There is a BIG shift in the way political campaigns conduct election war these days. During the 2006 elections I was contracted to do some work for Sharron Angle for Congress and it was a very educational experience and the race taught us many things about the new direction of political campaign marketing.

In our race for congress we were lucky that the opposition had little experience in online marketing. The reason we were lucky is that I had my hands full with other parts of the campaign and couldn’t spend any time on the website or out and about in the www community.

In the end we lost by about 400 votes, but the knowledge that came from working on such a campaign is something I’m thankful for. I was able to see one of our opponents get ripped to shreds by the online community because he virtually ignored them and his site did everything possible to avoid having to engage the group. At the time, this attitude worked because the social networks of Nevada were limited. Now, however, these networks have gained big momentum and I believe that if we were to see a repeat of that race he would have a very tough time slipping by without getting the online community involved.

The same can be said across the country. With more and more voters and activists moving their networks to the web, political campaigns are forced to move in that direction with their campaign plans and message marketing schemes. I believe we’re witnessing the birth of a new era in US elections.

Political campaigns would be wise to lend an ear to this massive movement of information and there are a plethora of tools that can help them do just that. I’ve compiled a list of what I believe will be the top ten players in internet activism.

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C-SPAN has a great discussion panel running on TV called Political Blogs & 2008 Elections. The panel discussion is sponsored by the Robert Dole Institute of Politics. The speakers for the panel are Erick Erickson, Jerome Armstrong, Scott Johnson, Joan McCarter, and Patrick Hynes.

A lot of the discussion is very general and hardly scratches the surface, but there is certainly a level of wisdom between the group and it shows in the panel dialog. However, I notice that none of the bloggers present the problem with elitism within the blogosphere.

Many, MANY bloggers have talked about the “long tail” of the blogosphere. If you aren’t familiar with the long tail, it’s basically a way of explaining the majority of today’s blogs.

The top blogs make up the head, which represents the largest section of traffic, and the rest of us make up the long tail, which represents the blogs with less traffic and influence. Normally I would give you examples, images and links for such an explanation, but I’m currently on a flight to Washington DC so I have no internet access. I’ll try and add some links in within the next few days. UPDATE: Check out this link for more info on the “long tail”.

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It was only a matter of time before web 2.0 was embraced by the Conservative realm of the internet. Conservatives, I’m sometimes ashamed to admit, aren’t always the first group to jump on a new innovation, but it can be said that Conservatives know how to make one work rather quickly for their purpose.

The blogosphere is a great example. Bloggers like Michelle Malkin, Patrick Hynes, Erick Erickson, Scott Johnson, Chuck Muth, LGF, and others had success on a proportionate scale soon after the Blogosphere was given life. LGF, for example, can has in excess of 70,000+ visitors in a single day. No doubt, Conservatives know how to communicate opinions, articulate issues, and network together to inform others will relative ease.

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The last month has been a wild ride for ConservaBlogs.com. We now host more than 50 blogs and have only been up and running for less than 8 weeks. Not bad for a guy who has spent $0.00 advertising dollars and very little time marketing the product right?

On top of the success we’re having with traffic and bloggers, our Technorati rank seems to quickly be on the rise. In fact, I’ve been quite stunned with how fast we’ve moved into the top 20,000 blogs. I’m really not sure what this means for us because it appears as though even the top 10,000 means virtually nothing as far as extra traffic. But considering the fact that Technorati tracks millions upon millions of blogs and we’re in the top 20,000 I think we’re doing well.

But how did we get there so fast? Just 6 weeks?

Oddly enough, our homepage URL, www.conservablogs.com, is getting credit for links coming in to blogs on sub-domains. When you look at the link list for ConservaBlogs on Technorati, you’ll find that a majority of the links are pointing at sub-domains or blogs on sub pages, yet the homepage still gets credit.

Most of our bloggers have their blogs claimed with Technorati, so it’s easy for us to compare the links and see that they line up to an exact number. For example, Publius Forum, one of our most active bloggers, recently moved from blogger to ConservaBlogs. When he contacted all of his link partners or bloggers who had him in their blogrolls to change the URL, both his new blog AND the homepage of our site got credit for the links.

So it’s clear that blog hosts and networks are going to do quite a bit better as far as rank with Technorati. Or at least, they’ll be able to move up the rank ladder much quicker than any normal, stand alone blog.

Interesting. Interesting indeed.

-Eric Odom
ConservaBlogs.com

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