POLC: Reaching Congress, according to Congress and according to advocates

My two morning panels were an interesting contrast: both talked about social media and influencing Congress, but from very different perspectives.  First we heard  from four members of Congress who are active on Twitter. Then we heard from advocates (from Fleishman-Hillard mainly) about how to reach Congress.

First the major similarity: both panels know communication is changing, that it's becoming more decentralized and more personal.  Congressman Tim Ryan (D, OH-17) said social media "accelerated the decentralization of messaging."  Bill Black of Fleishman commented that most lobbyists look with horror at the idea information is being dispersed - but now organizations realize they can't afford not to be doing blogging, Twitter, etc.

But unlike the advocates' view of the future,  the elected officials seem to be coping with the stream of messages, so far.  Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) reads all her @replies each evening.  Congressman Steve Israel (D, NY-2) said he'd tweeted about Jay Bybee and gotten responses from "sophisticated" people knowledgeable about the issues, and that was valuable and had more impact on his office than messages through other channels.  Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R, WA-5) commented that she has email screened so only messages from Washington State residents reach her, and so far it's OK that that doesn't work on Twitter right now (McCaskill has started asking her constituents to use #mo, but they aren't tracking that yet).  They'd like more staff/funding to push these ideas further - Ryan would like to organize discussions between his office and individual classrooms, for instance - but so far the mix of professional and more personal (McCaskill about a cellphone dropped in the toilet, Ryan being told he bought the wrong food during the Food Stamp Challenge) is working.

The advocates are focused on cutting through noise - and making their advocacy look authentic.  They know the politicians talk about things like Ryan's stack of letters six inches tall in his district office, or Israel getting "astroturf phone calls is what we call them."  John Wonderlich of the Sunlight Foundation has heard staffers talk about hitting Reply All and getting huge numbers of bounces.  Black mentioned a member of Congress getting a postcard purportedly from himself, supporting the opposite of his position.

So the advocates recommended associations reaching out beyond their members to find more supporters, though sometimes the biggest audience for your messaging campaign might be your own members ("look, we're doing something about the issue you care about!").  They suggested making things tangible - once 100 people in a district signed in support of more funding for locally grown food, Michael Bassik of Air America said MSHC Partners (his old employer) would go buy locally grown food from that district and deliver a basket along with the signatures.  Pat Cleary of Fleishman talked about the Fix Housing First campaign, and how useful Twitter was for putting out a constantly updated feed of information - Black went to a fundraiser for his old boss Steny Hoyer and learned the bill would be delayed for Sherrod Brown's return, and the only people who knew were those in the Fix Housing First network.  And as Bassik said, "there's still no substitute for an in-person meeting with a member of Congress."

None of that sounds much like "I sent an @reply and the senator read it."  Advocates are still focused on mobilizing lots of people and on having in-person relationships with officials.  Officials seem more likely to value individual, personalized messages.  One questioner stood up in the elected officials session and talked about new tools being able to generate phone calls at a rate he thought Congressional offices just couldn't handle, and the same is certainly true of social media.  I'm expecting a collision in the near future, and I expect the advocates' aggregate view to mostly win.  My hope is that the listening tools now being developed for corporations, with evaluation of each mention's tone, will be adapted to Congressional listening.  That's the only way the offices are going to be able to scale.

(Added) More on Congress and Twitter and advocacy and astroturf:

• Congress panel liveblog from Jill Miller Zimon at Writes Like She Talks
• Congress panel recap from National Journal
• Matt Bai in the New York Times on "the promise of false intimacy between politicians and voters"
• Claire McCaskill on why she tweets
• Eagle-Tribune on fake letters to their editor

One last note on the power of Twitter: Israel was delayed in getting to the panel (and John Culberson unfortunately couldn't make it because of flu).  Israel tweeted "Traffic! They can figure out how I can instantly communicate with you, but not how to move a disabled car from the left lane of I-95 in DC!"  A minute later, @nerdette, otherwise known as Tanya Tarr, retweeted his message and I saw it.  About ten minutes later, the moderator read it to the session.  Once Israel arrived, I saw Tanya taking a picture of the panel.  A couple minutes later, she posted a link to the picture on Twitter. New communications in action.

The Congressional panel also marks the debut of my username on television: my question was read (though not answered) and the panel was broadcast on C-SPAN. I'm unduly amused by this. You can watch the archived session to catch all the funny bits I've left out.

POLC: The Visual Frontier

Keynote sessions with panelists from an entirely different profession than conference attendees are always hard to pull off.  This one was interesting in pieces, though disconnected, and it had one great story.

When Samuel Yates first set out to photograph every property in Palo Alto for his project The Color of Palo Alto, he didn't have a use for his photographs beyond the end of the project.  So he decided to offer them to the city.  He went through several offices asking if they'd have a use for the photos, and was told no repeatedly.  Finally he found someone who said, "I don't know, but you should talk to my colleague."  Turned out the colleague (aside from being an art history major who was happy to talk to an artist) worked on Palo Alto's geographic information system, and she was delighted to hook his photos into it.  The photos could then be used by anyone in city government, and resulted for instance in a photo-assisted 911 response system.

So for the new age of user-generated content and connections, three principles.  (1) Data makes it possible to build things, (2) it takes a while to find someone who can build on your data, and (3) you never know what they're going to build.

Thanks to panelists Samuel Yates, Josh Klein, and Elizabeth Windram (sorry I've given short shrift to most of your content), and especially to moderator Tanya Tarr, also the director of this year's Politics Online conference.

Recovery.gov: transparency and its complications

Yesterday, President Obama signed the $800 billion economic stimulus bill, and as announced a couple weeks ago in his YouTube address, his web team has created Recovery.gov to allow people to track where the money goes. Some observations:

1. There isn't much there yet. Not too surprising, but there are very few pages on the site so far. They haven't even yet copied the whole bill text over from its place on WhiteHouse.gov, letting people see the plan and its implementation in one place.
2. Lots of interactive items. I particularly like the scrolling timeline (apparently a Drupal module). The jobs map's pop-up information blocks look far more utilitarian than the rest of the (lovely) site design, and I can't click through for more specifics, but perhaps they'll come. The challenge with providing lots of data (which the site will do) is to also allow people to effectively visualize it.
3. Consistent design with WhiteHouse.gov and Change.gov. Very smart. You know you're on an Obama administration site the moment you land there, and with Obama's approval ratings high, the new site will have an automatic boost in people's trust. Branding was a strong point of the campaign, so much so that it inspired copying.
4. It's built on Drupal. (Announcement by project founder Dries Buytaert.) This is a technical point, but with sociological implications. Drupal is software designed for community sites, not for one-way information flow. Hopefully the site will take advantage of crowd-sourcing, building a community of news gathering like the one that made Talking Points Memo Time's best blog of 2009. Change.gov included discussion, but it would be nice to see a post-inauguration site allowing more input than a comment form - though the privacy policy doesn't offer evidence that will happen, alas.
5. How many sites can the White House manage? The stimulus is an unusually important bill, but I could see them also launching sites for health reform, for energy policy, etc., along with the already-announced FinancialStability.gov (and AStrongMiddleClass.gov, but that redirects to the main White House site). They'll need to consider how much staff time it takes not just to build but to manage each site: adding new information, guiding any discussion, and communicating with users who've requested updates. Updating WhiteHouse.gov has already proven challenging, though most of those issues seem to have been worked out.

A few reactions from the political technology community:

Nancy Scole of Personal Democracy Forum's TechPresident: What's Missing: (1) A Responsible Party. The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board which will oversee Recovery.gov, hasn't been formed yet. So, email away! But know that there isn't really yet anyone on the receiving end. (2) Data. Data. Data. Of course, with the act three hours old, there just isn't much yet. That said, whether Recovery.gov will give open-government advocates the raw data that they're hungering for is still an open question. The site is, thus far, populated by the shiny consumer-end charts. A that's good start, but no replacement, advocates say, for raw XML data then can then use for mash-ups and number crunching.

Ellen Miller of the Sunlight Foundation blog: The basics are pretty simple. Recovery.gov must make the raw data available and it must be housed in system so that data can flow in and out easily. There should be open programming interfaces that allow developers to share and analyze data. Timeliness is key, so is accuracy. That, plus a few simple tools for easy citizen access would be a great place to start. A little blogging now might help with a few of the basics: What data is getting collected and how often? Who has to report? How often will the data be updated and how often will it made available to the public? What’s the database going to look like what’s the relationship to USASpending.gov? What kinds of content will Recovery.gov produce around the data? (Will there be regular emails when new information is available, blogging with analysis, etc.)?

Dennis McDonald: It’s not just the performance of the “stimulus” package that will be interesting to track, though. How the Administration develops the systems and processes that are needed to track and report on progress in an open and interactive fashion will also impact the recovery. Whether you call these systems and processes “e-government” or “government 2.0” or something else entirely, they will need careful planning as well as speed and experimentation. No one has ever tried to do “open government” before on such a massive scale. As I’ve pointed out already, the challenges that must be faced are great.

Micah Sifry of Personal Democracy Forum: I'm sure Obama's pronouncements on the shape of Recovery.gov are probably keeping his new media team awake 24-7, but his political team ought to be paying attention too. Imagine if citizens take his exhortations to heart and start monitoring their local government(s) to track how the money is being spent, and the site makes it easy for them to visibly share and pool those reports. Who exactly is responsible if, say, a school construction grant isn't being used properly? Recovery.gov could be a great tool for making government work, but along the way, it might also make a lot of existing government workers pretty unhappy.

Hopefully I can add more later - I'm particularly waiting for Colin Delany's take, as well as Patrick Ruffini's and Mindy Finn's.

Why create an integrated advocacy campaign

An individual advocacy action can be successful on its own, but a campaign that reinforces its message using a variety of channels, media, and communicators can build greater momentum and involvement. In a world flooded with more and more information, your constituents will be most enthusiastic if you're available where they are and interact with them on their terms. If you understand them, they'll join your efforts.

On the corporate side, integrated marketing communications and multichannel marketing are responding to the same trends, and companies know that "Users who interact with your company over multiple channels are more loyal than single-channel customers." The trick is to become part of people's lives, something they choose to become more involved in over time - and keep reaching them in different ways, so they don't get bored.

We think about integrated advocacy campaigns as including:

• traditional public affairs - Hill briefings, media relations, coalition building;
• conventional online tactics - petitions, email newsletters, tell-a-friend forms;
• and new social media tools - virtual events, micromedia, social networks.

It's not easy to coordinate everything, but each piece increases your impact. Why not add something your constituents will want to tell their friends about?

Social media "expert" evaluations

Dave Fleet has an excellent post this morning on 8 Questions to Ask Your "Social Media Expert", building on Ike Pigott's on finding useful Twitter "experts". Dave is offering a guide to "weeding-out the pundits from the practitioners," so I figured I'd answer his questions for Amplify's Internet practice.

1. Can you give me an example of social media work you’ve completed for a client recently?

Sure. We're working with a religious organization to promote education about and understanding of other faiths, using Facebook and YouTube among other avenues.

2. How do you go about pitching bloggers?

We research an issue area, finding influential and interesting bloggers who would care about our topic (usually they've written about something related in the past). Often we already have relationships with some bloggers who fit those criteria. Whether we know a blogger or not, we write offering information and say we hope they'll consider blogging about it.

3. How do you monitor what people are saying about you?

Google Alerts, Twitter search, comments from clients and friends at other organizations (offline conversations count too). We're investigating several social media monitoring services but haven't made choices yet.

4. Where can I find you online?

Our website, our other blog Disruptive Women in Health Care, Facebook. Our staff is on LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and lots of other places as well.

5. Can you write my blog for me?

We do blog training and work with our clients so they can easily keep something fresh on their blogs - create publication calendars, set up Delicious so they have a recent news feed, etc. Writing a blog is a valuable process as well as a way to promote your work (listen to Tom Peters and Seth Godin), and having someone else write it makes no sense.

6. How do you measure results?

Usually number of actions taken - advocacy lends itself better to hard numbers than marketing generally does.

7. How would you define social media?

People interacting online. I'm waiting for a better way to say "and I include mobile services in that too," but no one's invented a good word yet.

8. Can you just pretend to be me online?

No. See (5) for some of the reasons. We actually don't have people ask us this, so either we're just lucky or most advocates want to convey messages themselves.

All right, now go look at Dave's post and see if I got the right answers!

Innovative Health Advocacy: Strategies To Break Through The Noise

The following post is a reprint of remarks made by Robin Strongin, CEO of Amplify Public Affairs, at Innovative Health Advocacy:  Strategies to Break Through the Post-Election Noise, a breakfast briefing Amplify organized and co-sponsored with The Hill, and Care 2.

- - - -

Good Morning.

I am curious—most everyone here this morning has some connection to health care—by a show of hands, how many of you read blogs regularly for work?

How many of you post or comment on blogs?

I want to start with one of my favorite anecdotes—this is from a speech by Congressman Pete Stark, Democrat from California, who back in October 2002 addressed the Commonwealth Club with a talk on Prescription Drug Coverage and Medicare:

I can tell you in about 30 seconds everything I know about health care.  Years and years ago, Jake Pickle, a congressman from Texas, reformed Social Security and decided we would have 6 subcommittees on the Ways & Means Committee.  I was happily going along, and chaired what we called the Welfare Committee and wrote Aid to Families with Dependent Children laws and all kinds of exciting things like that.  Then I rewrote the life insurance tax code.  But we came into the Congress in 1984 to reorganize, and somebody wanted my committee, which was the teeny tax committee.  After we went through choosing, all that was left was Health or Social Security.  Social Security had just reformed—there was nothing to do there—so I said, I’ll take Health.  I didn’t know anything about it.  That was on a Tuesday, and by that Friday I knew about 4 or 5 organs in my body that I hadn’t known previously existed and each one had a lobbyist in Washington and they all offered me a transplant.  And I began to think—What is health care?

Now, 6 years later, Cong Stark continues to shake things up in health care as Chair of the Ways and Means Health Subcommittee.

The Chairman, who knows more about all the organs in his body also knows a little something about how to give—and get—information from lobbyists and others.

I went to his website and there he was, on a giant you tube video—then just for good measure I checked The Hill’s Congress Blog—and the man is still talking about Medicare—only this time he is also blogging about it—the post I read was entitled “Senate Republicans Medicare Plan is Not the Answer” (June 12, 2008).

What’s going on here?

Author of "BlogWars" Talks to DC Advocates

Dr. Alan Rosenblatt changed up the format of the monthly Internet Advocacy Roundtable from the usual panel of experts to a single speaker for special guest Dr. David Perlmutter.  The solo act was well deserved as the author of BlogWars took attendees through the evolution of the rise of the political blog.   

Some of the “blogthroughs” (my new favorite blog buzzword) that Dr. Perlmutter believes brought these once fringe writers in the 1990’s to today’s prominent political figures:
• The ease of making your own page
• The ease of disseminating and receiving content
• The rise of the Daily Show bringing news to 18-29 year olds
• The growing attention to blogs from mainstream media

Watch Dr. Perlmutter’s recent chat with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show below.

And, if you’re not on the list for the monthly Internet Advocacy Roundtable – please click here to join us next time!

Live from the 2007 Convio Summit!!

Well, I've picked up many new buzzwords since the Wednesday night kick-off reception, but if I had to pick just one word to summarize the buzz here at the 2007 Convio Summit in beautiful Austin is would be MICROSITE.  You are preaching to the converted to talk about the importance of online communications among this crowd, but the latest and greatest trend we are about to see in technology driven advocacy (which many groups have already embraced) is the microsite; a separate site, URL, mission, and "ask" for each campaign that an organization seeks to drive.

The advantages to microsites are numerous.  Aside from just keeping constituents more engaged by the dynamic content of diverse mini-sites, microsite proponents find they see higher value constituents from the targeted messages (hello, more repeat actions and next steps!) and more viral activity (hello, tell-a-friend!).  Creating diverse microsites also forces campaign strategists to think more outside of the box, a challenge many activists are eager to tackle. 

My favorites? Play some Whack-a-Murdoch at StopBigMedia.com, a new microsite by Free Press, or help PETA stop Denny's support of circus animal cruelty at DeadlyDennys.com. 

Borneo Blogging

Photo: IFAW

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) is currently on the scene at a natural disaster -- forest fires in Borneo, Indonesia. People are impacted and so are orangutans. On their Animal Rescue Blog, which we helped them setup, you can get firsthand accounts and amazing Flickr photos. It is helping to increase awareness in the U.S. and in the media about what's happening there.

It's a great use of streaming photos and narrative in the blog format with an incredible sense of urgency.  The impact to start:

• An Associated Press story that quotes Jennifer Miller, lead blogger.
• A post mention and links to all stories to date from one of the most popular animal-focused blogs, An Animal-Friendly Life
• On the Care2 News Network, a social networking news site similar to Digg, 2 front page stories chosen by several dozen votes from online readers. Care2 News reaches the heart of their target audience.

IFAW is using their blog to reach out. The blog is just one new way to tell people about their brave and sometimes dangerous work rescuing animals in need when no one else can help.  The Animal Rescue Blog is putting a new face on IFAW's issue advocacy.

Why the Wikipedia Matters

Did you know that the first place that an every-growing number of Internet users go to get educated about a company is no longer the company's website?  Instead, more and more users are heading for the Wikipedia entry first to get an overview of the organization.  To get an idea of the importance of the Wikipedia, here are some interesting statistics:

• The Wikipedia is the 17th most trafficked site on the Internet, according to Alexa.com's rankings; and is more popular than Amazon.com, Craigslist.org,  CNN.com, and Flickr.com.
• The Wikipedia contains over 1.4 million English language articles and more than 3.8 million articles total in over 100 languages.
• By comparison, the entire 32 volume Encyclopedia Britannica contains a paltry 65,000 articles.

The collaborative nature of the Wikipedia is what has made it so influential and far-ranging.  Anyone can start an article on any topic and can edit any existing article.  From a public relations point of view, this is both a blessing and a curse. 

On the plus side, this means that the Wikipedia is an easily accessible medium for decision makers to quickly get educated about practically any issue, company, or prominent individual.  It enables brand managers to affect the portrayal of their brand on this critical medium.  Inaccuracies and attacks on a brand can quickly be addressed and corrected.

Many of these qualities which make the Wikipedia such an incredible tool also make it problematic from a branding point of view.  Since anyone can add new and edit existing entries, people who seek to damage a brand can quickly and effectively do so via its Wikipedia entry.  Due to the Wikipedia's collaborative, open nature, there is very little editorial oversight, thus requiring vigorous self-policing of the site.  In addition, inaccurate content that has been removed remains in the history tab for others to review later.  These are just a few of the reasons that many scholars doubt the ultimate reliability of the Wikipedia.

That said, the Wikipedia's reach and influence are undeniable.  In an online environment where literally thousands of blogs, discussion boards, and websites are discussing brands, the Wikipedia is a critical juncture of brand-related content. 

From the Shameless Plug Department: Issue Dynamics offers a comprehensive suite of Wiki-related services.  For more information, contact Cheryl Contee.