We’ve Got Your Number: Mobile Campaign Strategy
These days, everyone has a shortcode and some type of bandwagon-style promotion, (Text PORK to 234O2 and get a free HAM!) But the question isn’t availability, it’s viability. Why should your company or your campaign go through the trouble of a mobile campaign? The short answer, because there are 4.6 billion mobile phones worldwide which means a potential for 4.6 billion impressions, donations or contacts.
Mind Is Blown, Then Content-Aware Filled
Adobe Photoshop CS5 was recently made available to the public. After watching this video…
I downloaded the CS5 free trial and played with the new content-aware deletion and spot-brush features. Needless to say, I was absolutely excited and amazed.
I spent about 10 minutes playing with various photos and then downloaded a random Facebook photo from a friends feed and began to see what I could delete. 20 minutes later I had deleted 10 or 11 things from the photo below. Can you spot them all?!
Click on the image to zoom
The mind-blowing thing here is, I am not a Photoshop Expert. I’ve never taken a PS class. I’ve played with it for many years, but always considered myself at an Intermediate level. If a mid-level untrained photo editor can remove items from a low-quality Facebook photo, what kind of creations could a professional make?
Now thinking about the future… *KABLOOIE!* Mind. Is. Blown.
Bai Bai Birdie
Reading The Argument by Matt Bai this week reminded me of reading another verbose publication. Then I realized Bai worked for the other, the New York Times. I enjoyed Bai’s book, it was an interesting topic and is a relevant book for those interested in working with politics. It’s important (and fun) to learn the behind-the-scenes of a political sphere, but when looking at the old democrats we can always find lots of interesting characters. Speaking of characters, I enjoyed how Bai often used literary designs usually relegated to the fictional writer to describe non-fiction characters; some of whom are still quite prominent in media and politics.
Bai’s book was far from an eye opener, and closer to a narrative, but the book itself described many considerations sometimes readily apparent to the casual political observer. For example, people are more important that constituency. When asked who influences politicians, its not just the people of the district, state or country who elected the officials, but often other officials, lobbyists, friends and colleagues.
This comes as no surprise to many of us, but the reasoning behind it (while not surprising) is not often put forth. Insecurity. Doubt. Confusion. Not to say politicians are stupid, but they are people. In our society of strong media personalities, public relations, media relations and highly sensationalized and celebritized figures, it’s strange to think that famous Americans are just another odd kid in a suit.
My favorite part of the book was the exposure of these celebrity leaders as not just politicians with talking points, but people who can be influenced by direct and purposeful information. People who can be spoken to like any other, befriended like any other, and argued with like any other.
As I like to tell my friends, “Even Obama has sit on the toilet to take a poop.”
Facebook & Twitter Activism
Activism is an interesting monster. I once dated a girl who joined protest lines because she thought herself an activist. She believed in the protester’s message, but was also looking to join in! Does joining up as you’re walking make you an activist or something else?
Today we read about the activism using Facebook, Twitter and messaging for a specific group on USENET. From the readings (Facebook here and Twitter here) we discovered that activism using social networks is complex, but can e successful if done properly. The lessons focus on activism using social networking, specifically those launched via a social network.
No One Likes a Qwitter
While using the ‘ol Twitter this week, I realized I’ve lost a follower. Now, I know it’s no big deal to lose a follower… but when you only have 190, a single follower is 0.5% of my overall user base!
During my Internet Advocacy class this semester, Rosenblatt has promised we will learn how to gain in followers, but in order to understand how you gain (easy looking at the Stats of # of clicks – I use Hootsuite) it’s not as obvious when people leave. For that, my social discovery of the week is Qwitter, an unfollow tracker for those who tie their self worth to their number of followers.
Qwitter is a free tool which sends you an email digest regarding your weekly unfollows you. It even gives you the exact tweet which might have possibly caused your fan-loss.
Simple and easy, my favorite kind of geekyness. I’ll check it out, maybe you should too, but don’t worry, it’s not what you know its who you follow… or maybe it’s who follows you? We need to update these old sayings.
So, You Want to be a Successful Campaign?
Engaging the public in an Internet age is not necessarily more difficult than engaging the public previously. If anything according to Rosenblatt, Delany and Rigby, it would seem to be easier to reach, offer influence and recruit individuals. The problem is not access, but organization and strategy.
The days of driving the megaphone through the center of town are not gone, but the megaphone has evolved into a series of electronic pages. Instead of driving it through town you create the data on a server and shout your message into people’s email inboxes and social networks. Additionally, the campaign cannot use the hypodermic needle theory, they need to engage and respect their audience (who are often NOT the general public, but subsets of that public known as publics). In the age of engaged publics who can communicate and search for your campaign, you need to respect and value their input from the ground level. If you don’t care, then why are you even soliciting it?
Impressions on the Social Age 
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