and learn a lot from interesting presentations on the topics of political science and marketing.

I presented on how political campaigns need to engage with bloggers in creating and running blogger outreach programs to communicate with influential people online. As people in new media understand, the argument of Blogger Vs Journalist was raised.

My take is that Bloggers should not be treated as main stream media journalists or reporters. Political campaigns need to target them with new media tools and technologies that have proven to be effective in creating personal links, and valuable in gaining trust from online communities. The campaign should be able to provide bloggers with relevant insightful and bundled information, in order to spark and maintain a two-way communication stream with  online communities.

When a blogger is interested in a politician or a political campaign, he or she would already monitor their website, follow them on social media, and receive a vast amount of campaign newsletters, press releases and media advisories (not to mention the latest information from main stream media websites).

So, Bloggers have all the raw information they need to write a post.

What do they want?

  • They want traffic towards their Blog, linking to Blog posts signals that the campaign understands and reads all relevant information online.
  • Following from that, they want to get mentioned, for the campaign to acknowledge the fact that they spend time in dealing with certain political issues.
  • Bloggers want to grow their internet presence, in maintaining a multi-subject website.
  • They want to have a personal connection with the people running the online campaign, and ask questions.
  • They want to contribute, not just money or time resources, but provide policy or communication ideas to the campaign or the candidate. Bloggers can be proven to be valuable in proving feedback on online communications methods.
  • They want ideas to write new posts and insightful information that can help them put their argument to perspective.
  • Some Bloggers want to advance their career, start a online information portal and go into professional journalism. 
  • Also, some bloggers want money, in terms of paid advertising, there is nothing wrong with that, but the campaign needs to always follow it's advertising policy in buying any ad space online. 
Blogs are becoming part of the Media and Public Relations landscape. Political campaigns, and candidates,  need to open-up and reach the flow of online information, whilst having, or in some cases creating, a comprehensive communications strategy in implementing blogger outreach programs.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Campaign Strategies | Obama and Palin facebook posts

Sarah Palin concludes her latest facebook note with "November 2012 can’t come soon enough." , while Obama promotes a Strategy update video on: "What We're Building This Summer" . When you compare these two facebook messages one can understand that Obama is building on an ongoing campaign with volunteering initiatives and grassroots organizing; while Palin is asking: "Should we be borrowing money from China to turn around and give it to the Muslim Brotherhood?". This is the time to start organizing to campaign for 2012; not the time to engage in creative political rhetoric or 2012 debate talking points.  Here you can watch battleground States Director Mitch Stewart reporting on the nuts and bolts of what volunteers are building, for Barack Obama 2012.
Post a Comment
Read more

Mid-term elections - GOP Vs DNC chairs and online updates

The upcoming election campaigns in the States, are probably going into full mode next week, and the Republicans have launched their new campaign bus along with http://www.firenancypelosi.com/ A cool move by the GOP in energizing grassroots campaigners in every bus stop. So where is the bus now? well have a look: Also watch RNC Chairman, Michael Steele talking about the bus tour... you know it's ON! What are the democrats up to? well, they have launched a new http://www.democrats.org  website and re-branded with the new "D" logo. I find the new website much more clean than the old one, but maybe thats because they kept a lot of white space. Anyhow, you can learn more about the new democratic branding changes reading "Democrats, the Brand" Let me also comment on the vast number of email coming from " Organizing for America ", I definetly receive around one per day, maybe more. In the latest one today, the Obama campaign is offering "canvas
1 comment
Read more

Romney: Believe in America, Donate

The Mitt Romney campaign has the message "Believe in America" beneath the Romney logo ( my opinion on the 2012 Romney logo ) but just beneath that, it has a Donate button. In doing so the message becomes:  Romney - Believe in America - Donate So, Romney believes in America, you should too.. oh, and donate to the campaign..  I know that that this might be considered a detail, however, when you look at it, it looks like the message is with the word " donate ".  Anyway, I just wanted to bring this to your attention in order to point out that: The way you create an email newsletter can be proven to be crucial in changing or shaping your message.
Post a Comment
Read more