An interesting phone conversation with a colleague working on the David Miller campaign for Mayor of Toronto left me pondering the question: If I were the Mayor of Toronto, what would my blog strategy be? It’s an interesting question for our current Mayor — David Miller — who ran as the “underdog” in the last election and now runs again almost unchallenged. Aside from the obvious implications that this has for Miller’s fundraising strategy, it also occurred to me that it would impact his campaign’s initiatives around blogging and mobilizing the “netroots.” In short, it seems that the key questions are:

• Who will pen and post the entries? Will they be presented as Miller’s own? I suspect that most readers would assume that Mayor Miller has very little time for blogging, and therefor would question the authorship if presented that way.
• Who will the audience of this blog be? Who is this initiative aimed at? Is it just a “recent news” bucket? If it is, I suspect that the real bloggers will be unimpressed. If it isn’t, then I suspect the audience for the content will need to be well thought out.
• Why blog? What are the campaign outcomes that a blog will facilitate? How can that be measured? In a (mostly) unchallenged race, many of the de-facto advantages of having a blog — Google rankings, authenticity, convening a conversation with potential supporters, the appearance of being “hip,” etc. — may not fit with a strong incumbent-oriented strategy.
• And, of course, the ever-tricky (for politics) question: comments. What’s the strategy here: on or off?

I had a few ideas on that call — inspired by my colleagues David Crow and Eli Singer (and many, many, others) — and, with a couple weeks to noodle it further, here are some quick thoughts:

• Authorship: for many positions (e.g., city councillor), I feel that the posts should almost always be authored by (or appear to be authored by) the person running for office. However, for a top-dog position, like Mayor or Premier, or Prime Minister, I feel that it would be more honest to have official campaign bloggers, that are not the person running, as the author(s) of the posts. A great example (that I probably reference too often) was the personality of the Howard Dean campaign that many of us got to know via e-mail: Joe Trippi. There are many other examples like this. Also, another approach entirely, is the guest blogger or “embedded blogger,” which would give a number of people the privileged position of posting on the Mayor’s blog, either reporting on events or waxing poetic about City-focused issues. Either way, unless Miller’s going to write it himself — and it can be short if he does choose to! (hint-hint, wink-wink) — I don’t feel posts should be marked as “Submitted by David Miller.”
• Audience: Trickier question here… because it is widely known that, as popular as they are, there are probably only a small number of people that actually care about blogs in any given campaign’s audience (potential or otherwise). So, given the complexity around the 2-way conversation that blogs often create and the political need for “containment” of certain information, it seems only sensible to ask: Who are we writing this damn blog for anyway? If it is, at its simplest, a way of providing a view into the campaign tent (so to speak) by journalling events, appearances, and other tidbits, then I think there’s real value in defining the audience broadly and writing the posts in a way that is targeted to their interests. If it is, instead, an effort to compel support from the “netroots” — the growing number of popular Toronto-based bloggers and online publishers — then I feel that the content will need to be quite different. Both are worthy of consideration: but what is the strategy? Is is about extending the reach of announcements to non-traditional media? Or is it about giving supporters that warm-and-fuzzy feeling?
• Goals and outcomes: The strategy should have some clear outcomes and measurements (as any strategy should) that make it possible to evaluate the effort(s) and re-orient or re-jig as necessary. Quickly, I would think that keys for Miller might be:
  • Extending the campaign’s reach into the non-traditional media market
  • Finding new pockets of supporters, volunteers, and endorsements from influencers
  • And demonstrating a level of media savvy that younger voters might be expect or be impressed by

Each of these goals is measurable. And, if any resources are going to be invested here, measurements should be decided on from day one, to ensure that appropriate interventions are set-up to track this data. For example, special donation links in blog posts that provide simple tracking of donation by source; or signing up for an alerts service to track online media hits the same way you would for traditional media.

• Comments: As I said plainly on the phone in that first conversation: if there are no comments, it’s not a blog. Blogs are probably the biggest campaign idea of the last year or so and, at the same time, they are the campaign manager and communication director’s worst nightmare. It’s added work and there’s potential for big, often innocent, faux pas. But, turning comments off is not the answer! My suggestion: a clear, simple, and firmly stated set of comment guidelines and, if necessary, a statement of editorial policy about the how, when, and why of comment approval. For example, make the rules of commentary clear and then put it plainly:

  We’re a volunteer-driven campaign and, as such, we have limited resources to post every comment that comes in, given the approvals that are required. However, we will review every comment and make an effort to publish the most insightful ones publicly.

  Fellow bloggers: am I wrong here? There are many examples of sites (usually large publishers) that apply similar filters to comments and I personally feel that’s fine, as long as it’s clearly stated.

Okay, so just to wrap-up, here are a few other ideas for the pile for candidates that want to reach out to the influential blogging community in Toronto:

• Invite the key bloggers to your important campaign events. Or, better yet, have an event for bloggers.
• My suggestion if you need advise on a blog strategy: hold an event for bloggers and ask them what your strategy should be.
• This one’s from some US campaigns: invite bloggers — along with the traditional media — to your media announcement events or conference calls. Even better: offer them one-on-one interviews.
• Provide a framework and then offer “guest blogger” status on your blog. As long as the intentions and editorial policy are upfront, it might just work.

So I leave you with the question: what would your blog strategy for Mayor Miller be?

What does Web 2.0 have to do with grassroots advocacy and electoral politics? Well, that’s the question that we set out to explore yesterday during the workshop that I delivered (with my good friend Mark Greenspan of the Habitat New Media Lab) at the Mesh conference. For those who were at the workshop, you can find the slides as a PDF here and Sacha’s notes on the session here (and, if you have feedback on the session, please drop me a comment below!).

The basic idea of the session was to tease out the principles and tools behind what’s being called Web 2.0, and then to explore some practical applications of those tools or principles. The examples that I pulled together basically ran through the eight or so main points from Tim O’reilly’s (now legendary) article describing this shift in thinking about the Web. Here are a few examples from the presentation:

The Long Tail

Okay, so I should have picked a better example for the long tail slide. Upon scanning through my screenshots folder, I came across a much better example: the Greenpeace virtual whale march (shown here). The concept is that the long tail makes it just as easy to reach a large number of people who are interested in niche issues — which is kind of similar to the eBay phenomenon.

Data is the Next Intel Inside

For this concept, I picked They Work For You. Similar to O’reilly’s example of the Amazon book number overtaking the ISBN by adding user-generated data like purchase patterns, ratings, and reviews, They Work For You has extended publicly available data from the House of Commons.

Users Add Value

Here I went with the innovative project called Since Sliced Bread. This project aggregates common sense ideas from its users and then asks them to participate even further by categorizing and commenting on the ideas that are submitted. Not only cool, this project is demonstrating real impact by getting on people’s radar — recently, one of their ideas was adopted by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (the idea is to tie the US minimum wage to Congressional pay increases). I think I also referenced the Pledge Bank here too.

Network Effects by Default

Went with an easy one here: Tom’s Petition. A visual representations of the six degrees of separation, this campaign make it possible to see the impact of your signature — and your friend’s signatures — over time. Using an innovative tools known as Forward Track, new signatories become the first degree and can watch as their friends sign-on and send the message even further across the country.

Some Rights Reserved.

Geocoder.ca wins the prize for this one. Put simply, they couldn’t find the information they needed to create accurate Google Maps “mashups” and decided to build their own; and, of course, once they built it they gave away access to it for free. This service is changing the face of Canadian politics, as member-based organizations and political campaigns start to map their members and constituents. 

Cooperate, Don’t Control

Heading across the pond again, we looked at the BBC’s Action Network and how they’re helping to connect people around issues locally with free online tools.

The Perpetual Beta

Here I diverged a bit and took folks through what I feel is some of the most innovative stuff that’s happening on a local level, specifically: Who Runs This Town, City Idol, and the Toronto Public Space Committee. My reasoning for these examples is their willingness to try new ideas and to continue to evolve the tactics of civic engagement and local activism. the Billboard Battalion is one of the most innovative examples of local activism that I’ve experienced in a long time.

Software Above the Level of a Single Device

And, finally, I took folks on a tour of some phone-based initiatives like Murmur and One Free Minute and some location-based content projects like Wireless Toronto.

So, once we’d gone through those (and a whole bunch of other examples), I asked the group to break into smaller groups and start thinking about how these tools could impact our upcoming election. After a bit of brainstorming, the participants in the session came up with some fantastic ideas on how to apply the principals and tools of Web 2.0 to the upcoming municipal election, including an election wiki and a hot-issue blog that would help drive the debate.

So there you have it. The Web 2.0 movement is having an impact on grassroots advocacy: it’s true because I said so. Have any other great examples to add?