VasGk | Κοινωνικό Νερό

During the past months both the Democrats and Republicans have send an abundance of emails, driving home their message for the future.  At the same time all emails asked for money in the form of donations or contributions. Here are some punch lines the campaigns used to urge supporters to click-through and donate: Please chip in $5 or more today. Chip in $5 or more before our final budget deadline. Your generosity and efforts can make a great difference. Chip in $5 or whatever you can today. Don't wait. Supporting this campaign once more will move us closer to victory. Please don't wait any longer. Help us out with a donation of $5 or more today. Donate $5 or more right now to keep this campaign strong straight up until the last vote is cast on November 6th. Contribute $5 now to be automatically entered for a chance to win. Chip in $5 or whatever you can and you'll be automatically entered. Close the gap -- chip in $5 or more now. Thanks to you, our camp...

The US mid-term elections were held about the same time that the Greek Mayoral elections, and unfortunately I was preoccupied in keeping up with the local campaigns. But, I did manage to follow some of the news and catch up on US politics online. John Boehner was elected Speaker-designate by House Republicans and when the full House votes in January, Boehner will become the 61st Speaker of the House. When you visit the official speaker.gov website it's all about Nancy Pelosi And if you want to connect with the Speaker of the House you are directed to Nancy Pelosi branded social media. Twitter» http://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi Facebook» http://www.facebook.com/SpeakerNancyPelosi YouTube» http://www.youtube.com/SpeakerPelosi Flickr» http://www.flickr.com/SpeakerPelosi I would have expected for the Speaker of the House, whoever that might be, to have an independent presence on social media platforms, and not be centred around people that occupy the positi...

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 ...

Barack Obama was the second person to reach 10 million facebook likes, after Lady Gaga . Facebook for sure plays a distinctive role in online communications, and politicians in particular seem to be very fond of how facebook helps them connect, talk and get feedback. W hen  politicians become part of someones daily news feed, they connect in ways that are yet to be determined as to how they can shape future relationships and influence voting  behavior.  When people spend time in providing feedback, or channel political messages to friends, they need to be acknowledged for that.  facebook provides an intimate online technology platform that drives interactions in being more personal.  I can understand that engaging in dialogue can be time consuming, but politicians, in trying to help their constituents, need to get personal and provide useful information, just like other "facebook friends". Last year nobody knew Lady Gaga, she did however passed the 10 millio...

The 2010 US Senate race is heating up. I came across an excellent Internet campaign by Chris Widener (R) against Patty Murray  (D) for the Senate seat of Washington State. The campaign is called NotPatty.com a website that lists and asks a series of questions, and answers all of them with "Not Patty". You can also connect with NotPatty on facebook and twitter . A Great idea to launch not only a personal campaign website, but also an attack website that goes after the opponent on the issues. Both of the candidates have presence in facebook, with Chris having a few hundred more fans; but are they both on twitter? NotPatty! For some reason she is not active in tweeting, and it will be really awkward starting now, since she will not be able to catch up to over 9,000 followers that Chris has. May I also say here that her presence on YouTube and Flickr is very experimental and amateur, something that is not wise while trying to run a serious online political campaign. Will def...

Just wanted to squeeze another Blog post just before the new year. And yes, I will be more active in my Blogging in 2010, it is one of my many 2010, and new decade, resolutions... Maybe because I use twitter a lot, maybe because I was working hard on two political campaigns, I didn't have the time or the drive to keep up with my Blog, however, the next year is going to be a banner year in many aspects. I am really looking forward working on corporate new media communications, you may also find some of my Blog posts to be on business and new media, while still keeping up to date with online political communications and the use of social media. Let me also get myself on record here saying that I will pursue my academic goals in doing some research on new communications and marketing policies, whether that being in politics, corporate B2B, or freelance business. I believe that Direct-to-consumer advertising is going to be re-shaped and utilized more personally, given the fusion that ...

I am going to come back again and write about the outrageous emails send by the DNC . The latest one is signed by VP Joe Biden and informs people that this is a crucial week for Sonia Sotomayor and asks to support Sotomayor and take action ; Oh! and Please donate! It is incredible that " Organizing for America " asks US citizens to give money to support a Judge campaign for the US Supreme Court . Why would any candidate for Supreme Court need money for their campaign? and how come the DNC is fundraising through the Internet on behalf of Sotomayor? In these times of economic hardship, and with the financial crisis still in the forefront of political discussion, the DNC is asking people for private donations to support a judicial campaign. I also came across the following video "Nothing" by the GOP that explains how The Obama administration is devoting $18 million dollars to create a government website to show Americans just where their hard-earned tax dollars are ...

Hey everybody, It has been long since my last Blog post; but I have been keeping active in my social media responsibilities… Hope to tweet even more now that I will have my new blackberry! As you might have noticed, I currently work at the The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in Vienna. I am at the PPIS (this stands for Press and Public Information Section) in developing a social media strategy for the Organization and using a multimedia approach to get the OSCE message out, create awareness and further expand the communication strategy. Check out the official facebook page of the OSCE , follow OSCE updates on twitter and be sure to watch our videos on the OSCE YouTube channel! Will try to Blog even more! But keep up with me on twitter!

T he GOP is trying to rebuilt, so the RNC has launched Rebuilt The Party , Republican For A Reason , there is a RNC facebook group , with a Twitter account , and many more spin offs from the official GOP.com But, why are there two websites with the same content but different names? www.RNC.org and www.GOP.com? Why the party needs spin-off websites to rebuilt? Can't it do that from the official GOP.com? Do people need a different website to become republicans for a reason? Why doesn't the GOP promote the facebook page that it has, but created a new group named Republican National Committee - Official Group? Is this Grass-root online development, or just sporadic moves that hope for the best? The republican party's online presence says one thing right now: ME TOO! The GOP is copy-pasting stuff from BarackObama.com and Change.gov; It needs to do more, it needs to have a Republican online presence, with tools and technology that reiterate GOP values.

I haven't commented on the Nader campaign so far, well, I didn't see anything interesting... but wait... Ralf Nader will share his mother Hummus recipe if you contribute any amount of money but it has to have at least one three in it. So what the Nader/Gonzalez campaign is saying is: contribute to the campaign, we will email you Nader's mom hummus recipe, and then please vote for us on election day. It is a rather interesting way to entice voters to donate to your campaign, but I must say, when I first saw it, I found it really funny. Would be very interesting to see how much money will be donated because of the Hummus... Ralph's Mom will be proud!

On the subject of flip flops I came across http://www.obamaflipflops.org/ . I would have expected to see merchandising like this from the official McCain campaign; but hey, I'm sure that they will end up as a great memorabilia campaign item at eBay. Both candidates are rather busy of late, my take is that Obama needs to get back on message, energize people and focus on policy - themes that have brought him so far. P.S. Hope to Blog more often during the last days of the election.

A really great new segmentation tool by the McCain campaign. http://www.johnmccain.com asks people visiting to distinguish themselves between Supporter - Undecided and Unregistered Voter. After someone makes his or her choice the website ranks subjects and messages accordingly. The most interesting thing is that through the Internet and web 2.0 technologies voters can be segmented into 3 broad, but smart categories. Also the website is becoming user friendly towards all the people. In doing so, the website is appealing to voters across party lines, undecided and first time voters. Also, in the new website, visitors are not confronted with a signup page (as is the case with both Democratic candidates) and the website is not all about Contributions and Donations. Big up to the John McCain web team!

Hilary Clinton needs to win the upcoming OHIO & TEXAS primaries to be in the race, she also needs money to do that... I was really surprised of this quote from a recent Hillary Email update: It's just so I Need Money... Then again she says thank you...

INT ERNET POLITICAL COMMUNICATIONS Vasileios Gkinopoulos Refereed paper 4th International Political Marketing Conference Sinaia, Romania 19 April - 21 April 2007 Let me say that I really enjoyed traveling to Romania and being involved with the International Political Marketing Conference. I must say t h at I made a lot of friends and I hope my paper added to the Political Marketing debate Please read two articles concerning Politics and the Internet 2008 Fundraising Barack Obama’s first fundraising call managed to get 5,000 people participating in a new donor drive just the fist 24 hours of BarackObama.com. An Email update just after that emphasised that more important than the numbers themselves is “the way people got involved”. A new method employed by BarackObama.com was for every new donor to have their contribution doubled by someone just like them. Each new stakeholder in the campaign got to meet and exchange messages with someone who committed...

Innovating political communication methods through Internet technology, gives the opportunity to connect people and provoke proactive policy development, by communicating and sharing strategies with key stakeholders. In line with the concept of political leadership, Internet communication strategies provide candidates and political parties a platform to showcase policy and strategy issues, and expand campaign financing. The content and qualitative analysis of the research revealed a progressive change in political campaigning, by the introduction of Internet Political Communications. As a medium of interaction, the Internet has shown signs of being a method of effective and efficient political Marketing and political campaigning tool. The Internet provides the opportunity to socially exchange ideas, plans, and policies with citizens and concerned organizations while asking voters for help, not just for their vote; it provides feedback, while creating an online constituency, in eng...