UPDATE: January 9, 2012 at 11:14 PM E.S.T.
Since launching Donate Tweets for Buddy Roemer on New Years Eve, 149 people have signed up, allowing Govlet’ernor Buddy Roemer’s campaign to reach 75,549 followers each day. Buddy Roemer is a presidential candidate that has been in 0 of 18 televised debates, and is well known as the Twitter candidate, though he has only around 15,000 followers. He is also our client.
We have had a glowing article from Mashable, and a major attack from techPresident. We’re either saving Buddy Roemer’s campaign or destroying America, depending on whom you ask. Both Alex Fitzpatrick from Mashable and Nick Judd from techPresident have covered us before, with varying levels of positive, neutral, and negative responses.
Donating Tweets is a new idea in Twitter campaigning used to some degree by justcoz.org and donateyouraccount.com. They allow you to automatically retweet a Twitter account once a day. This helps causes, and television personality, to get more retweets, incentivizing them to sign up. Buddy Roemer is already the most retweeted candidate on Twitter, so I didn’t find that useful. Instead, we ask supporters to donate one original tweet each day to support Buddy Roemer. This is what it looks like on Twitter.com
This is what it looks like on Tweetdeck:
Every Tweet includes a “via” link, whether you are sending your message from the web, Tweetdeck, Echofon, or other platforms. Donated Tweets are clearly marked with “via Donate Tweets to Buddy”, which links here.
Governor Buddy Roemer’s Campaign Manager Carlos Sierra (so many capital letters) explains the strategy behind these efforts. Per Mashable’s interview with Sierra,
Roemer’s team has been actively building an online team of supporters called “Free to Lead,” which Sierra calls the campaign’s “online army.” “We ask, they’re on it,” says Sierra.
This model understands the power of building a community of supporters around a candidate. Campaigns need armies. It takes millions to wage major ground campaigns supported by multi-million dollar, super PAC fueled, purely negative secret attack air campaigns against candidates such as Newt in Iowa.
Let’s take a look at how this has worked out. While writing this, we broke 150 Tweet donors, reaching over 75,000 followers, or 5 times Buddy Roemer‘s 15,000 followers. We have sent one tweet each day. 6 people who signed up have revoked the application, which we feel is a very low attrition rate.
Above are the major Twitter statistics for Buddy Roemer: Mentions, New Followers, and Retweets. In blue is the number of tweets sent from supporters who sign up to donate Tweets, i.e. Donated Tweets. techPresident’s Nick Judd’s main criticism of donate tweets is the following:
Once a day, the campaign wants to turn its supporters’ Twitter accounts into mindless zombies — all in the name of raising stats. The campaign is achieving its desired result: Roemer’s new follow rate, retweets and mention count have all gone up. This doesn’t do much for the follower’s investment in the campaign, or an understanding of Roemer by the public at large.
Given the proportion of donated tweets to mentions, this argument doesn’t quite hold up. Donated tweets works, not because it fabricates a false measure of success, but because it begins conversations and unites the message across all supporters. People reply to supporters who send out the campaign’s message, and supporters engage back. Donate Tweets are seeds that start conversations. They only account for about 5% of mentions, and 0% of other metrics. It is particularly effective because it doesn’t depend upon ongoing, daily tasks from supporters. As Adam explains, Donate Tweets
is not simply ‘raising stats’, it is attracting supporters for Roemer who will help spread his message. Donated tweets are a multiplier. Sending just one donated tweet a day through 150 supporters is generating conversations about Roemer that are resulting in thousands of tweets a day. That is the goal. Think of the donated accounts as volunteer spokesmen who are given pamphlets and told to canvas their neighborhood. The donated tweets are the pamphlets. This is a standard campaign practice. Are these volunteers zombies? Is this work done solely to see how many pamphlets can be handed out?
To understand the multiplier effect of donated tweets, you have to recognize the underlying campaign strategy of new media, based upon traditional grassroots organizing, of connecting and energizing a network of supporters.
Building community is important for any Twitter campaign, whether political or social. Once established, Twitter users are able to coordinate their efforts through common hash-tags and messaging. Top supporters are rewarded with recognition and encouraged to be even more vocal. Potential supporters are quickly brought in to a community that they can build upon. Experienced campaigners can share tips with newer members to help raise their visibility. When big events, like moneybombs, come to pass, these communities of supporters are ready to campaign using certain hash-tags, profile images, messaging, calls to action, and more. Most importantly, supporters become energized through the recognition that they are part of a community acting for a common cause. Community keeps supporters working hard over the long-term, which is essential to any successful Twitter campaign.
Of course, there is a sensitivity on Twitter to manipulation, with terms like astroturf, Obamabots, Ronulans, and so on creating scandal everywhere. There are certainly black-hat techniques. We are white-hat. When I originally wrote this article on January 3rd, I addressed this concern directly, and asked for feedback:
The difference between donating tweets and spam is each of these accounts has a real, unique person behind it who supports the candidate, and can respond to questions and replies. Yet none of these supporters have to keep up to date, or even log in, for a tweet to be sent from their account. These types of one-click, ongoing, non-monetary donations are incredibly powerful in the age of new media campaigns. Especially when supporters max out their donations at $100. What do you think? Tweet me!
Is donating tweets an acceptable tool for political campaigns on Twitter? Buddy Roemer is perhaps the perfect illustration of why this technique is not only justifiable, but merely the beginning of New Media 2.0., with applications built upon Twitter. Buddy Roemer’s central issue is money in politics, addressing issues such as Super PACs, Occupy Wall Street, limiting donations to $100, and ending special interests. He has been in Zero of 18 televised debates, although a Governor of Louisiana who wrote it’s state constitution, a four-term US Congressman, and a Harvard economist.
Buddy Roemer wants to get money out of politics, which is a central issue in the 2012 election, manifested in Income Inequality, Occupy Wall Street, Mitt Rmoney the quarter-Billionaire Bain Capital candidate versus a Billion-dollar Obama 2012 campaign, and our friends the shadowy super-PACs!
Twitter and new media is cheaper than traditional media. When the press doesn’t give you free air time, and you can’t get in a televised debate, and you limit donations to $100…let’s just say it becomes hard to get even 30 seconds on the all-powerful Television. As Roemer’s Campaign Manager, Carlos Sierra, said in the original press release when we began helping out with their Twitter campaign,
“This is very exciting for us,” said Sierra. “Twitter has been an invaluable tool for Buddy in the absence of any nationally televised debates. Social media, and Twitter in particular, have made it possible for Buddy to connect and communicate with supporters and members of the media in very engaging, meaningful ways.” Carlos added that Buddy wholeheartedly believes in the power of Twitter and it’s ability to amplify his message. “Like Buddy always says: ‘You can take away a man’s stage, but you can’t take away his voice.’ Twitter has kept Buddy’s voice in the debate.”
So what has made Buddy Roemer’s Twitter numbers pop? The Iowa Caucus was a big night, with some well-timed tweets that went viral. It is impossible to tell, but I think that donate tweets helped carry that momentum forward, especially as we launched the #LetBuddyDebate campaign.
Donate Tweets is powerful because it can co-ordinate the campaign’s message. Supporters look at their accounts and see a moneybomb, caucus or primary, debate, or calls for action such as the Let Buddy Debate campaign. These aren’t just bots, they are real supporters, and donated tweets are starting conversations. People respond to donated tweets, and those supporters continue the conversation. See the donated tweets we have used below. What do you think? Tweet me!
Original Article: January 3, 2012 at 9:08 PM E.S.T.
We just launched a new idea in Twitter campaigning for our client, presidential candidate Buddy Roemer. Governor Roemer doesn’t take donations over $100, which has allowed us to be more creative in asking for non-monetary donations. Supporters can keep they money and raise their voice instead.
Some candidates, like Jon Huntsman, have made pages on their campaign websites that make it easy for supporters to share tweets. The problem with this model of having a list of tweets on a page is that it requires supporters to repeatedly visit that page. You cannot count on anyone to do something twice, let alone more. Our system allows users to authorize an application once, then the campaign can tweet from their accounts once a day, forever.
We launched this on New Years Eve, and got 60 users to sign up that day! At this point, we have 113 supporters who have signed up to donate tweets, reaching 61,372 followers between them. Gov. Roemer only has about 11,000 followers, so this is an incredible boost in reach for campaign messaging.
Instead of simply blasting Twitter by sending a single message through all these accounts at once, we’ve decided to “carpet bomb” streams by spacing each tweet out by a few minutes. On Monday, we used this for a moneybomb that drove over 1,000 users to a corresponding donations page. Using hashtags strategically, we have been able to take over search results throughout the day. Today, for instance, we were able to place tweets asking supporters to caucus for Buddy Roemer with the trending tags #iowa and #iacaucus. This took place over 9 hours from 113 unique accounts.
Iowa, caucus for @BuddyRoemer tonight! The only anti-corruption, anti-unfair trade candidate. #iowa #iacaucus #occupyiowa #iowasurprise
— Brian Johnson (@Juanhijo) January 3, 2012
The result? People are taking notice.
Looks like @BuddyRoemer supporters are on message tonight via Twitter, telling #occupyiowa to #iacaucus for him.bit.ly/zToy50
— Jennifer Preston (@NYT_JenPreston) January 4, 2012
The difference between donating tweets and spam is each of these accounts has a real, unique person behind it who supports the candidate, and can respond to questions and replies. Yet none of these supporters have to keep up to date, or even log in, for a tweet to be sent from their account. These types of one-click, ongoing, non-monetary donations are incredibly powerful in the age of new media campaigns. Especially when supporters max out their donations at $100.
What do you think? Tweet me!
