by Daniel Anstandig

The business of campaigning and elections has a lot in common with the business radio conducts everyday in pursuit of ratings and revenue.

After all, the Arbitron Diary is a ballot, and elections and ratings are both popularity contests.

In politics, people vote on a specific candidate or issue based on:
- What they think they heard.
- What they wished they heard.
- How what they heard made them feel.
- Who they remember.
In radio, people write down radio stations in diaries for the same reasons.

This year, politicians have used new media to motivate and enfranchise potential voters on their way to the paper ballot. Many of their tactics can translate to radio's ongoing campaign to cultivate loyal audiences and motivate listeners on their way to the paper diary.

DATABASE MANAGEMENT: The fundamental trend in political campaigns' utilization of new media is the concept of CRM or Constituent Relationship Management. Savvy campaigners are using the internet to reach new people, collect information about them, use that information to target and reach them, and track their subsequent behaviors.

The first step in building online relationships with your listeners is recruiting people to join your database. The most successful database-builders have very clear "opt-in points" visible on their websites. If you were to visit John McCain's or Obama's websites, you would find it difficult to move through their site without offering your e-mail address.

Most important in attracting new e-mail addresses and "joiners," is spelling out the benefits that anyone will receive by sharing their information with you. What type of important news, events, and programs will they learn about by sharing their personal information with you? For instance, many campaigns have created special sections on their websites for registered members.

Programs like Promosuite's Listener E-mail and Triton's M20 offer similar functionality and database capabilities to radio stations.

BLOGS: Candidates have also gone out of their way to befriend "amateur reporters" and bloggers. Your radio station should have its own blog. It's an excellent way to create and host content on your website. However, if you do not have a blog, use a page from the playbook of interactive-campaigning and empower bloggers to talk about you.

- USE RSS FEEDS
Make an RSS feed of your site content available. With RSS feeds, bloggers can pull content from your site into their blogs (and link back to your website). Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty website (www.campaignforliberty.com) makes each blog post available for people to post in their facebook pages, twitter, or blogs with a SHARE button. As a result, his name and site is inserted into thousands of other websites every day.

- BLOG RELATIONS PROGRAMS
Many politicians have Blogger Relations Programs, where they are communicating specific messages to people who are hosting their own blogs. The McCain/Palin Campaign has posted a daily issue tracker as well as featured blogs: http://www.johnmccain.com/ActionCenter/BlogInteract/BlogInteract.aspx

- ADVERTISE
Consider advertising on blogs in your market. Sites like www.Blogads.com give you the opportunity to handpick blogs from over fifty different niche markets. You can also geographically target online ad campaigns using systems like Google AdWords (www.google.com/adwords)

FUNDRAISING:
Non-commercial radio could certainly take a page out of the political playbook when it comes to online fundraising.

Howard Dean was perhaps the first political candidate to attract notable attention with fundraising online, although he was unable to parlay the interactive-buzz and money into actual votes. Dean was an amateur compared to Ron Paul, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama, who all raised tens of millions of dollars per month during the Primary season. John McCain, who was leading in the polls at the time of this printing, has also recently seen a sharp increase in online fundraising following the Republican National Convention.

Three lessons to take from the most effective online political fundraisers:

1. Make a specific ask. The best have connected their fundraising to specific issues and points. They have usually been specific about what they money goes towards, and they make specific suggestions on amounts for donations.

2. Keep it simple. Make the number of steps in the sign-up process as few and simple as possible, or you'll lose people. This is not just a note about fundraising, but a "best practice" when it comes to online streaming as well. The more hurdles a listener must endure before achieving their donation or tune-in, the more likely they are to abandon the process.

3. Expect Attrition. NO database is 100% static (unless you're not using it). People will come and go. You must expect that attrition will occur, and you must continue building your database to realize long-term growth.

TEXT MESSAGING:
There has been a remarkable amount of buzz during this campaign season about text messaging. CNN, Fox News, CNBC, and MSNBC have all conducted surveys using SMS/Text Messaging. Barack Obama even attempted to make his Vice Presidential announcement via a database of 10 million mobile phone numbers.

- INVITATIONS
Candidates at a number of levels have used text messaging this year to invite voters to local events. Likewise, radio stations can invite listeners to participate in local events and special remotes.

- MOBILE INTEGRATED EVENTS
have become increasingly popular this year inside and outside politics. In addition to the news networks and Obama, a number of local candidates have invited voters AT events to opt into their databases via mobile.

Def Leppard, NBC at the Olympics, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Visa, and Chase Bank are among the major companies now using text messaging as a fundamental pillar of their promotions / marketing mix.

MJI's Mobile Xpress Messenger provides tools to radio stations to conduct these types of tactics. Similar services are available from Hip Cricket as well.

SOCIAL NETWORKING: The most prominent social networks are MySpace and Facebook, which are utilized by most of the prominent candidates this year. At the beginning of the year, MySpace reported that they had more than 7,400 discussion groups related to politics.

Voter registration, fundraising, volunteering, and voter turnout are all bolstered through the utilization of social networking. Change.org, Project Agape, and Care2 are examples of companies that have used social networking effectively to grow their databases and motivate people to participate in their causes.

In 2006, Facebook was utilized by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) to target a half-million people in specially targeted districts. The New Politics Institute reports that one such race that utilized Facebook to "get out the vote" was Democrat Joe Courtney. One New Politics report says that "Courtney won the race by 83 votes on the strength of a 600% turnout increase in the precinct ontaining the University of Connecticut, which had been a major target of the Facebook Flyer--one form of electronic targeted advertising.

Social Networking Lessons Learned:

1. You should have a MySpace and Facebook page for your radio station.

2. The messaging on your social network pages should be consistent with the information and marketing on your station's web site.

3. Do not link from your radio station's website to MySpace or Facebook, but DO link from MySpace and Facebook back to your radio station's website. The reason: You have no control over the advertising or portions of the content on the social networking pages. However, there are many benefits to participating in these social networks, which warrant your participation.

4. On both social networking sites, you can utilize hundreds of free applications to build a social network for your station, including a business card application (Facebook), testimonials, and discussion forums in which listeners can communicate together.

5. Browse your market by zip code, age, and gender and invite people in your target demo to join your social network. At worst, you'll run into people who already know the radio station and raise their level of awareness about your product. At better, you'll introduce yourself to new listeners. At best, you will encourage existing listeners to invite their friends to your social network.

VIDEO ON DEMAND:
Use YOUTUBE on your site to embed video on your site. You will add a multimedia edge to your site that engages the audience, and it's FREE. Purchase a digital camera, flashcam, webcam, and some video editing software, and you're in business. If you are looking for an inexpensive solution, consider the FlipVideo camera and Pinnacle Studio 11 video editing software. The software is less than $100, and you can perform many of the same functions as Avid and upscale video editing suites.

When you edit your videos, add a watermark of your station logo on the bottom-left of the video. Youtube automatically watermarks all videos on the lower right side of the screen--so if you want your logo to be seen, you need to watermark on the lower left.

Next, setup a Video Channel on Youtube. Examples of well constructed channels:

http://www.youtube.com/user/JohnMcCaindotcom

http://www.youtube.com/user/GovMittRomney

http://www.youtube.com/user/hillaryclintondotcom

http://www.youtube.com/user/BarackObamadotcom

Remember that you will only have a few seconds to grasp the attention of your viewers.

Encourage feedback on your videos. When you get high ratings and feedback on your video, it will rise in rank and visibility on Google.

THE BOTTOM LINE:
No amount of new media can conceal a bad product.

You can launch a social network, communicate with bloggers, send out millions of text messages, or reinvent the internet. However, if your message/product does not resonate with the audience, new media won't win the election for you alone. The product must be right first. Join us at www.mcvaynewmedia.com for regularly updated ideas and strategies for audience and revenue-building!

email Daniel Anstandig