My career is staked on community building and cutting edge digital tools, but no one can afford to ignore email. It may be “old” technology, in a sense, and it certainly isn’t sexy, but it can have a real impact.

I was the Communications Advisor for the Wake Democratic Party Coordinated Campaign for the 2011 election cycle that just ended. We won a number of incredible victories, including in areas that Democrats typically do not win. The result was a testament to the hard work of many volunteers, paid staff, and the support of donors.

I focused on earned media, public relations and new media.

Of all my efforts, however, it was the email campaign that earned the most buzz. We aimed to use “catchy” subject lines, and we made sure the emails were targeted in such a way that they were part of the conversation of the day. We shortened the emails from the essays that they had been in the past, and we tried to have specific, focused requests of people.

What was most interesting, in my view, was the manner in which we were able to push specific story lines.

The lines of attack that we decided on were put in every email multiple times, and the media + volunteers + donors + supporters all picked up on the messaging. Our talking points, digital media, and much of our earned media generated less messaging success.

It might be hard to believe, but you need to remain focused on email as a tool for success even now.

A few tips:

• Subject lines matter. We had five times the “open rate” that the Wake Democrats had previously which meant that our emails were better written, yes, but they were also more appealing for people to even open.
• Find ways to grow your list every single week, few things are more important to your long term success.
• Try to keep the emails short, preferably break them up to keep from having long paragraphs as well.
• Integrate links to your website and social media. Always ask people to forward the email to friends, sometimes that actually works!

Community can be built by anything, even email. Never forget that.

The announcement that Netflix will be spinning off the DVD-by-mail portion of the business into a company called Qwikster surprised the business and technology world today. The reaction has been mixed but a number of fans of the service seem unhappy with the move judging by the reaction on social media, and analysts are skeptical due to the fact that this makes it harder for fans of both services to manage their account, etc.

One of the sub-stories today is that they neglected to gain the Twitter handle for Qwikster to the delight of various “comedians” who enjoy reading the posts of the user who does control @qwikster on Twitter.

All of this is compounded by the original announcement of the Netflix pricing and plan changes. To the credit of the company, Reed Hastings apologized in the email today - BUT - the apology was overshadowed by the Qwikster launch which showed that the folks inside of the company still don’t get it.

My friend Chris Grams recently had a book published called The Ad-Free Brand (you need to read it!) and one of the more compelling parts of the book included a quote from former Mozilla head John Lilly where he basically said:

Surprise is the opposite of engagement.

Netflix has not grasped this. Fans, users, customers want to, and expect to be, engaged. That is a driving force behind social media.

If they wanted to change pricing, or launch Qwikster, they could have done so via community building methods. They could have gained user opinions, managed a contest for the name of the new service, offered various incentives to participate in the process and more.

Fans/users would have been engaged, they would have had less of an uproar and they would have lost less subscribers.

Change can be hard. I get it. Change must happen. I get that.

Netflix doesn’t have to make it harder on themselves. Surprise is the opposite of engagement and engagement is king these days. If they adopt that line of thinking then they will benefit enormously and writers/tweeters will have to find another company to joke about…

The New York Times has a great article out today on social fatigue.

“For the Plugged-In, Too Many Choices”

The article begins with the spotlight on one lady who spends her energy on Twitter. She focuses, in large part, because she found a job, a house and a boyfriend on the service. She has opted to focus entirely on Twitter, personally, because she finds it useful.

Incidentally, Twitter is perhaps my most used social network but I am active on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr (due to this blog), Google+, Instagram and foursquare. I have presences on other sites and I use many of them, on occasion, for work. In large part due to these statistics:

The relentless pressure to partake of the newest networks was underscored in June with the debut of Google+, Google’s social networking site. According to Nielsen, social networking is now the most popular online activity, ahead of sending e-mails, searching the Internet and playing games.

Put another way: one in every four-and-a-half minutes spent on the Web is spent on a social networking site or blog. And last year the average visitor spent 66 percent more time on such sites than in 2009, when early adopters were already feeling digitally fatigued.

The article goes on to spotlight others and how they combat fatigue.

In large part, my work is focused on new media, public relations and communications. I have to keep my eye on Twitter, Facebook and now Google+ all of the time for that reason. Instagram, Tumblr and foursquare are used more sparingly.

For my personal use I am focused on staying in touch with friends, making new connections, expanding my reach, staying on top of trends and staying aware of new events + locations around my home base. I put One Nation work under personal as much of my client acquisition, research and pitching relies on those very tenants.

One service I focus on, as I consult with businesses, brands and politicians, is to help them figure out where they should have a presence, how to communicate on each network and how to engage/monitor. Organizations, more so than even individuals, have a tendency to overstretch themselves and do everything Ok rather than a few things well.

“Social fatigue” will continue to arise as new services launch which is why it pays to monitor where it would be best to spend your time.

I enjoy reading books, drinking a beer or coffee with friends and family, exercising and a host of activities that are not built around social networking. I do not have time for everything, which is true of everyone, and I feel that I have made the right decisions to date. I will continue to evaluate new services as they arise and grab accounts to “protect” my identity.

You, and your organization, would be wise to do the same.

One of the fun parts of my work is the unexpected.

A recent client has handed me a lot of unexpected work as I have developed overall political strategy, the communications/messaging piece and the narrative of the campaign.

All of that is work I had performed before but not work I expected to do with this client.

The narrative and strategic piece moved in fits and starts, at first, but really accelerated in development over the last two weeks as I spoke with dozens of folks with experience in the field.

Too many consultants bring a pre-conceived notion of what works and what doesn’t when it comes to overall strategy. With this client, and this work, that would have failed miserably. The complexity of the issues involved forced me to listen and develop a narrative that fit the campaign.

Even when that isn’t the case I promise to always listen and adapt - you are not giving it your all if you fail to do so.

I had a recent discussion with an employee for a nonprofit who is quite active in the digital space. We touched on the success of the New York Times and Washington Post in the digital age - with a particular focus on the early success of the digital paywall for the NYT. This reminded me of the attention paid to the Washington Post when they recently announced that all journalists and staff would receive social media training.

It also reminded me of this piece from the Post:

A sign of the times is that Vernon Loeb, Post Local editor, has begun mandatory social media training for the reporters and editors on the Metro staff. This means that most editors and reporters, if they haven’t already, will be setting up Twitter and Facebook accounts and using other social media tools to monitor, report and convey the news from around the Beltway.

In terms of keeping up on a beat, Twitter can be hugely helpful. This week, for example, by following two of The Post’s leading Twitter stars, bloggers Chris Cillizza at The Fix (82,000 Twitter followers, according to the Web site Muckrack), and Ezra Klein at Wonkbook(78,000 followers), I learned on Thursday afternoon that Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner might resign after a debt ceiling agreement is reached, if it ever is.

I didn’t learn that from monitoring Bloomberg News, which first reported thestory around 4:45 p.m., I learned it from Klein and Cillizza, who both tweeted links to it minutes later. By 5 p.m., Klein had a blog post up speculating on possible candidates to replace Geithner and whether the Senate could confirm any of them. Klein also quickly tweeted questions to his followers asking whether they had ideas for candidates, and they did.

…

Loeb notes that you don’t have to have 80,000 followers to be successful on Twitter; nor do you have to be age 25. Jura Koncius, 56, writes about home design for The Post; she has 1,300 Twitter followers, which is plenty for her more specialized field, and she tweets maybe six times a day. She uses it to call attention to her own stories, find sources in the design field, comment on Michelle Obama’s decorating taste, and find houses to write about, such as a Dewey Beach house that was the subject of a recent feature.

…

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/at-the-post-reporters-get-socialized-to-social-media/2011/07/01/AG3I0CuH_story.html

This is an important sea change for Washington Post as they promote social media usage by all.

This fits hand in hand with the New York Times which has an active social presence and as a bonus to the followers allow them to avoid the paywall and 25 article cap by following the links through to the site.

They deliver value to their followers, build an identity for the journalists and build the overall brand of the paper.

In recent weeks I have met with a number of folks who touched on the Raleigh News and Observer. They seem to continue to miss the digital age - in part because they are actively trying to survive.

One of their signature properties is “Under the Dome” which prospered under Ryan Teague Beckwith but has languished, in large part, in recent months and years. With a focus on producing good content and then distributing it via social media (and not just via RSS feed which is the case now) and engaging with fans they could easily build the brand further and define value.

The same is true for many of their properties.

The N&O, and other papers, have an important place in the world. Unfortunately most of them are too busy fighting for survival to really adapt and embrace what could actually save them.