Transcript of Twinterview with @PatrickRuffini 12:15 PM

Thank you to @PatrickRuffini for participating in my first ever Twinterview! Stay tuned for the announcement of my next Twinterview guest!

Here is a complete transcript of the Twinterview:

@JordanRaynor: We are LIVE with @PatrickRuffini, Partner @engagedc and most recently a Senior Online Strategist for @BobMcDonnell. Thanks for joining us!

@JordanRaynor: @PatrickRuffini Thank you for sitting down with me. The @engagedc team ran an incredible online campaign for @BobMcDonnell in VA.

@PatrickRuffini: Great to be here, Jordan!

@JordanRaynor: How many new organic email sign-ups did the McDonnell campaign accumulate? Where did the majority come from? Online ads?

@PatrickRuffini: The campaign had 187,000 e-mail addresses. Search marketing & banner ads on sites like Drudge were a strong component of this

@JordanRaynor: The McDonnell campaign raised $1.25 million online. Approximately what % of that came directly from email solicitation?

@PatrickRuffini: About a third. Walk-in donations to the site were surprisingly strong, esp. after the thesis attacks. Thank you WaPo.

@JordanRaynor: Thank you indeed. What do you think is an effective non-fundraising email to direct fundraising pitch email ratio?

@PatrickRuffini: About 1 in 3 or 4, moving to 1 in 2 in the critical weeks before the election when it matters most.

@JordanRaynor: Much has been made of how the McDonnell campaign went mobile. What was the most successful aspect of your mobile strategy?

@PatrickRuffini: We experimented a lot with mobile. We were able to get very granular with it so I got updates from the Alexandria field office

@PatrickRuffini: I would say this local targeting was a highlight. We also experimented with assigning GOTV phone calls through SMS, also a win

@JordanRaynor: Interesting. I love the Redskins ticket give away you all implemented in exchange for cell #s. Was that effective?

@PatrickRuffini: Yes, it grew the list considerably. Also use at live events was key, particularly the GOP convention

@JordanRaynor: @IsCool wants to know how successful fundraising via SMS was for the campaign?

@PatrickRuffini: Candidly, that is one area that's still emerging. Mobile better for message distro and field than fundraising, at least now

@JordanRaynor: Good to know. Let's talk online advertising.

@JordanRaynor: McDonnell spent 7.5% of ad budget online. What % of a campaign’s advertising budget should be spent on online ads in 2010?

@PatrickRuffini: 7.5% is a start. Big brands moving to 10-15%. 10% of TV ads being skipped over. More than 10% of media consumption is online.

@JordanRaynor: The McDonnell campaign launched a Google advertising network "surge" in the last 12 hours of the campaign…

@JordanRaynor: …Would you recommend a “Google Surge” for candidates at the presidential, state-wide, congressional and local level?

@PatrickRuffini: Yes -- exposure it gets you for the $ is far better than TV. Blogs buzz about the full court press effect, sure sign it works.

@JordanRaynor: Was the “Deeds On the Ropes On Taxes” video (http://bit.ly/4Fsv5) the biggest moment for the McDonnell campaign online?

@PatrickRuffini: It was huge. Our grassroots' response to the WaPo thesis attacks was also huge. (cont)

@PatrickRuffini: But if you had to pinpoint a turning point where Deeds effectively disqualified himself, that was it

@JordanRaynor: Let's talk social networks. Why did the campaign decide to create a custom social network (McDonnell Action) with Ning?

@PatrickRuffini: We needed a way to connect our super-volunteers and roll them into the organization immediately (cont)

@PatrickRuffini: Before McDonnell Action, phone trees used to mobilize volunteers. After a mix of groups/events on the site & email.

@JordanRaynor: Which social network provided the greatest value to the campaign? Facebook, Twitter or your custom McDonnell Action (Ning)?

@PatrickRuffini: That's a tough one. Facebook was biggest with over 30K fans. But we could do more with McDonnell Action volunteers.

@JordanRaynor: How many Facebook statuses were “donated” to the campaign for GOTV efforts on Election Day?

@PatrickRuffini: Close to 1,000 -- which we estimate reached about 80,000 Virginia voters

@JordanRaynor: Interesting. Did the campaign have any relative success fundraising directly from Twitter and Facebook?

@PatrickRuffini: Decent success around deadlines. But main sources were 1) walk-in traffic to site, 2) email, 3) Google AdWords

@JordanRaynor: What new technology would you like to see a political campaign experiment with in the 2010 cycle?

@PatrickRuffini: 1) iPhone apps with GPS geolocation & voter ID, 2) Hyperlocal Twitter activity by field offices

@JordanRaynor: Twitter rock-star @nansen wants to know what are the top 3 online items campaigns must have/do?

@PatrickRuffini: In no particular order, 1) robust web platform that scales and captures enthusiasm, 2) video, video, video 3) email strategy

@JordanRaynor: Moving away from McDonnell for two questions...

@JordanRaynor: Thanks for reading Plouffe’s book for the rest of us. What’s the biggest online lesson you learned from the book?

@PatrickRuffini: Bottom line: Actually believe your grassroots can do it. Don't underestimate them. Make them a key part of the team.

@JordanRaynor: What’s your biggest criticism of Obama’s online campaign?

@PatrickRuffini: It was metrics-based to the point of being paint-by-numbers. They once didn't change their homepage for 3 weeks b/c it worked

@JordanRaynor: Lastly, what single accomplishment are you most proud of with McDonnell’s online campaign?

@PatrickRuffini: Lesson: No one silver bullet. Consistent execution across the board was the hallmark of Obama '08 and McDonnell '09

Live Twinterview with @PatrickRuffini 7:41 PM

Tomorrow at 11:30 a.m. EST, I will conduct my first-ever live Twinterview (Twitter interview) with Patrick Ruffini - Senior Online Strategist for Bob McDonnell's victorious campaign for Governor of Virginia.  Ruffini and his team led an incredible online effort for Bob McDonnell's gubernatorial campaign that is being looked at as a model for state-wide campaigns moving forward to 2010.  In Ruffini's first Twinterview since McDonnell's landslide victory, I will ask how exactly the McDonnell online team pulled it off and what secrets they have for online campaign teams in 2010.

Here's how it will work.  Beginning at 11:30 a.m. EST, I will begin directing questions to Ruffini via my Twitter account (@JordanRaynor).  Ruffini will then respond to these questions via his Twitter account (@PatrickRuffini).  After I have finished asking my prepared questions, Ruffini will take a few additional questions from other participants on Twitter.  If you have a question for Ruffini, please direct them to @JordanRaynor or @PatrickRuffini on Twitter.

How can you follow this live Twinterview?  Here's 5 simple ways:

1. Follow @JordanRaynor and @PatrickRuffini on Twitter.  This will allow you to follow the Twinterview in whichever Twitter client you prefer.
2. Follow this Twitter list specifically for the Twinterview
   
3. twitter.com
   
4. search.twitter.com (no Twitter account required)
5. Watch the conversation right here at JordanRaynor.com:

Patrick Ruffini bio:

Patrick Ruffini is a political strategist whose work has helped define the convergence of new media and politics for more than a decade.

Ruffini is currently a partner at Engage, a political media firm he founded in 2007. In this role, he helps political and public affairs clients navigate the seismic shifts in today’s media landscape from the top-down broadcast model to an open and participatory online ecosystem. Shortly after founding the firm, Ruffini was recognized by Campaigns and Elections’ Politics magazine as a Rising Star in American politics in 2008.

From 2005 to 2007, Ruffini served as eCampaign Director at the Republican National Committee. As part of the RNC Chairman’s leadership team, Ruffini worked to maximize adoption of new media throughout the Republican Party, producing record online fundraising, architecting best-in-class online organizing tools, and spearheading the party’s blog and social media strategy. Under Ruffini’s leadership, the RNC’s Web traffic led that of the Democratic National Committee for 11 out of 12 months in an otherwise challenging 2006 election year according to Nielsen//NetRatings.

In the 2004 election, Ruffini served as webmaster for Bush-Cheney ‘04, managing day-to-day operations on the campaign’s Web site and helping oversee development of the grassroots tools that mobilized an army of 1.4 million campaign volunteers. Having come to the campaign with experience as an early political blogger, Ruffini launched and ran the campaign’s blog — the first ever affiliated with an incumbent President — and led rapid response outreach to the then-burgeoning political blogosphere.

(more here)

Charlie Crist vs. Marco Rubio = Traditional 3M vs. New 3M 8:01 AM

A few weeks ago, a friend told me half-jokingly and half-seriously that I wrote Marco Rubio's campaign game plan on June 11, 2009 when I published a piece titled "The 3M Campaign Cycle Reversed" on SayfieReview.com. In the piece, I argued that with the right candidate and the right message, the internet could level the playing field and help reverse the conventional wisdom that you must run a "Traditional 3M" campaign to get elected to office. I argued that the Traditional 3M model was based on big money to launch a campaign, followed by momentum, with the candidate's message being a distant third priority. This model can be diagrammed like this:

MONEY → MOMENTUM → MESSAGE

Using the internet to drive message directly to voters, victory is now possible for candidates who don’t have big money to kick-start their campaigns, by following a “New 3M” model that looks like this:

MESSAGE → MOMENTUM → MONEY

When I wrote the 3M piece 5 months ago, I had the race for the Republican nomination for the open Florida U.S. Senate seat in mind. At the time, it seemed unthinkable that Marco Rubio, the insurgent candidate with no money or momentum, could beat political titan Charlie Crist. Today, it is a very real possibility. 9 months away from this critical primary that politicos inside and outside of Florida are deeming the “Battle for the GOP’s Soul”, it appears that this race has indeed become a battle between a Traditional 3M campaign and a New 3M campaign.

It was clear from the beginning that Charlie Crist would run a Traditional 3M style campaign as he had done so many times in the past. So far, nothing has changed. Crist has spent nearly all of his campaign time bundling big money at traditional big-ticket fundraisers. The expectations for how much Crist would raise were set incredibly high, and Charlie Crist crushed them to the tune of more than $6.4 million dollars raised with $6.2 million cash-on-hand as of October 8, 2009. Crist has trounced not only Marco Rubio in raising big money; he has become the leading Republican Senatorial fundraiser in the entire country for the 2010 cycle. Though Rubio showed glimmers of hope at the end of the last fundraising report in early October raising $1 million, he has fallen far short of Crist’s ability to bundle big money. However, Rubio has successfully raised money from smaller donors (more than 11,000 of them) most of whom he can raise money from again. By comparison, more than 850 Crist donors have already maxed out, meaning they can not give to Crist again until the General Election.

Even with all of his big money, Crist has fallen far short of reaching the “Second M” of the Traditional 3M campaign cycle - momentum. If anything, momentum has shifted against Crist and turned in favor of his opponent on the short end of a 5-to-1 financial disadvantage - Marco Rubio.

Marco Rubio’s momentum is undeniable. It is difficult to read the Florida papers without reading of Rubio gaining in the polls, another lopsided straw poll victory or a story about how national conservatives are rallying to Rubio’s side attempting to put a giant bull’s eye on Charlie Crist. Rubio is being hailed inside and outside Florida as the poster boy (literally) of the conservative movement. So what’s driving all of this momentum? According to the models I have outlined above, either big money or message.

So far, Rubio’s momentum has certainly not been driven by big money which drives a Traditional 3M campaign, leaving us with message. So far, Rubio’s message has been largely nationalized - more about the future of a more conservative Republican Party than about the issues specific to the Florida Senate race. This has forced me, as well as others, to ask what exactly is Marco Rubio’s message? This very question was posed to Rubio in an October interview on FOX Business:

Rubio’s answer: “What we’re campaigning on is that America is an exceptional society. There’s never been a freer, more prosperous people.”

If Marco Rubio doesn’t think there is a Crist ad out there ready to attack Rubio’s message as being nothing more than piggy-backing the Greatest Generation, he has another thing coming. But even though Rubio has kept his campaign message broad and nationalized, there is something about his message that is clearly resonating with voters.

Just before the November 3 election in New York’s 23rd congressional district, I tweeted the following:

 Harnessing voter anger may actually qualify as a platform this cycle.

This is what I believe we are seeing with Rubio’s campaign in Florida, which has indeed been modeled as a New 3M style campaign. Though his message has been broad, he has been successful in harnessing grassroots anger and discontent with the political establishment (namely Charlie Crist) giving his campaign remarkable momentum that shows no signs of stopping.

As Crist ramps up his campaign and rhetoric, the true test of Rubio’s implementation of a New 3M campaign model will be whether or not that message is strong enough to continue to drive momentum and eventually lead to the big money he will need to defeat Charlie Crist.

The Case for 1 Twitter Account 10:14 PM

Since publishing The 7 Deadly Sins of Tweeting Politicians (which has now been shared with tens of thousands of individuals), I have received numerous questions about how best to avoid Sin #6: Lying (or hiding) who is actually tweeting for you.  Here's how I describe this sin in the earlier blog post:

In an ideal scenario (mostly for the potentially disastrous entertainment value) all politicians would personally tweet, but it is widely understood that the majority do not.  A bigger mistake than not personally tweeting though is lying about it.  If your staff tweets for you, make that clear.  You don't want to be giving an interview on CNN and have a staff member send out a tweet, supposedly from you, at the very same moment.  It is not difficult to know who is genuine and who is not on Twitter and other social platforms.

Many have assumed wrongly that I would recommend political campaigns set up two separate Twitter accounts in order to keep tweets from the candidate and tweets from staff or press separate.  Political consultant @aprylmarie pointed out this evening:

In addition to Florida Republican gubernatorial hopeful @BillMcCollum whose campaign launched a separate Twitter channel for staff tweets this week (@Team_McCollum), U.S. Senate GOP hopeful @MarcoRubio also launched a separate Twitter account for his press shop - @RubioPress.

Personally, I am not a fan of the multiple Twitter channel model of separating staff tweets from candidate or elected official tweets.  The simpler you make things on the internet, the more success you have.  Having multiple Twitter accounts that people have to follow will become a nuisance to your Twitter followers and ultimately, I believe, your campaign will not be as effective.

Virginia's Governor-elect, @BobMcDonnell offers a better model.  For tweets supposedly from Bob McDonnell himself, the tweet reads as if Bob himself was typing the message:

Tweets from staff were very clearly indicated as such within the tweet:

This appeared to be a very effective model for the McDonnell campaign.  With one single Twitter account posting updates from the candidate, staff and press team, the McDonnell campaign made it easy for supporters to follow every aspect of the campaign in one Twitter channel which amassed 7,152 followers before Election Day.

10 Famous Hugs in American Politics 3:12 PM

The front page of Monday's New York Times led off a story with the following sentence: "In retrospect, even Charlie Crist admits that “the optics” of The Hug are not great."

Florida Governor Charlie Crist's embrace of President Obama at a Ft. Myers rally in February of this year has officially been dubbed "The Hug." Crist's primary opponent for the GOP nomination for Florida's open U.S. Senate Seat, Marco Rubio, has used The Hug to fuel grassroots discontent with Crist and his "embrace" of President Obama and his stimulus plan.

"The Hug" isn't the first of its kind though.  Here are just 10 Famous Hugs in American Politics:

83% of Twitter Users Registered to Vote? 1:52 PM

Here's a great example of the power of Twitter.  Last week, I tweeted the following:

I would love to see a study from @pew_internet showing what percentage of Twitter/Facebook users are registered to vote.

This morning, I received a response via email from Pew Internet Research Specialist, Aaron Smith, answering my question in detail:

In our post-election survey conducted in November 2008, 85% of Americans claimed to be registered to vote. For internet users as a whole the figure is 88%; for users of social networking sites the figure is 86%; and for those who use Twitter or other status update services, the figure is 83%. Ultimately, all of these are within the margin of error—we found no statistically significant differences on this question based on social media use.

There are a few caveats to this. For one thing, telephone surveys tend to overstate voter registration and turnout somewhat (since people don’t want to admit that they aren’t registered, or did not vote in an election). Second, the Twitter and social networking universe in November 2008 was quite a bit smaller than it is now. However, while the magnitude of the numbers above might be overstated I don’t have any reason to believe that the differences between groups are any more or less pronounced than we found in 2008. If anything I’d guess that users of social media applications have gotten more like the overall population in their voting behavior as increasing numbers of middle-aged people adopt these services (since older adults are generally more likely to be registered voters than the young people who were early adopters of Twitter and social networking sites).

4 Ways to Track #NY23, #VAGOV and #NJGOV on Twitter 2:00 PM

Want to track the latest breaking news coming out of Virginia, New Jersey and New York's 23rd congressional district on Tuesday's big election?  Twitter is the place to do it.  Here are 4 ways (for Twitter users and non-Twitter users) to track these three crucial races on Twitter:

Twitter.com - Track the races in real-time from within Twitter.com in your browser:

• NY-23 
• VA GOV 
• NJ GOV

External Twitter clients - Want to track the races on TweetDeck, Seesmic, Tweetie or another Twitter client of choice?  No problem.  Here are some good search parameters for you to copy and paste into your favorite Twitter client:

• NY-23:  NY23 OR NY-23 OR Scozzafava OR dougforcongress
• VA GOV: vagov OR vuv OR bobmcdonnell OR creighdeeds
• NJ GOV:  christiefornj OR joncorzine OR ChrisDaggett OR takebacknj OR njgov OR savejersey OR corzine OR christie OR daggett
  

search.twitter.com - Real-time stream of tweets based on targeted search parameters in your browser.  You do not need to be a Twitter account holder to view these searches: 

• NY-23 
• VA GOV 
• NJ GOV

RSS - Subscribe to RSS feeds of the Twitter conversation surrounding these races in your favorite RSS reader:

• NY-23  
• VA GOV  
• NJ GOV