Forgive me, faithful followers. I know I haven’t exactly been great about blogging. When I started this blog, I had intended to use it to share my thoughts on various grassroots advocacy strategies and innovations. However, over the past few years, every time I would sit down to expound on something, my mind would wander … [Read more…]
The other day I attended a Town Hall meeting in Lisle, Illinois organized by Governor John Kasich’s campaign. I learned a few key lessons from this event and from using the campaign’s online phone-banking software. First of all, let me disclose this – John Kasich is my guy. And I knew it the minute he … [Read more…]
I promised myself I wasn’t going to use this blog to vent. I’m breaking that promise. Last week on Good Morning America, George Stephanopoulos interviewed Donald Trump about his plan to ban Muslims from coming into the country. (I’m not going to get side-tracked here by discussing some very valid issues related to the constitutionality … [Read more…]
Apparently they do. Just last week the Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) released the results of a recent study they completed on the impact of social media efforts in advocacy campaigns. (As an aside, the member/public engagement nerd in me LOVES CMF studies on how congressional staff view constituent communications). So here’s what valuable in the … [Read more…]
Those of you who have been nice enough to follow this blog (thanks Dad!) are probably wondering where the previously-promised humorous and embarrassing anecdotes are about my kids. While I haven’t seen my kids enough in the last two weeks to compile the aforementioned stories, I DID have an epiphany as I was flying home … [Read more…]
So Twitter™ has published a rather lengthy handbook for elected officials on how to use Twitter™, covering such topics as “What is a Tweet?” Sam Sanders with NPR thinks this it’s hysterical that there’s a 136 page manual on how to create a 140-character message. I, too, was initially struck by the irony. Then I … [Read more…]
Hopefully you’ve read my previous post about how to measure the success of your mobilization campaign (Hint: Did you win?). But up until that definitive moment when you know you’ve won, it’s helpful to be able to know how well your campaign is doing along the way. I use a whole bunch of different tools … [Read more…]
I know I’ve been radio silent for the last few weeks and I have a good reason. My largest client, the California Association of REALTORS® (C.A.R.), is involved in an effort to keep Congress from taxing mortgages to pay for highways. That’s the short explanation. The longer one is that U.S. Senate passed a long-term … [Read more…]
There were more interesting numbers out of Iowa this weekend. The recently released Des Moines Register/Bloomberg poll shows that both Donald Trump and Dr. Ben Carson are either the first of second choice of 32% of likely GOP caucus-goers. Meanwhile, other GOP candidates are beginning to use some of Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric, like Gov. Jeb … [Read more…]
How do we measure the value or success of a mobilization effort? That really depends on the goal. As I write this, opponents of the Iran nuclear deal are attempting to mobilize folks in the U.S. to contact Congress to oppose the agreement. The goal here is easy: derail the deal. Check out Nuclear Free … [Read more…]