how to learn from past mistakes...

Out of the three Jakob Nielsen pieces, the one I found the most intuitive and useful for future campaigns was his sidebar on how Bush and Kerry used the Internet during the last week of the campaign. According to Nielsen, the candidate who had the best Internet usability ratings in the previous presidential elections had one the race, and 2004 was no exception.

The major difference between the candidates in this election was that Kerry used his e-mail communications to raise money while Bush used his to get out the vote and motivate his base. Even the most fervent supporters will get irritated by too many donation requests, and that was the Kerry Internet campaign's biggest flaw in the last week. Bush, on the other hand, instructed his supporters to reach out to their friends and then sent a follow up email after the election telling them exactly how successful they'd been. That's the way to keep and expand your base.

more on usability...

After reading another of Jakob Nielsen's usability articles, this one comparing and contrasting the usability of Kerry and Bush's email newsletters over a period of time, I don't know that I'll ever look at a mass mailing the same way again. I was on neither candidate's mailing list, although I received Kerry emails at work. I did not usually read them, but deleted them as I would delete any spam. The fact that I would delete them as spam (although part of the reason I deleted them was because I did not request them) makes me wonder how many other people would as well. If the way that the candidate got my email address was because I had to enter it as a way to access certain information on their website or because I donated money or filled out a volunteer form, then how was I supposed to expect a newsletter up to four or five times a week.

One thing Nielsen pointed out that I find very true, is that if the email doesn't come from Kerry or Bush themselves, it really does appear like spam. The candidate should use the subject line properly and explain that the email is a "Kerry campaign update" for example. I know who Mary Beth Cahill and Ken Mehlman are, but I doubt my mother or even some of my best friends do. With the high tech spam blockers these days, how many of those one or two million subscribers do you think actually read the emails?

the question of usability

Anyone who uses the Internet, or even reads a magazine or newspaper regularly, makes a decision on whether or not to read something based on its usability. It may not be a conscious decision, but given the choice between two websites of similar content, a person is going to choose the more user-friendly one. For example, I receive both New York Times and Washington Post headlines in my email daily. I like the NYT email better, because of it's format and brevity. However, since I live in Washington, often times the Post's story are more relevant to me, so I read those as well.

Jakob Nielson compared Bush and Kerry's campaign updates with the Washington Post's during the 2004 election. It rated the Post's much higher. I did not receive any of these updates, so I can't speak from personal experience, but it makes sense to me that the Post's would be more user-friendly. While Bush and Kerry would have more to gain with a user-friendly newsletter, the Post is more experienced, having sent out headlines daily for many years now. One thing that the Post is very good at is personalizing what e-mail you can get. For example, in addition to daily headlines I also get a Sports update and a Politics update. I get an Arts update weekly from the NYT. By getting a personalized e-mail, I am much more likely to click a link, follow the story to the main website, and continue exploring the newspaper online once I'm there.

I would assume clicking on a link and arriving at the main campaign website would be a main goal of an e-mail newsletter. Therefore I suggest the campaigns take a better look at what newspapers are doing right and capitalize on that the next time around.

the Drudge effect...

The idea that anyone can be a journalist on the Internet first gained credence when Matt Drudge broke the Clinton sex scandal that Newsweek had but was sitting on at the request of Ken Starr. Newsweek has much more at stake in falsely accusing the president than does Joe Schmo, or in this case, Matt Drudge. Drudge has no editor, no publisher, or no huge corporation that he is owned by. He is not held up to any standards of journalistic integrity by the public. He has nothing to lose but his personal reputation. And what is that really, when people wouldn't know him from Adam if passed on the street?

What Drudge has done, is challenge what is news and how it is presented. The 24-hour news cycle was invented with CNN, but before the Internet it was still much easier for news outlets to verify a story before breaking it. Now that all the major outlets have websites, getting something out there is more important than what gets out. It can very easily be altered once released. As Andrew Shapiro said in The Control Revolution (p. 138),

The fact that it can be modified so easily and imperceptibly prevents it from ever really being a final draft...an author can simply change the text as it appears on the web. The problem is that this ability to make seamless corrections after the fact can create a journalistic atmosphere in which sloppiness and inaccuracy are tolerated. With the pressure to be first to get the story out, the 'publish now, edit later' school of journalism may become widespread.

A great example of online "news" sources vs. Mainstream media occurred during the presidential election. The MSM had agreed not to release exit polls until they were all closed. However Drudge was not in on this agreement, and was one of the first to release the preliminary data around 2 pm, long before much of America had voted. The fact that this data favored Kerry has led many to question whether the early release ultimately hurt him. That this debate even exists is proof of how far the Drudges of the world have come.

Is this really the future of journalism? We can only wait and see.

the so called control revolution

After reading chapter 11 of Andrew Shapiro's Control Revolution, entitled Freedom from Speech, I began thinking about how the Internet is truly a self-selecting resource. Sure, anyone can publish their opinions on the Web. But once they're there, how do you get people to read them. In the age of Google, submitting your site to the search engine is step one. Once Google acknowledges your existence, you're on your way. If your opinion is unpopular, you may need to trick people to your site by including commonly searched terms or phrases.

However, a person's attention span online is often extremely short. If you look at a sitemeter on any given webpage, often times to average visit is less than a minute. However if you want your message out in the world fairly inexpensively, if not free, the Internet is the way to go. Chances are someone else holds a similar opinion and if you are lucky enough, will find your webpage. The Internet can make it happen.

election laws and the Internet

Trevor Potter and Kirk L. Jowers have written an article on election law and the Internet that appears in The Civic Web. I've always found election law to be confusing at best, and once it involved the Internet, I was more or less lost. I did find it interesting that the Federal Election Commission's (FEC) initial approach was that anything of value to a political candidate on the Web should be subject to government regulation. That got me thinking about how if that had become law where blogs would fit in. I can only assume that as long as a blog contained no official endorsement and did not include copies of campaign materials or links for fundraising, it would never appear on the radar of the FEC. However, the beauty of the Internet has always been its lack of regulation. With the proliferation of online journals and blogs, many people may forget that what they saw online is available for anyone to read, and rules such as libel still apply.

I remember a case recently at GW where members of a fraternity banned on campus got into trouble with the university because they had been using Facebook (Friendster for college students) to communicate. Chances are repercussions of using such an online medium never occurred to the brothers. In the same way, political supporters or detractor need to be careful with what statements they make online.

Luckily for Americans, the Internet remains fairly unregulated and acts as yet another outlet to demonstrate our first amendment right of free speech. Hopefully it will remain unregulated and online campaigns can continue to expand and people can continue to make a difference, or at the very least continue to use the Internet as an outlet of free expression in campaigns.

the trials and tribulations of online fundraising

Continuing with Ireland & Nash's book on internet campaigns and the importance of fundraising online...

I enjoyed the chapter on Secrets of Online Fundraising because while it may not have contained many secrets, it did point out pretty much everything someone should know or consider when fundraising through the Internet. Having been through three campaign seasons now that have used the Internet to different degrees, online fundraising seems like a fairly obvious tactic. I think that it will continue to gain in importance, but I like that Ireland & Nash noted that it was important to integrate online fundraising with normal fundraising, and to advertise it through other means of communication, like mail, radio, or television.

The candidate who wins in many races is the one who has the best communication strategy. A candidate cannot focus on only one media outlet, but must learn to combine the best of all of them and use it to his or her advantage. The tips outlined in the chapter were helpful, and are important for anyone running an online campaign. From giving donors a choice to donate online or by mail to ways to advertise your website to prominently displaying a Donate button, their hints should be standard operating procedure at any Internet campaign HQ.