Two articles today on
Marketing Vox should be of interest to everyone in the New Media class. The
first one describes how advertisers are turning away from TV towards other mediums; the
second one seems a recent Nielsen study that people are increasingly reading their news online, although those sites are still predominantly MSM.
Kathie's PoliTech talks about the Tipping Point, and I wonder whether we are getting near to that in terms of where advertisers will choose to place their adverts. If the Internet becomes the medium of choice, what consequences will that have for political campaigns?
One thing I am sure of is that the campaign website will become increasingly important to the campaign since every online advert will give a user immediate access to the website, in a way that television rarely can. As such, part of the strategic plan much include sections about infrastructure and architecture such as:
- What is the capacity of the current site for visits, donations etc?
- How quickly can we increase that capacity?
- What backup system do we\our website provider have in place?
- In the event of catastrophic failure (e.g. we lose all the servers in a flood), how quickly can we get the website back online?
As people move online, our campaigns must be ready to greet them. If someone comes to our campaign office with a check, we want to be sure someone is there to take the donation. The same is true with our campaign website. Too often, these details are left to someone else to worry about, and when you most need them, they haven't been done. If you are responsible for the Internet strategy, make sure the people providing your website can answer these questions.
