Public Relations / Public Affairs Ideas To Use

A Tale of Two County Organizations

In Middlesex County, New Jersey, the divide between the Democrat and Republican organizations is not merely financial, but digital, too. (The Star-Ledger, 10/29/06)

It comes as no surprise to learn that in this year’s Freeholder race, Middlesex Dems have raised $222,000 while the county GOP has less than $2,000 on hand.

The surprise comes in the digital disparity.  The Dems have a robust Internet effort. The GOP is unplugged.

The Dems Website includes podcasts, information on Democrats running in municipal races, information on party events and fundraisers, a link to a Meetup group, and more.

Their cable television spots are on YouTube.com, thanks to the campaign manager for Woodbridge mayoral candidate Jon McCormac, Rachel Napear, who posted them to the popular video-sharing site. I searched iTunes, but haven’t found their podcasts posted there.

The county GOP has none of these digital communications tools.

The New Jersey Republican State Committee’s online list of county GOP organizations fails to provide links to only four counties: Cumberland, Essex, Warren, and Middlesex.

After spending about fifteen minutes searching Google, I finally found the Middlesex County GOP site (www.mcronj.com).  Every link on that Website links to yet another Website, whose address is www.mcro.org.  That site has nothing to do with the Middlesex County Republican Organization -- but it is for sale by its owner in Equatorial Guinea.

The address listed on the mcronj.com Website is to a strip mall that was recently demolished.

For Middlesex, where the registration and financial gaps between the parties have consistently been wide, the one area where the GOP could compete, if it so desired, is online.  Instead of buying lawn signs that are used for one election, then become instantly obsolete, investing in a modest Internet infrastructure will not only help the current slate of county candidates, but can be used for future campaigns and communicating to the rank and file between elections.

This Internet infrastructure could even be shared with local and legislative candidates, and feature blogs, podcasting, video, e-mail, and more, extending the Internet outreach value even further.

I’m reminded of that old saying, “The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.”  When it comes to competing in the marketplace of political ideas, the Internet is one place where poor organizations can enjoy equal access to the online public.  You don’t need that much money, just the will and imagination to do it.

Technorati Tags: politics, elections, New Jersey

Mike Ferguson Gets Google Bombed

Political bloggers have devised a “fascinatingly evil” scheme to cause unflattering news stories to appear high among Google search results when certain candidate names are searched.

Earlier today I did a Google search of “Jon Kyl,” the senator from Arizona. The fifth ranked site was a Phoenix New Times story about Kyl titled “Stealth Zealot”. Kyl, the story tells us, “has spent his time in Washington kowtowing to the Bush administration and the radical right.”

The story's high ranking was mentioned in today's New York Times.  Several hours after performing my search, the Phoenix New Times story subsequently disappeared from Google's search results.

New Jersey Congressman Mike Ferguson seems to be a similar target.  MyDD.com includes Ferguson on a list it calls "Google Bomb The Elections: Source Code."  The story MyDD.com wants ranked highly when someone searches "Mike Ferguson" is the Washington Post's "The Congressman's Night on the Town".  MyDD.com's list is ranked in alphabetical order by state, so you'll see Arizona's Jon Kyl listed first with the Phoenix New Times story's HTML code.

Liberal bloggers are influencing Google search results by getting like-minded bloggers to embed a link to such news stories each time they mention a particular Republican candidate’s name. The more that candidate’s name is linked to that story, the higher that story will appear when that candidate’s name is searched in Google. That’s one way Google’s search algorithms work.

The higher an item is ranked on Google, the better its chance of appearing onscreen and the more likely it is to be read. Imagine how influential it might be for an undecided New Jersey 7th Congressional District voter to find the Washington Post story when searching Google for information about Mike Ferguson.

This is a refined and clever method of search engine manipulation. It’s also, I think, unethical. But all the same, it does underscore the power of news release search-engine optimization, a legitimate and valuable tool in getting your message easily seen and read by people interested in your issue.

You can learn more about news release search-engine optimization and how it works from a previous interview with Lee Odden of TopRank Online Results.

Technorati Tags: Google Bomb, Mike Ferguson, search engine optimization