President-elect Barack Obama recorded his first weekly address today, laying out policy objectives and restating some of the problems the country faces today. The weekly address has been a staple of Presidential communications for decades.
As many predicted, however, he made history again when he posted it not just on the radio and not on TV, but YouTube. Cross-posting it to several other video services, as well on the radio, he’s reaching Americans wherever they may be.
I’m in New York City for the Personal Democracy Forum, hobnobbing it with Internet and politics geeks influentials. We’re discussing the role that the Internet plays in personalizing democracy, engaging citizens in the political debate and making government more transparent through the sharing of records and information.
Aside from its similarity to Christmas morning with new gadgets and gizmos abound, it’s a fascinating look into the amazing work being done by a number of groups and individuals. Some are unknown outside of the community, but all are shaping the political debate in the mainstream through one channel or another.
We’ve had an appearance by John and Elizabeth Edwards, been lectured by Larry Lessig, witnessed a verbal beatdown of McCain’s Internet skills, evangelized with Vint Cerf, surfed for furniture with Craig Newmark and battled the MSM with Ariana Huffington.
It’s two days of intensity at the grand Jazz @ Lincoln Center, overlooking Columbus Circle and Central Park. I’m happy to be here and loving NYC.
photo by philhawksworth
When creating advocacy videos for YouTube or other electronic media, the general rule is to make it shorter than 5 minutes. Even better is 3 minutes. Then, why is Barack Obama’s campaign churning out 20 minute videos? Because people are watching them.
Link to video
Sending email to lots of people is usually a hassle. Some paste 200 email addresses into the “TO:” field, prompting a heinous “Reply All” thread, others just spam repeatedly without any option to unsubscribe. Email marketing websites try to solve this problem for mass emailers, but most fail.
One that definitely doesn’t fail is MailChimp. I’ve used them repeatedly for clients and previous employers with nothing but good experiences. They make it easy to send emails to one person, or 10,000. Their staff is completely anal about usability, standards and design, which is usually lacking in the email marketing space. Their customer support (thanks, Dan!) should be an example for all (read: personal calls from vacation).
At one point, “an associate” sent a campaign to about 8,000 recipients with two broken links (our bad). A frantic IM to customer support resolved the issue as they just switch out the bad link reference for the good one. Life Career saver.
While they lack some needed features in list management, sorting and client-side accounts, it’s a stellar service for anyone ranging from individuals through medium-sized PR firms.
If you enjoyed the post, make sure you subscribe to the RSS feed.
Powered by: WordPress / Media Temple
