The Conservative Talking Points iPhone app. Tons of information for $1.99

There’s a new iPhone app geared for conservative political activists and conservatives who want to win arguments with liberals. The “Conservative Talking Points” iPhone app, $1.99, provides an extensive yet easily-accessed collection of sourced information, data, quotes and more on 50 different political topics. Its creators say it is “filled with 205 talking points backed by over 965 supporting facts and figures,” all organized in a “quick reference format” that makes it easy to find information with just a few thumb-taps on the iPhone screen.

Among the wide range of topics covered: abortion, capital punishment, judicial activism, health care reform and climate change policy, not to mention “cash for clunkers,” the ACLU, energy policy, illegal immigration, the liberal roots of the housing crash, fundamentals of conservatives, news media bias, the Second Amendment and gun rights, and the separation of church and state. More about the Conservative Talking Points iPhone app here.

Mesh Media Strategies likes the new app – but hopes the next version includes more interactivity tools and integration with other iPhone apps and tools. For example, it would be useful to be able to email, tweet or post to Facebook information entries directly from the Conservative Talking Points iPhone app – with the touch of a button or by cutting and pasting, which isn’t currently possible on the app. And it would be much more useful if the app provided live hyperlinks to the cited sources for the information it serves up.

eBay CEO John Donahoe

EBay CEO John Donahoe has started using a pocket-sized video camera and the company’s internal blog to connect with eBay employees. The Wall Street Journal reports…

Amid a turnaround effort at eBay’s online marketplace, he has been meeting with the company’s merchants and taping the conversations with a Flip camcorder. He’s posted many of these to a video blog for eBay’s internal employees.

In an interview, Donahoe said he got the idea to videotape and share his encounters in the spring from Cisco CEO John Chambers, who also makes videos with the Flip camera. (Cisco bought Flip maker Pure Digital earlier this year.)

“It was like a light bulb going off for me,” said Donahoe of his conversation with Chambers at a Microsoft conference. “I don’t have time to write a blog, and [text blogs] also have the problem that they can get spread virally.” So he bought a Flip camera (on eBay, of course) and started informally recording his encounters and other thoughts to share with eBay’s staff.

“I’m trying to drive a much more customer-focused organization,” said Donahoe. “It has such a powerful impact on me. I want to use it to educate all of our employees and also celebrate some of our sellers.”

What really impresses me with what Donahoe is doing is that he is playing a central role in this social media effort, but in a way that deliberately takes the spotlight off himself. Instead, he is forging a new role for himself as a communications connector between eBay employees and eBay merchants – and as the WSJ story goes on to show, eBay already is reaping tangible benefits from it.

Cheap digital social media technology makes it possible for Donahoe – and for the leader of almost any company or organization – to create such new connections and conversations that were previously difficult to create and sustain. Increased transparency, new connections and conversations open the door to new possibilities.

If he continues with this video-interview-blogging effort, Donahoe should expect the unexpected.
He’s likely to see a lot more light bulbs going off.

Incidentally, the Flip camera is a great product, but it’s not the onlytool that works for this purpose. The new iPhone 3Gs shoots video and allows on-device editing – and can be used to post directly to a blog, YouTube or a social media site like Facebook. With the Flip, you have to be able to download the video to a PC or laptop, edit it, and then post it. On the other hand, Flip has high-def models, the iPhone doesn’t, so far.

In the interest of full disclosure, MMS does not have a client in the race.

While there is still plenty of time for more candidates to jump in, the two “big” candidates known to be running are businessman A.J. McCall, whose multi-generational family-owned furniture and appliance business (D.T. McCall’s) has him on TV in commercials with regularity, and state Rep. Susan Lynn.

Lynn became the first candidate with a website up this week with the launch of SusanLynn.net.

The site is, to be charitable, a design mess, a mishmash of fonts and colors and low-quality clip-art graphics that appear to be salvaged from the wreckage of mid-1990s web design. The “Susan Lynn for State Senate 2010″ banner takes up far too much real estate on the home page, pushing the interesting content down and forcing readers to scroll to find it. And when they do find it…

Functionally, the site is worse. Most of the necessary pieces seem to be there, but it seems obvious that the site was cobbled together by someone who doesn’t understand how to use the internet and social media in a political campaign.

Here are my comments regarding the site:

1. The “Newsletter” link takes readers to a page where they can read old weekly newsletters sent out by the candidate’s state House office – the newsletters can be downloaded as .jpg image files rather than the more common, standard and easily printable PDF. The site should have NEW news, related to the campaign.

2. The “Rumor Mill” feature – designed to respond to rumors and attacks – is a good idea, but the section ought to be a part of the campaign website rather than hosted on a separate blog site, and should share the same design and colors as the main site. The “Blog” link also goes off-site, to the candidate’s pre-existing blog. While MMS would prefer not to have readers leave your site to read your blog, the fact that the blog existed before the campaign site makes this situation understandable.

MMS recently built a site for another state representative running for state senate in a different district, a lawmaker with a pre-existing blog. Rather than just add a link to the candidate’s pre-existing blog, we built the site to automatically pull the latest headlines from the blog and post them to the campaign site in a prominent position, so that the campaign site is updated with fresh content whenever the lawmaker/candidate posts to his blog.

3. The next feature – the “Volunteer” page is actually pretty good. Simple, easy to understand, and meant to give supporters an easy way to get involved in the campaign. Ditto the “Yard Sign” request page – well done.

4. The lists of “Campaign News” and “General Assembly News” headlines are useless. Web readers expect headlines to be hyperlinks to click to read the whole story. The headlines in this campaign site are just text. They go nowhere, and provide too little information.

5. The “Donate” link takes the reader straight to the campaign’s PayPal page – without collecting information required by state campaign donations regulations and without explaining state campaign donation limits. MMS recently completed a site for another candidate for the Tennessee state Senate in a different district who also uses PayPal to collect online contributions, and created a way to handle those two important informational tasks.

6. In terms of social media, the site’s “Facebook” link goes to Facebook’s home page, not to the campaign or candidate’s specific Facebook page. There’s no Twitter link, no YouTube channel, and no use of or apparent provision for future use of video and/or podcasting.

7. The site is not optimized for viewing and use on mobile devices such as a Blackberry or iPhone.

8. And, finally, a major weakness of the site is that it incorporates too much of the candidate’s state legislative content, as if it was meant to be a lawmaker’s constituent-service website rather than a tool for winning a campaign. Contact information is provided for both the campaign and the lawmaker’s General Assembly office. The result is information overload and a lack of focus on the goal. An incumbent lawmaker running for re-election or for another office needs two sites – and the two sites should overlap only minimally, with a single link from the campaign site to the incumbent-lawmaker site as part of the candidate’s bio page. Contact information should be given for the campaign only.

The web and social media are tools of great potential and power for politics and campaigns. This campaign site has left most of that potential and power untapped. The good news: The primary election is more than 11 months away. There’s still time to fix it.

If you’re considering running for the state legislature in your state* and you want a high-quality website that leverages the potential and power but are afraid it costs too much, please contact MMS. We have built websites for state legislative candidates in two election cycles, and we are working on ways to bring down the cost of campaign sites for state legislative candidates while raising their quality and effectiveness.

If you are running to win, you can’t afford not to have a great website.

* MMS only works for mainstream conservative Republican candidates.

Because of their cheap fares and high customer service rankings, both airlines have legions of loyal travelers. Part of that loyalty can also be traced to fresh marketing that tries to put some fun in flying. JetBlue’s tongue-in-cheek ads have urged executives to get off their private jets and fly JetBlue. In Southwest TV ads, CEO Gary Kelly told customers “It’s On” in New York.

Both airlines are on YouTube. Blogs and Twitter are also important parts of their brands.

JetBlue’s social media efforts include a robust Flickr photostream. Southwest’s highly regarded blog, Nuts About Southwest, also links to a Flickr photo gallery. On YouTube, JetBlue is here and Southwest is here – and Southwest has the clear lead over JetBlue in terms of channel views and subscribers on YouTube. If JetBlue has a recently updated blog, it isn’t easy to locate – though the former blog of a former CEO shows up high in the Google results.

You can follow Southwest on Twitter @SouthwestAir, while JetBlue is on Twitter @JetBlue – where its more than 1 million followers is more than double the current number of people following Southwest on Twitter.

Neither airline features their YouTube, Flickr, Twitter or Facebook links on their consumer-facing home pages, though Southwest includes a text link to “our blog” – which does feature its social media efforts. The Southwest blog even links to CEO Gary Kelly’s LinkedIn profile. (Looking at the LinkedIn-created pages for each company. JetBlue’s is better than Southwest’s.

Although JetBlue is trouncing Southwest on Twitter, on balance it is clear Southwest has the edge in understanding and using social media. Whether that translates into winning the Battle of Boston remains to be seen. That Twitter lead is potentially a huge edge for JetBlue.

If Mesh Media was advising Southwest, we’d urge them to focus intently on growing their Twitter following – and using Twitter as a promotional channel to reach fliers in Boston and beyond – and market to them. (One thought: Offer a free round-trip ticket each week to one random Twitter follower, to grow the number of followers rapidly. Then market extensively to Twitter announcements of fare sales, new routes, etc.)  If we were advising JetBlue, we’d urge a more integrated and cohesive approach to its social media – and a blog that belongs to the airline and would continue on past a change in leadership at the top.  A million-plus followers on Twitter is a great ready-made channel for promoting the airline – and a blog can be programmed to automatically “Tweet” on Twitter and Facebook.

Mesh Media’s favorite airline is Southwest – we love the low fares, the good service, the boarding procedures and the attitude. We’ve never had the opportunity to fly JetBlue as they don’t currently serve our hometown, or we might like them too.

One thing I’d like to see Southwest offer – a free iPhone app where a person could check fares and schedules, make reservations, check in and track Rapid Rewards points.

Update 8/17/09: Southwest Airlines responded via Twitter:

@meshstrategies Use mobile.southwest.com save on your homepage as a bookmark!

Done. Looks good. Works like a good iPhone app. Thanks. Another reason why Southwest is our favorite airline.

Is Your Business Advertised In Here?

Do you market your business with an ad in the Yellow Pages? Why? Are you trying to reach people who carry a phone book around instead of an iPhone or a Blackberry?

As noted by GapIntelligence.com recently, the Yellow Pages are no longer the most popular way people look for businesses. Google and Yahoo are. According to a comScore study, usage of the Yellow Pages is declining: About 30 percent of local business searchers now spend more time online instead of offline, compared to 26 percent in 2007.

Unlike the printed directory, when you search for a business online, you get interactive informational content – maps to guide you the store, not just an address, for example, and not just a static ad with some text and maybe a picture, but up-to-date information on products, services, specials, sales, and customer reviews. And, unlike the Yellow Pages, marketing via the social media can be targeted to reach the people you want to reach.

Added bonus: Marketing via the social media is far less harmful to the environment than chopping down trees to print millions of phone directories that nobody uses.

In the age of social media and the mobile web, you can reach your intended audience and engage them in conversation and a relationship via the web at far less cost than buying a Yellow Pages ad. Let Mesh Media Strategies show you how, today.

A growing number of tools – both paid and free– in Apple’s App Store are useful to small companies whose owners or employees are pounding the pavement, hoping to ink deals or take care of customers.

“It is not all about fun and games,” says Shiv Bakhshi, principal analyst at Mobile Perspectives, a Seattle research firm. Developers increasingly understand that “you are an office while you travel” and need ways to efficiently manage, understand and grow sales on the go, he says.

In the last year, Apple has tried to woo business users to the iPhone by adding more features they need, such as real-time email delivery and better security, and has targeted small companies in particular with a TV ad featuring business apps. Meanwhile, competitors like business-market leader Research in Motion Ltd., maker of the BlackBerry, are increasing their app offerings for both business and pleasure.

The story reports that Apple’s iPhone “appears to be gaining more traction with employees of small companies, especially those with 15 to 99 employees.”

The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project survey, from data gathered in April of this year, shows that 56 percent of adult Americans have accessed the internet by wireless means – a laptop, mobile device, game console, or MP3 player. Most use a laptop: 39 percent of adult Americans have gone online using a wireless network via a laptop computer.

The report also finds rising levels of Americans using the internet on a mobile handset, such as a cell phone or a “smartphone” like a Blackberry or iPhone. According to Pew, 32 percent of Americans have used a cell phone or smartphone to access the internet for emailing, instant-messaging, or seeking information, an increase by one third since December 2007, when 24 percent of Americans had ever used the internet on a mobile device. On a typical day, nearly one in five of Americans – 19 percent – access the web via a mobile device, up sharply from 11 percent in December 2007.

The demographic breakouts are interesting: While the percentage of white Americans who have ever gone online via a portable device has grown from 21 percent to 28 percent from December 2007 to April 2009, among African Americans it has jumped from 29 percent to 48 percent, and among English-speaking Hispanics, the number has risen from 38 percent to 47 percent.

Is your business or campaign’s communications strategy optimized for the mobile web?

They’re right, of course.

The communications challenges facing businesses are as varied as the businesses that face them – and the array of communications tools that are available to help solve them. Mesh Media isn’t here to sell you the latest digital media trend using the latest buzzwords – we’re here to help you solve your communications challenges with the right tool or tools for the job. If that’s Twitter and a blog, okay. If it’s a more traditional media relations approach, okay. If it’s a blend of traditional media relations, advertising and social media – or if hiring a plane to write your company’s name in the sky would do the trick – that’s okay too.

Not every CEO needs to be a social media star, but every CEO ought to make sure their business is taking full advantage of all the available communications tools, technologies and trends that make sense and get the job done. Like it or not, you’re doing business in the age of interactive media and digitally-empowered customers who seek transparency and connection and community and see through the latest slick ad campaign. You’re doing business in the era of the iPhone and Skype, YouTube, LinkedIn, podcasts and other user-generated content and if your businesses isn’t using certain social media tools because, after careful review, you believe they don’t fit the need, that’s one thing.

But if you’re not using the tools because your business doesn’t know how to use them, and you aren’t making the effort to understand them and their potential, then chances are your business is leaving some powerful business-building tools gathering dust on the shelf.