By Mark Reilly
I know what some of you are thinking. "Blogs are a fad for techno-geeks. Blogs are just chat rooms. Blogs don't win elections or pass legislation. As a public affairs
professional why should I care?"
You should. Blogs, online journals have been increasing at a furious pace. Some of the top political Blogs sites get more traffic than http://www.georgewbush.com or
http://www.johnkerry.com get on daily basis (and remember they have tiny budgets in comparison). For example, the Instapundit, and the
DailyKos (see sidebar) each get more than 100,000 unique visitors per day. The Dean for America Bloggers were directly responsible for raising a large portion of the more than
$28 million raised in the second half of 2003 via his campaign Web site -- that's real money. And the Blog use growth curve is on the upsurge. According to a survey conducted by
the Pew Research Center in February of 2003, 2% of respondents had their own Blog. A year later PEW conducted the same survey and found that up to 7% had their own Blog, which
translates into somewhere between 4 million and 8 million active Blogs.
In February 2004 George Washington University, IPDI, RoperASW and Nielsen/NetRatings released a report on the online behavior of political influentials (aka the public affairs
target market) for the 2004 Election. It found that people who use the Internet for news (including Blogs) are more likely to vote, be involved in politics and fall into the
"influentials" category (as defined by RopersASW). What this means is that while perhaps only as many as 8 million Americans read and participate in Blogs, these people are much
more likely to get involved in politics and the issues important to them than are people who watch TV or listen to the radio or even read a newspaper.
My interpretation of these numbers is that Blogs are worth the effort to consider for inclusion in your public affairs campaign strategy if only because they attract the right
kind of audience for most public affairs campaigns. (For a related story, see PR NEWS, March 22, 2004.)
So how can Blogs be included into your campaign?
The first and easiest way is to simply join the Blog and make a comment supporting your issue. Remember, do not try to be someone else or use an anonymous name. If that is
not possible, ask your client or spokesperson to comment on the Blog. If the Blog does not accept comments directly, send the Blogger a tip. Again, it might be most appropriate
to have your client, a credible third party, or the spokesperson of the campaign contact the Blogger (with your assistance, of course). Bloggers need to maintain credibility and
want to know that they are dealing with true believers not a paid hand.
Another tactic would be to purchase ads on Blogs that you think attract your audience. BLOGADS and Goggle's Ad Sense are the two best Blog advertising networks for political
sites at this point. It stands to reason (although Blog owners will deny it) that if you purchase an ad on a Blog and then contact the Blog about your issue it may be more
receptive to your request. Just a hunch.
If your goal is to build a list of supporters and to get concerned citizens to send communications to their elected officials in support of your campaign's issue, Blogs can
help.
Building your own Blog may sound ambitious, but if you have a spokesperson or some committed followers it might make sense as the best way to raise awareness and recruit around
your campaign's issue. The technology is relatively inexpensive, but the strategy, upkeep and maintenance are labor intensive.
The key items to be concerned about are making sure that you have fresh content and ensuring that you ultimately control the basic tune and content on your Blog.
Reilly is an Assistant Vice President of Issue Dynamics Inc. Washington, DC 20006. He can be reached at 202.263.2932; [email protected]
Top 10 Political Blogs
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http://www.Instapundit.com -- 124937 visits/day Glenn Reynolds - Conservative
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http://www.DailyKos.com -- 119839 visits/day Marcos Zuniga - Liberal
- http://atrios.blogspot.com/ - Eschatron -- 92139 visits/day Liberal, pro-Democratic party, has been doing fundraising for Kerry.
-
http://www.andrewsullivan.com -- 47351 visits/day Conservative, pro-Bush,
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http://www.smirkingchimp.com -- 43320 visits/day Liberal, anti-Bush
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http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ -- 41223 visits/day The Political Animal -- Kevin Drum - Political commentator for Washington
Monthly -
http://www.blogforamerica.com/ -- 33746 Liberal - pro-Dean blog, the reincarnation of the Dean for America Blog
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http://www.wonkette.com -- 23563 visits/day Liberal - liberal, a tad crude
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http://www.command-post.org/ 18095 visit/ day News coverage of the election
- http://blogcritics.org/ - 17919 visits/day Not a true political BLOG, but does have a lot of political commentary mixed in
Other Interesting Blogs
- George W. Bush Blog -- http://www.georgewbush.com/blog/
- John Kerry Blog -- http://blog.johnkerry.com/
- Technorati - http://www.technorati.com/
BLOG tracking web site
- BLOGAds -- http://www.blogads.com/
BLOG ad network
- Google Ad Sense --
http://www.google.com/adsense/ Provides ways to place ads on targeted web sites including Blogs
- BlogsearchEngine.Com - Search engine for Blogs
To get a copy of the Report on online behavior of political influentials released by George Washington, IPDI, Ropers/ASW and Neilsen/NetRatings go to http://www.ipdi.org