Note: We've just returned from Massachusetts, where we helped coordinate both Senator-Elect Scott Brown's online efforts and his GOTV phone program. This is the first post in a series about the Brown campaign.
Truck owner, Wrentham resident, and State Senator Scott Brown is now the giant-slaying US Senator representing the dark blue state of Massachusetts. Much of that was accomplished because of a smart online campaign that helped fund his efforts, generate volunteers, and engage supporters. As a quick overview, here’s what the Brown campaign did right online- from the start.
They understood that big “Mo” doesn’t come automatically.
The curse of Obama’s 2008 campaign (for online strategists) has come in the form of candidates and campaigns who think that a sharp website and a Facebook page should somehow automatically generate online momentum. In contrast, just as it did for Obama, it took Brown months of tireless campaigning with little result (both on and offline) to create the inertia needed to generate $12 million in donations, over 100,000 Facebook supporters, over 10,000 people enrolled in our “Call from Home” program, over 215,000 email subscribers and 7,529 text message subscribers.
The Brown campaign invested early by immediately putting someone in charge of new media. Serious time and money was invested in online efforts even when results seemed few and far between. Many campaigns would have cut out this expense when it didn’t show immediate results. The Brown campaign knew better and the rest is history. Consider, on December 1st, 2.5 months after the campaign started, the campaign website had just 700 visitors. But by the first of January, that number had begun to grow to over 3,000 and would eventually reach nearly 180,000 unique visitors on Election Day. Massachusetts residents were by far the most likely to visit the website- over 261,000 unique visitors were from Brown’s home state.
They respected the "web guy” and didn't stick him in the basement.
From the beginning Rob Willington, the campaign’s new media director, was put in a position of leadership. He wasn’t relegated to a stuffy office in the corner of the campaign headquarters. Instead, he was consulted on key campaign decisions and allowed to lead campaign initiatives online.
They understood that social media is called SOCIAL media for a reason.
While the campaign of Attorney General Martha Coakley used Twitter (and actually posted more Tweets), they were far less likely to be interactive. Instead, Twitter was used to promote press releases and media hits. Brown, on the other hand, used replies and other tools to actually engage voters online. It led to far more Twitter followers and far more voters who felt they were being engaged in conversation vs. being talked at. The campaign's Twitter following was also key to spreading the buzz of the campaign nationally.
Content is King, and they created a lot of it.
In order to keep people engaged, the Brown campaign created regular content- specifically making good use of online video. Over 59 videos were used to supplement the messaging of the campaign. They were often issued quickly after an event or an embarrassing comment by Coakley, including one where AG Coakley said that the extent of her foreign policy experience was that “she had a sister who lives overseas.”
They understood their audience.
Many candidates want to use up a lot of real estate on their website to explain issue positions or show off press releases. The Brown campaign, however, understood that a campaign’s website is primarily visited by supporters and other friendly individuals. This principle was only magnified due to it being a Special Election with a shortened timeline. Therefore, the website design focused on interaction, highlighting web video front and center and dedicating the bottom half of the home page to a Twitter stream, links to social networking, and a plug to join the Brown Brigade, the campaign's Ning network. As the campaign progressed, so did the website design. The Brown campaign added a tell-a-friend feature to educate supporters on how to vote absentee, encouraged contributions, created a call from home program, provided information about local Brown offices for phone banking, and even initiated a first-ever Voter Bomb.
Although many factors contributed to the election of Scott Brown, the importance of online strategy and social media cannot be ignored. We are proud to have been a part of the team as both a web and phone vendor, and a part of such a historic election.
Rob Willington also contributed to this article.
