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.

Robin Smith on Twitter

I took a look today at the number of Twitter followers for each of the top three candidates in Tennessee’s hotly contested race for the Republican nomination in the 3rd Congressional District. The numbers are interesting. Former Tennessee Republican Party Chairman Robin Smith (@robints) had, as of this morning, 925 followers, giving her a more than 4-1 advantage over Bradley County Sheriff Tim Gobble (@timgobble), who had 225 And Gobble has a 4-1 advantage over Chattanooga lawyer Chuck Fleischmann (@chuck4congress), who had 61.

(Another four Republican candidates in the race have 70 Twitter followers, combined, as Joe Lance reports, and on the Democrat side, the main candidate has 247, while an independent candidate has 250.)

I haven’t yet compared lists of Twitter followers, but even in the unlikely scenario that there is no overlap among the Twitter followers of Gobble, Fleischmann and the four lesser candidates bit all of the followers of the six-pack all also follow Smith on Twitter, then Smith has at least 569 unique Twitter followers, which is still more than Gobble and Fleischmann combined. It’s early in the race, but that’s a healthy lead.

Smith did start the race with an advantage: She had built a sizable Twitter following while serving as TN GOP chairman, which she maintained as she transitioned to running for Congress. Still, the Gobble and Fleischmann campaigns can’t be happy with their numbers.

Tim Gobble on Twitter

Fleischmann’s Twitter output has been fairly sparse, while Gobble’s tend to read like canned press statements and campaign-generated ad copy – both candidates’ tweets offer few links to articles or to other people on Twitter, instead, their use of Twitter is mostly one-way messaging rather than participation in the online conversation. Smith’s tweets, on the other hand, convey Smith’s political passion, positions and personality as much as is possible in a 140-character message – and are stuffed with links to interesting articles and replies to other people on Twitter. She uses Twitter both to release news and to participate in the online political conversation.

Fleischmann is considered by many “experts” to be Smith’s biggest obstacle to winning the nomination, primarily because he has money and the quiet backing of Chattanooga’s more moderate Republican faction. But money can’t buy love, as the Beatles so eloquently put it, and a politician builds a Twitter following not with money or press-release posts, but with personality and passion.

Twitter is a perfect tool for a politician who runs on gut instinct and who shoots first and asks questions later, but a trap for politicians who are using a pre-social media communications playbook, who play it too close to the vest, who use Twitter solely as a press release outlet, or who expect their money will buy them first place.

I haven’t been to any campaign events in TN-3, and don’t know what level of efforts the candidates are making to gain Twitter followers, but based on how each of the three has used Twitter so far, and their results so far, I predict that the next time I check on the numbers a few months from now, Smith’s lead will have grown substantially.

Gobble might be able to close the gap – a couple of his tweets today showed some spark that suggests he might be getting better at using the medium to its maximum effect.

Chuck Fleischmann on Twitter

As for Fleischmann, I have no idea. I have seen some novice candidates with money and establishment backing play it safe, not wanting to make a mistake before they have bought name recognition.

For such candidates, something like Twitter is often viewed as risky rather than as a powerful tool, something they gotta have because everyone has it, but nothing more, and the results generally aren’t impressive.

Sarah Palin

The Politico looks at how Sarah Palin has built “one of the most powerful social media brands in politics.”

While Palin isn’t the only major political figure to try alternative means of communication to bypass the media, her unique ability to remain in the headlines while avoiding the spotlight suggests she may be the first to pull it off successfully.

For several days in August, the national health care debate turned to focus on so-called “death panels,” in large part because of two widely-publicized Palin Facebook posts accusing Democratic authors of the House proposal of creating bureaucratic entities to decide end of life care.

The post was immediately rebuked by Democrats, and even by some Republicans, as untrue and irresponsible. But rather than immediately firing back at her critics when reporters came calling for a response, or issuing a press release defending her claim, Palin waited five days to post her response on Facebook.

The post, simply titled “Concerning the ‘Death Panels’.” went up shortly before midnight on a Wednesday night. By late Thursday morning, a write up of her statement was on the homepage of dozens of national and local newspapers. The post also quickly became one of the most mentioned topics within the political blogosphere.

Palin’s five-day delay before posting her second Facebook note was strategically brilliant. Too many people think the fact that they can publish immediately via the social media means they should post immediately. By waiting five days, Palin essentially forced the media and the politicians to spend five days talking about her original statement, and exploring whether the bureaucracies and policies contained within Obamacare would, in essence, amount to government deciding end-of-life issues. Her response post, after five days, was a meticulously sourced response to criticism.

The Politico notes the true power of social media for someone like Palin: the power to communicate without having one’s message twisted by the mainstream media filter.

One unnamed political ‘insider” in Alaska nails it:

“There was so much difficulty in her getting her message out without it being deliberately, in my opinion, twisted by members of the media. Now, even if a story gets twisted, they all know they can go right to Facebook and see what she said.”

Some sort of social media platform – Facebook, a blog, at the least a Twitter page – is a must-have for any serious political candidate. Transparency and the ability to interact with voters who, increasingly, are using social media to communicate with each other, are important in their own right. And without a social media platform, a candidate is at the mercy of the mainstream media filter. For conservative candidates, that means their message is at the mercy and whims of a media establishment that is likely not on their side.

But as the state-run company grows, it is attracting the scrutiny of Brazilian investigative journalists and senators who worry that billions of petrodollars might be put to political use. And that’s not sitting well with Petrobras CEO José Sergio Gabrielli, a left-leaning former economics professor and close adviser to Brazil’s President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. While the Brazilian government holds 38% of the publicly traded Petrobras shares, it controls 55% of the voting rights.

In May, the Brazilian Senate launched an inquiry to determine if Petrobras had evaded more than $2 billion in taxes by channeling funds to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) run by political allies of President Lula in the runup to next year’s presidential elections. It also started looking into alleged overpayments for ships and pipelines. That’s when Gabrielli—frustrated by newspaper reports that he complained were tendentious and quoted him out of context—ordered his public relations team to create a blog called Petrobras—Facts and Figures.

“We’re Going to Defend Ourselves”

Gabrielli says he personally signs off on many of the company’s daily postings on the blog, which is published only in Portuguese. The idea is to rebut what he calls “false information” in the Brazilian press about the company. But the site, which has had more than 1.5 million visitors, is raising questions about whether one of the region’s most respected state-run companies is harming its reputation by being so combative. “We’re going to defend ourselves,” Gabrielli told a reporter from leading newspaper Folha de São Paulo in late June, in a Q&A posted on the blog. “Attacking is also part of defending oneself.”

One of the first things the Petrobras blog did was to publish the entire transcript of an interview Gabrielli granted to a major newspaper—before the newspaper’s article appeared. That infuriated journalists throughout Brazil, who claimed that their questions are the intellectual property of their publications—and in any case, out of courtesy, should not be aired before an article appears in print.

Petrobras agreed to wait until midnight before an article’s publication to post transcripts on the Web, but it still takes a no-holds-barred approach to rebutting, point by point, every major news report.

Petrobras avoids making inflammatory statements about journalists in its daily postings. But its pointed rebuttals spawn vociferous reader comments that accuse journalists of working for political parties or belonging to a conspiracy to turn over Brazil’s oil riches to foreign oil companies. One blog post by a reader identified as Da Torre said that “the Folha [de São Paulo] never tires of making up facts to denigrate Petrobras’ image. Could it be that they are working for the multinationals to knock Petrobras down and…grab the best thing Brazil has, its oil?”

Mesh Media Strategies has always advised its clients who may be interviewed by the media – any media – to record the interview and be prepared to use it to combat misleading media reports which use bits of the interview out of context. This applies to both corporate clients and political candidates. Ideally, the interview should be video-recorded, with cameras on both the reporter and the interviewee. Immediately after the interview is concluded, a verbatim transcript of the interview should be made, and the video or audio of the interview should be prepared for uploading to the web. YouTube is a good platform for video, while a corporate or campaign blog can easily handle an audio file as a “podcast.”

No corporate CEO, organization leader, business owner or political candidate should ever do a media interview without recording it – and no corporate CEO, organization leader, business owner or political candidate should agree to an interview with any media outlet that refuses such conditions.

I have been on both sides of this issue.

Several years ago, I managed to land an interview with music superstar Garth Brooks as his fame was peaking – an interview not for an entertainment magazine, but for a business magazine called Business Nashville. (Today, it’s called Business TN.) The focus of the interview was not music but money and Brooks’ approach to business. In granting the interview, Brooks’ people asked that he be allowed to record the interview.

I had no problem with that request, because I had no agenda in doing the story. I was going to record the interview to ensure accuracy, and didn’t mind if he did the same. I tell clients today, if the media doesn’t want you to record the interview and post the recording or a transcript, they’ve got an agenda.

Brooks did the interview but, as it turns out, his people didn’t record it. They did ask to review the quotes we selected for the story, and although all of the quotes were verbatim, Brooks did ask – not demand – that we delete one sentence because the situation he was talking about – ironically, involving Brooks and a dispute with a major national newspaper – had been resolved since the interview. The quote was accurate but the context had changed, so I made the edit. The result: An accurate story.

Garth Brooks didn’t need to record the interview because I came to it with no hidden agenda, but today’s professional news media is so rife with bias and agendas that you can’t take that chance. Even if the media isn’t biased or coming at you with a hidden agenda, the chances are still high that you will be misquoted or information you give will be used in the wrong context. No member of the media knows more about your business or your campaign than you do, which means there is a good chance they’ll get it wrong.

Having audio or video recordings and a verbatim transcript means you can quickly respond when they do.

Transparency is a two-way street – a media outlet which demands transparency but refuses to grant it is not to be trusted.

VoteStacey.com

Mesh Media Strategies’ current projects include VoteStacey.com, the website of Tennessee state Senate candidate Stacey Campfield, a Knoxville Republican serving his third term in the Tennessee state House.

The goal for the site was simple: A low-cost, easy-to-operate campaign website which incorporated the most useful social networking tools for encouraging grassroots involvement and financial support.

Mission Accomplished: MMS built and launched the initial version of the site in three days, and is continuing to evolve the site as the 2010 campaign cycle rolls along.

If you are a candidate or potential candidate for public office, we invite you to contact MMS for information about our services.

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.

The emerging protest movement is almost the mirror image of the grass-roots campaign that helped sweep Obama into office by pulling in people who’d never been politically active. This time Obama is seeing the other side of what can happen when people are motivated, connect over the Internet and seemingly reach a tipping point that turns them from onlookers into activists.

Don Surber comments on the town hall meetings: “Congressmen wanted to turn them into rallies for health care. That may be the political boo-boo of the year.”

In the age of transparency, when motivated people can easily connect via the web and use social networking tools like Facebook, Twitter and blogs to become instant activists, the old methods of stage-managing events such as town-hall meetings to turn them into rallies as political theater isn’t going to work. The old spin methods don’t work any more. The viral nature of online communications has seen to that.

But MP&F doesn’t deserve all of the criticism for taking the money – the city agency deserves criticism (and a budget cut) for using tax dollars that way. It’s an ethical lapse on both sides. No government agency should use tax dollars to lobby its legislative branch to spend more tax dollars.

MP&F does deserve all of the criticism of the deal from another perspective: The firm is charging outrageous, indefensible, unreasonable fees for simple services like following the convention center debate on Twitter and sending emails. And its spending is out of control: The contract was for $75,000, but MP&F has billed the city more than $458,000.

Outrageous.

Mesh Media Strategies doesn’t operate that way. We don’t charge outrageous fees for anything. (We also don’t over-bill by counting a 15-minute task as an hour of billable work.) And our proposals include cost caps and a policy of never doing work that hasn’t been approved by the client, including approval of the price.

Our goal isn’t to make money at your expense, selling you services you don’t need at prices that don’t make sense. Our goal at MMS is to help your business, non-profit organization or campaign to grow and succeed – to make more sales, get more clients, attract more supporters and donors – by using the right media tools and the right strategy, for a reasonable price.

As for the larger ethical issue raised by MP&F’s current predicament, Mesh Media Strategies accepts government agencies as clients but will not accept tax dollars from one branch or agency of government to do media relations work intended to lobby another branch or agency of the same government on behalf of any project that would result in more spending of taxpayers dollars.

Blogs will play an important role in this election by default. Over the next year, traditional news organizations will do the occasional “take out” on the race. …  But day in and day out the gossip, the trivia, the minutiae, and the obscure details that thrill political junkies will be found on the blogs. … Blogs can provide information that is not general enough for mass media. That will be especially true for special-interest issue blogs. No doubt SayUncle will keep us informed on where the candidates are on gun issues, for example.

Blogs do not, by and large, have the reach of traditional news organizations. At least right now. But they do have a great deal of influence with political insiders. And they are often read by newspaper editors and television and radio news directors. Thus they often set the tone of campaign coverage. They can get the “talk right” for a candidate, or reveal the candidate to be a bumbling fool. This campaign, they may set the storylines that play out in the course of the campaign.

The founder of Mesh Media Strategies launched Tennessee’s first successful political blog in November 2001, with demonstrated impact on public policy decisions, campaigns and media coverage during its seven-year run. He now consults with candidates, campaigns and political organizations on how to use blogs and other social media as an “offensive weapon” and effective communications tool.

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