Why Automating Your Political Campaign's Social Media Isn't A Good Idea

Social media is supposed to have a social element to it. With all the different ways to communicate with followers via social media, it can become very tempting to automate your posts through various social media tools such as Hootsuite and SocialOomph. While these tools can help save time and streamline your updates, this automation can sometimes work against you.

For example, say you have a carefully crafted press release that announces a large campaign event. A lot of time was spent writing the release so it would catch both the attention of supporters and the news media. Then you then configure your blog or update tool to automatically post the press release update to your followers when it goes live. In doing so, your auto-tweet and Facebook post may end up being little more than a link and a partial sentence without any additional personality or flair.

If you automate the bulk of your social media posts, then you are limiting your engagement with others and potentially making your campaign appear lazy. Simply putting out links and statements without taking the time to craft them carefully will eventually work against you. For example, talking about an issue on Twitter without bothering to use a hashtag could mean that people who are following the conversation will never even know about your post.

A hands-on approach is the best way to handle social media updates. Every social network is different, so don't post the same exact title or headline across the board. For example, Twitter displays content like news headlines. In addition, you only have 140 characters to get someone's attention. By manually tweeting, you can add additional #hashtags and @replies that would not work if you were automatically cross-posting your content.

Facebook allows much more flexibility in your updates. Not only can you can post status messages, but you can also include images or even embed video. Take the time to tweak your link description or add a comment, question or statement about the post.

By customizing your messages to each specific medium, and you will get better exposure and a better audience response.

If you are going to start using social networks, don't wait! Building a successful network takes time and effort. Some campaigns today are now starting social networking efforts a year or more ahead of the elections.

As a final tip, one thing you SHOULD automate is your social media monitoring. If you do nothing else, set up Google alerts for you name, your opponents and phrases related to your campaign.

Online Candidate provides campaign websites for candidates running for local office. Accept donations, recruit supporters, add events and upload files, build your e-mail list, run a poll and more!

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Gun Control or Better Media? Which Will Really Stop the Violence?

Anyone who's been in touch with recent events in America knows that the school shooting in Connecticut has refocused attention on gun control. But will gun control really curtail gun violence?

THE PROBLEM IS THE ENVIRONMENT?

Certainly, as best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell points out in Tipping Point we are shaped by our environment. In a no-gun environment, gun violence would drop to zero. But no one seems interested in making America a no-gun environment. Gun control, yes. Gun elimination, no. We want our police and our military to have guns. Politicians, Hollywood stars, and high-level businesspeople want their bodyguards armed. As a people we don't seem terribly concerned about allowing people to hunt or to shoot guns recreationally. What we want is to curtail gun violence. So the question is: how is that possible in an environment where both legal and illegal firearms exist?

THE PROBLEM IS MOTIVATION

In his landmark TED talk Tony Robbins says, "If I pull a gun on you and I'm in the hood, instantly I'm significant from zero to ten how high? Ten!" Tony claims that everything we do is motivated by our six human needs. Particularly violence is motivated by our need for significance, that is our need for attention, or our need to feel unique, special, different. Looked at from this angle, people will turn away from violence when we take away its significance.

STORIES MOTIVATE

Going back to Tipping Point, Gladwell analyzes the meteoric rise in suicide attempts by teenage boys in Micronesia after a highly publicized 1966 suicide by the "charismatic scion of one of the wealthiest families" of Ebeye. That story motivated other boys whose publicity motivated others in a vicious cycle that has caused the suicide rate among young males in Micronesia to hit one out of every thousand, and on some islands, one in forty. Many of these suicides seem to be triggered by banal disagreements with older family members and do not fit the traditional "cries for help" model. Still, each one is highly publicized, giving permission and even encouragement to the next.

MORE LAWS OR BETTER MEDIA?

Now of course, Micronesia could outlaw rope, wire, belts, and anything else these men might try to hang themselves with, but wouldn't it make more sense to take away part of the reason they're committing suicide? What if the Micronesian media refused to report on suicides the way TV stations now refuse to show stadium streakers at baseball games? By taking away suicide's significance, you could take away a major motivational factor. And what about gun violence?

SHOOTER VS. HERO

By now everyone knows the name of Adam Lanza, the Newtown shooter. How many instead know the name of Victoria Soto? She's the 27-year old Newtown teacher who lost her life while saving a whole classroom full of first graders by hiding them in the classroom and telling the gunman they were in the gym. What, she didn't make your local newscast? What if the mass media agreed to a total media blackout about the shooters and focused on the heroes? What would that give us permission and encouragement to do?

Now I'm not saying we don't need intelligent gun laws. We do. I'm suggesting that violence could be greatly curtailed by a media blackout like they already use for streakers at sporting events. Cut away from the action, give a brief commentary, and then focus on the heroes everyone wants to see. Couldn't that spark a social revolution of heroic generosity?

Fr. Scott Kallal is one of the founding members of the Apostles of the Interior Life, a new community dedicated to answering Pope Benedict's call to raise up "a new generation of apostles rooted in Christ's word, able to respond to the challenges of our time, and ready to spread the Gospel far and wide." You can contact Fr. Scott at scottkallal@gmail.com

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Is The Mainstream Media Making a Mistake By Pushing Political Agendas With a Divided Public?

It seems to me rather unfortunate that the mainstream media spends so much time spinning and manipulating what was said and debated at the presidential debates in mid-October 2012. What I see as rather curious is how many left-leaning socialist thinking people have been on TV criticizing Mitt Romney for his strategy and plan to get America back to work. In almost all regards they have misconstrued what he has said, rebranded him as a liar, and completely misstate the facts. Over and over again the American people are being told by the media and political operatives for the Obama campaign that Mitt Romney's plan is unattainable, and that the numbers don't add up. Sure they do, and let me explain.

Mitt Romney wishes to aggressively boost domestic energy development and production. That alone would add a tremendous number of new jobs, and with that more people paying taxes into the system, therefore there would be more revenue for the government. This could add 500,000 high paying jobs and lower our energy costs helping small businesses and consumers, allowing them more money to spend - thus, boosting the economy as well.

He also wishes to complete trade deals with South America which have been on hold therefore increasing the number of products we export. That would provide more jobs at home in manufacturing. Further, on that note he wishes to lean on China for their intellectual property theft, and their currency manipulation. That could easily add another 2 million jobs to our manufacturing sector.

He's also us spoken of allowing the states to administer their own job training programs rather than being dictated by the federal government. This is also quite wise because things should be done locally in the regions where those jobs actually exist, or don't exist. It hardly makes sense to train people for jobs which do not exist in those particular states. This is why centralized control over such things never works, as the so-called economies of scale are lost to mismatching. By allowing the states to do their own retraining that means more jobs, again more people paying taxes into the system.

Mitt Romney also says that he wants to reduce the deficit by eliminating inefficiencies, duplication, and nonsensical agencies. That will reduce the amount the government spends. He doesn't wish to increase taxes, he wishes for more people to be paying into the system because they have new jobs. Lastly, he wishes to reduce the regulatory burden on small companies, our small businesses are being barraged by rules and regulations at every level of government. If we can reduce these regulations small businesses will expand and hire more people. When they hire more people more people will be paying taxes into the system.

With all of these new jobs and all of these new people paying into the system, the government won't have to run a deficit, or as it is working itself out of the budget deficits it will have more money coming in. Those who oppose Mitt Romney are only looking at the cost of the government and where the money is going, without looking at the revenue side of the equation, perhaps because they believe that since Obama couldn't create any jobs, then either can't Mitt Romney. But there is a big difference between a free-market capitalist, and socialist style leadership as they have in Europe.

Europe's way doesn't work, free-market capitalism does, and that's the fundamental difference. If the political opposition doesn't understand this (they hardly teach economics in our schools anymore), or quite frankly doesn't care because all they wish to do is a negative things about Mitt Romney, and if the mainstream media continues making a mistake by pushing this political agenda when 50% of our population is against socialism, then the mainstream media will also suffer in the end, not only because socialism ruins business models, but also because the other 50% which believes in freedom, liberty and free-market capitalism is going to tune them out.

Media companies cannot operate without viewership, and without the ratings as they will not pull in any advertisers after the election. Right now, perhaps they are promoting Barack Obama because the amount of money in advertising the Obama Campaign is currently spending with them, but if that is the case that's just another form of crony capitalism, and therefore their opinions and what is stated on their programming, or who they choose to interview cannot be considered unbiased.

In fact one could say they're part of the problem, therefore maybe it doesn't matter if they go out of business, or turn on the economic reality and basic math of this equation. Romney's right, for the right reasons. Please consider all this and think on it.

Lance Winslow has launched a new provocative series of eBooks on Political Concepts. Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank; http://www.worldthinktank.net/

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