Say It Ain't So Joe (Lieberman)
So by now you know, if you had any interest, that Senator Joe Lieberman lost his democratic primary to Ned Lamont by 52% to 48%. According to the website MyDD Direct Democracy one of the liberal bloggers in Lamont's camp, 283,000 democrats turned out to vote (43%) with about 30,000 new registered voters. Wow, that's some achievement, but what went wrong and how can JoeL fix it with his independent bid for senator? There are a few articles out there including the NY Times and MSNBC, plus I also watched during the day what happened on the blogs like MyDD and DailyKos, so here's my take on the Lamont victory.
- This was not just some internet only campaign run by Moveon.org; even bloggers made phone calls and went to poll centers to hand out cards.
- Lamont stayed on his anti-Iraq message appealing to the left wing and younger voters; he even ran videos and made buttons showing President Bush kissing Joe Lieberman.
- He had the netroots press his issues and message online while he used good old fashioned grass roots to get people out to vote.
- He had a great website while Lieberman's
website was mysteriosly hacked or the server crashed due to volume. However, as I showed in my earlier post, there was very little traffic to the site (according to Alexa, but maybe that's not the right audience). As you can see from the chart there was a spike in volume back in June without a crash.
Ok, so now what for an independent Lieberman. Here's what I would do:
- New and better website that can gather emails, take donations, push messages and most importantly handle volume and not be so vulnerable to a hack.
- Can't surrender the internet to Lamont's crew of bloggers; JoeL needs a voice on the internet and whether they are sympathetic bloggers or an online advertising campaign it doesn't matter. His voters can be found online too.
- Avoid falling into the track of trying to be in the social media sites of MySpace, Facebook and others. However, there is a use for YouTube and Joe's own brand of social marketing. Go where his demographics are and start an online conversation with them.
- Online Advertising. I could not find a single instance of search or banner ads anywhere on the internet for either side. People are searching for these candidates, so there is the ability to market to them. Plus, a large scale geo-targeted campaign on key sites will provide a voice......
That's my plan and I don't think it will cost a lot of money. Heck, we are now talking about 2.5 months worth of advertising and marketing. Even in my best months of advertising I couldn't spend more than $1.5 million per month without seeing a dropoff and that was for a national advertiser. A sum a lot smaller than that will give Lieberman a voice online that will be hard pressed to match. If you buy on more than just a few blogs and one large site, it takes experience to pull it off properly.....
PardonMyFrench,
Eric
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