Political Blogs Gear Up
It's a big day to be in Cincinnati (and not just because the Bengals are 4-0, their best record since 1988). Opening up this morning's Cincinnati Enquirer, the following headline is on the front page, above the fold: Blogs test campaign freedoms. Be sure to check out the article for a list of local political blogs and their impact on the Queen City. It's that time of year again and political blogs will keep the limelight on the blogosphere.
Seeing the b-word on my hometown daily should not be such a surprise, really. The Cincinnati Enquirer has been blogging for awhile. Even our award-winning editorial cartoonist, Jim Borgman, covered blogs a year ago.
UPDATE: BlogPulse's Sue MacDonald was recently on NPR's "All Things Considered" discussing politics and the blogosphere. Pete Blackshaw has more here.
tags: news media, blog, Cincinnati, political blogs, politics
Do you see blogs playing a big role in the next presidential election? Or, will they be thought of as just another small-time sort of thing like fringe groups printing their own newsletters? I know there was a lot of talk about politics on blogs last election, but are there any numbers for people who actually relied on information presented on blogs for their campaign news? I totally believe in the power of blogs and the change they can initiate, but I just don't know if I can honestly tell my clients that blogging will help them in the polls... please, let me know if you have any opinions.. also, please check out the blog I just started..
Posted by: Ron Schott | Tuesday, October 04, 2005 at 03:37 PM
Ron - Three main reasons blogs will continue to help candidates in the polls.
Search Engines: If your candidate is blogging his/her thoughts on an issue, those thoughts will come up first on most search engines. Blogs are highly-networked web sites with links and search engine-friendly pages. What if someone else is blogging about your candidate and say something negative, that will come up when voters look you up on Google. Unless you have content to take its place.
TIP: Google ALL OF YOUR CANDIDATES IMMEDIATELY - regardless of whether or not you decide to have them blog - to see what you find.
Conversation: Blogs are all about creating a conversation with a niche audience. Blogs are an intellectual way for a candidate to shake hands and kiss babies online. They had better have an opinion and be willing to talk about it. If the posts sound canned or are written by someone else, they will be toast. Authenticity is the key here and they need to be prepared to lose control of the message in this forum. You can control comments to the blog and moderate them so no one tries to post something out of line. But otherwise you want this to be a dialogue.
Easy Updates: Blogs are the Internet's version of a pamphlet or door hanger that can be updated anytime and instantly distributed to each constituency and the media via RSS. Just make sure you are plugging it on your candidates web site. It should be the most obvious link on first view of their homepage. It should be connected to the homepage as it will pull it up in the search engine rankings along with it.
These are just three reasons and there are plenty more. Anyone care to add?
Posted by: Kevin Dugan | Wednesday, October 05, 2005 at 11:00 PM