Politics, Technology, Web 2.0
Jun 12, 2008
Todd Zeigler
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Thoughts on McCain’s “Spread the Word” Program

A few weeks ago the McCain campaign launched a “Spread the Word” feature on their campaign website that encourages volunteers to comment on prominent left and right leaning blogs as a way of getting the McCain message out. The feature was written up in Wired and has attracted a mixed reaction. Some think it is nothing more than astroturfing while others think it is a clever outreach strategy.

My take is that the idea is a good one but that the execution could have been better.

The piece includes very brief instructions, a long list of blogs to participate in (94 are listed) and a few talking points to copy. Intentionally or not, the tool seems to aspire to create an army of Ron Paul-style shills, who inject promotional materials about their candidate of choice into every discussion no matter the topic, alienating the very communities they are trying to reach. Bull, meet china shop.

I think the tool would have been better received and more effective had the campaign provided volunteers with better instructions as to how to participate in these blogging communities. Off the top of my head, here are some of the tips I might have included:

  1. Read the blogs and familiarize yourself with their communities before posting comments.
  2. Read the actual post you are commenting on before posting anything. Read other people’s comments as well before posting.
  3. Make sure your comments are on topic.
  4. Participate in the community beyond simply posting pro-McCain materials.
  5. Be civil and respectful of others members of the community.
  6. Etc.

Basically, I’d try to give volunteers more information so that they conduct the outreach in a manner that is respectful of the blogs they are participating in.

  • http://www.lesliecarbone.blogspot.com Leslie Carbone

    Good tips. The McCain campaign seems pretty clumsy in its efforts to reach out. They didn’t even notify Virginia bloggers about events they held here this week.

  • http://www.kungfuquip.com Turk

    If the campaign wants to reach lefty blogs, why not have McCain do blogger conference calls with those bloggers? They’ll be heated, to be sure, but at least they’ll give you credit for opening the lines of discussion and engaging them directly.

    That would be better as a storyline than “we had our people go to their community and piss them all off”.

  • http://www.bivingsreport.com Todd Zeigler

    Turk – I personally would have skipped the liberal blogs altogether and just listed conservative communities. Having McCain commenters invade Kos is a waste of time. If done well, McCain people might be able to fire people up on conservative communities.

  • http://www.blognetnews.com/elections Dave Mastio

    This is the cousin of the letters to the editor astroturfing campaigns have been doing for years. (As I recall, Bob Dole 1996 went crazy with fake prewritten letters to the editor).

    The worst mistake is giving people explicit talking points. The kind of supporters you want engaging in the comment sections of the blogosphere are the ones who follow the news enough to figure out the talking points for themselves.

  • Bill Armstrong

    I think the whole thing is a bad idea. If your supporters want to do this on their own – great. Let them have at it.

    But putting up a piece like this to manufacture it is pretty much the definition of astroturf.

  • http://www.theamericanmind.com Sean Hackbarth

    Turk, I know of one McCain call where lefties not only called in but got to ask questions. Grist has gotten to ask McCain a question, but I still haven’t.

    This is a tool like the forward-to-friends feature found on most campaign webpages and e-mails. Making things easier and more customer-centric for supporters to get more active only helps a campaign. It’s useful but can be abused.

    I agree with Todd that education is key to not turn it into an astroturfing device. I also hope there’s some level of monitoring going on to prevent abuse and ban abusing IP addresses.

  • http://www.jtpr.com Jesse

    Todd,
    Great post. It’s interesting the McCain campaign has to give talking points along with a list of blogs to comment on. His campaign must realize that it cannot manufacture word of mouth. Rather, it must inspire word of mouth. He’ll have a better chance of success with the latter.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_XBJHULSYKVGU45MLJI2CYV56TM Maryam

    The only unique feature that I can discern is that UserVoice allows companies to create a specific page for themselves. The effort seems to be made in keeping the comments more regulated and organized than the previously mentioned sites, but will that cause users to be less free with their suggestions and comments? I applaud the company for creating a way for small to medium-sized businesses to have their own ‘focus groups’ but it is going to be a couple of months before we will be able to decide if UserVoice shouts or gets silenced.testking EX0-101

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