For the uninitiated, the live Google+ hangout feature is a free live videoconference that can automatically be streamed, recorded and uploaded to a YouTube channel. All that is needed is a Gmail account synced to a YouTube channel and a Google+ account, making barriers to entry pretty low.

What makes Google+ hangouts so beneficial for public figures is the incredible control over the videoconference. For example, the host has the ability to invite select guests for the conference, mute or have normal dialogue with participants, and the audience can be as broad or narrow as desired.

Last week, I participated in a Google+ hangout with President Obama, hosted by YouTube and Google. While President Obama had a large team of people making sure nothing went wrong technically, it is overkill for most individuals’ needs.

In my hangout with President Obama, he took questions from five participants with one Google staffer moderating. The look of the event was very similar to a “talking head” show on cable news, only with more participants. President Obama did most of the talking, and the five participants asked the questions. Overall, the hangout went very smoothly and generated major news headlines.

What we should expect in the future is many politicians using Google+ hangouts on air with their constituents, artists having hangouts with their fans, candidates for public office holding hangouts with their supporters, and CEOs having hangouts with shareholders or board members. It even has a feature to play video as the conference is taking place. The video playing and screen sharing features make it ideal for presentations.

The possibilities for this relatively new platform are endless, but because Google+ hangouts can facilitate controlled access to individuals at a low cost, every public figure should know and understand its benefits.

Here is a post explaining how to begin a live Google+ hangout. I recommend testing a private hangout before going live, but the feel of the event is pretty natural and the camera will automatically switch to the person talking, reducing the amount of interruptions.

If you are interested, you can watch my hangout with President Obama below.

Lee Doren is the Research and Outreach Manager at CRAFT | Media/Digital.Lee specializes in public policy research and analysis. He also focuses on online issue advocacy, which includes reaching out to reporters and bloggers on behalf of clients. You can reach Lee via email at ldoren@craftdc.com or on Twitter @ldoren.

There is hardly consensus as to what the first piece of political communication technology looked like, but one thing is certain: It was simple.

Once upon a time, leaders would stand on rocks so crowds could hear them yelling above the fray; then communication evolved with the invention of the printing press and later the radio and television. Regardless of the innovations in the changing technologies of the day, the objective remained—reaching as many voters as possible.

Today, thanks to the Internet, the objective is far different, and far more sophisticated.

Communicating in politics is no longer about reaching the most people—it’s about reaching not only the right people but also those who you know will take action on your message. 

As Jay Friedman and Geoff Halsema illustrate, the bass fisherman who catches one record-size fish will beat the one who reels in 26 smaller ones every time, assuming the contest aims to see who can catch the largest bass.

The same is true in politics. Candidates who target voters most likely to act will beat those who don’t deploy a targeting method. Many candidates waste money reaching out to people who demonstrate low levels of political activism.

At CRAFT, we make calculated decisions based on data. CRAFT partner Matthew Dybwad says, “the question now is not ’how do I get my ads in front of my core demographics,’ it’s ‘what do my supporters look like?’”

Dybwad continues:

“It starts with getting a real understanding of the environment, which means going out to your entire constituency with a variety of messages and creative approaches, seeing who responds and how, and understanding what those people look like, what they believe, and how they act.

“Based on that, you can then identify current supporters as opposed to persuadables and craft strategies to talk to both, based on what you know motivates both groups.  At that point, armed with accurate models of your targets, you can make smart decisions about where to run ads, what sites, what kind of creative, the balance of site targeted vs. device targeted spend, and how best to use digital advertising to complement communication in other channels like broadcast and mail.”

So what does this look like in action?

Let’s use the example of a hypothetical candidate running for a congressional seat in Nebraska. After going into the field and testing multiple messages with a number of different groups, she finds that her message resonates particularly well with middle-income, Hispanic women between the ages of 25-45. These women are most likely to both donate to the campaign and volunteer. Moreover, they have proven to loyally watch Spanish-language television networks as well as visit Hispanic online news sites.

If our candidate were to solely place TV ads in every designated market area (DMA) across the state, her efforts would prove far more expensive and far less effective than running ads on a nightly Spanish newscast in the market with the majority of the state’s Hispanic population. However, balance is crucial, which is why supplementing broadcast exposure with digital ads on MSN Latino, for example, will provide the most comprehensive result.

At CRAFT, we live by this integrated approach by marrying TV and mail advertising with digital, giving candidates the ability to bring a micro-targeting approach to a number of different screens. Combining these methods allows political hopefuls to maximize the impact of their message, not just its reach.

Beware of narrowing your target characteristics so much that you end up reaching only a few hundred people for a statewide race. While this may mobilize certain voters, it won’t move numbers. Expanding your target slightly may also allow you to find new audiences that your model failed to identify.

It’s a new game these days. We’re not just yelling from a rock anymore. We’re stepping down, honing in, and reaching out.

It was unlike every other ad that ran on Sunday night. There were no sexual innuendos. No celebrity brand endorsements. No reference to popular culture. And shockingly enough, no Twitter hashtag.

The question begs to be answered: What made this ad stand out in a myriad sea of Super Bowl commercials produced solely to spike our entertainment pulses? It’s quite simple really. Chrysler followed one of the de facto rules of ad placement: leave the consumer wanting more by creating an authentic and genuine emotional experience.

This rule did not seem to resonate with the countless mediocre ads that aired in between the unforgettable Baltimore Ravens/San Francisco 49ers matchup of Super Bowl XLVII.

From Coca Cola’s epic head scratcher Coke Chase, to GoDaddy’s painstaking attempt at relevancy (Perfect Match), the narrative just wasn’t there this year.

Eric Deggans, of the Tampa Bay Times, sums up best what was on the mind of millions of viewers the morning after the big game. “When the game-halting emergency of a 35-minute power outage brings more excitement than half the commercials at the Super Bowl, you know there’s something seriously wrong.”

Going forward, brands and their ad agencies should consider the following when creating content for future Super Bowl spots (to truly get the best bang for their buck):

• Am I pushing a product or a way of life?

Chrysler Group isn’t just selling Ram Trucks with its ad this year. It’s selling American exceptionalism. It’s bringing us a closer look into family values. Work ethic. And Integrity. Giving us that unwavering feeling that there is a “farmer in all of us.” Chrysler does an exceptional job in making the case for the lifestyle they are pushing in the ad. The Ram Truck just so happens to be a by-product of it all.

• Will the consumer recognize my uniqueness?

Doritos has cornered the market when it comes to gut-wrenching humor in their Super Bowl ads. As a brand, they don’t take themselves too seriously. They understand that their core audience only expects a good laugh from them—with the exception of a unique twist. This was accomplished with 2013’s Goat 4 Sale.

• Am I relying on brand loyalty just to get by?

Coca Cola is by far one of thee most recognized brand names and successful consumer packaged good in the world today. But in this year’s Super Bowl, it’s Coke Chase ad just reeked of laziness. Where was the taste test feel? Where was the inner urge that you couldn’t live without knowing Coca Cola’s secret recipe? Falling into complacency is unacceptable when you are a major player such as Coca Cola and you are being watched on the world’s biggest stage.

At CRAFT, we strive to make ads that are not only creative, but create an authentic and genuine experience that humanizes an issue, a candidate, or brand. No two ads should evoke the same emotion.

Brian Donahue, one of CRAFT’s founding partners, holds a keen philosophy that part of our responsibility as content creators is to form “unique propositions” with consumers. Traditional advertising and the same old rehashed concepts will no longer cut it. The name of the game now is either evoke emotion or be forgotten.

The Super Bowl ads of this year will be mentioned around the office water cooler, on social media sites, and in the carpool lane for about a week a so. Maybe.

The question is, with ads costing upward of $4 million, what will consumers really take away from the 30-second spots placed this year?

Tom Wasserman of Mashable says, “Native advertising is a mode of monetization that aims to provide value through targeted relevant content.“ In other words, these are ads passing as content. Native ads are designed to look and function like the rest of the site. Content providers that create native advertisements focus on content specific to the information the user is browsing. In the online realm of constant distraction, advertising can get lost.

For native advertising to work, it must follow four key components:

1)     The ads blend in with the site branding.

2)     It is typically an image, video, post, or streamed content.

3)     Users have the option to engage with the content.

4)     It is always sponsored content.

Here’s an example: Porsche recently demonstrated a powerful form of native adverting. The company wanted to promote its redesigned 911, so Fast Company devised a co-branded, editorial-driven contest with Porsche as both inspiration and prize. What made this campaign successful was that the design challenge joined creative concepts from multiple designers. Submissions were broad: a kite, a baby carriage, and the winner: a hair dryer that sounded like the 911 Porsche engine.

Twitter’s pro­moted tweets have also been effective: buying a tweet placement allows further reach. This form of advertising on the digital space has given companies the ability to ride the wave of a popular current event. For example, if a celebrity’s pregnancy announcement trends, a retailer of baby clothing could promote its tweet in the trend’s search.

With the decline of click-through banner ads, native advertising has forced advertisers to redirect their resources when approaching brand engagement content. The pressure on advertisers just as easily applies to the political media and issues industry. Political advertisers in the digital space can apply native advertising by focusing on producing content that invokes emotion. Rather than pushing stodgy issue ads and traditional political ads, advertisers can place creative content that reflects the views and interests of their audiences. This could be achieved by using language and content that places a premium on targeted audience behavior. Ads should be more narrowly focused. They should also reflect timely events, inside and outside of politics—this is how they can stay relevant and top of mind.

An example of a native ad could be a creative feature that would utilize a drop down menu that asks individuals, “What do you expect from your politician?” The user would be able to choose from a various list of nouns that, when compiled, would create a pie chart of how many times said politician exemplified that particular noun. Wouldn’t that be nifty?

The possibilities for native advertising are endless. Advertisers and content publishers are still in the early stages of determining how to best utilize native advertising. But with more consumer involvement, brands creating exceptional content, and discussion among advertorial media, native advertising may well become the standard.

Who knows? Maybe one day, native ads will replace sombrero-wearing cats. We can only hope.

Here are a few of the roles an email list plays in digital marketing:

Communication: Email is by far the most direct method of communication between an organization or stakeholder and its supporters. In addition to being the most direct, it is also one of the most personal, allowing for real connections on an emotional level that other advertising mediums cannot deliver.

Supporter Map: An email list is a constantly evolving map of supporters. A well-executed email marketing strategy consists of an email list that is continuously updated, with a constant stream of new subscribers. It is important to quantify data and establish meaningful segments.

ROI: Whether used to drive sales, promote deals and events, or garner donations, a well-maintained email list can be a money-yielding cash cow that helps keep the lights on.

What’s the secret sauce to a successful campaign?
Unfortunately, there is no one answer when it comes to a successful email campaign. Achieving success in email marketing varies and depends on a host of factors—from the time of day the email is sent to the integrity of your data—and resulting from the effectiveness of your overall goal-driven strategy.

Essentials for a strong campaign:

Goal Driven Strategy: Every email needs one. Basically, your goal-driven strategy should answer this question: “What do I want my audience to do after reading this?” Whether you want them to attend an event, donate to a cause, or click on a banner ad, your goal-driven strategy should be the basis of the decisions you make regarding everything listed below.

List Segmentation: While working on our 2012 congressional candidates’ lists, I created segments ranging from age and location to their individual influence across social networks. Quality is just as important as quantity. What’s the point in having a massive list if you don’t know anything about the data? That’s why segmenting your list and tailoring your emails to individual segments is one of the most important things you can do.

Fundraising Language: If you are trying to raise money—ask for it. Do not assume that the reader will take the action you want them to by drawing their own conclusions. Be clear.

Tone: Tone is everything in email. It should be conversational and tailored to your specific audience. In a campaign you may be targeting females between the age of 18-24 one day and Hispanic males between the ages of 40-65 the next. Even if the goal of emails is the same, it is important to customize the message for each audience segment. Knowing how to effectively set the tone of your message will determine how it will resonate with your segments and maximize your effectiveness.

Keep Testing: Before sending an email, ask yourself, “How do I get my supporters to open this?” Then ask, “Once they open it, how do I get them to take the action I want?” Test varied times, subject lines, image placements, and layout designs to see what results in the highest click-through rates.

Do Not Ignore Mobile: Typically, in any given campaign, about 20-30% of all emails sent will be opened via a mobile device, and that number is climbing. According to a recent study by Knotice, “the number of emails opened on a mobile device (smartphone and/or tablet) during the first half of 2012 overall rose to 36 percent.” Read the full article here.

Email is a powerful marketing tool. Its effectiveness to reach large populations of highly targeted groups coupled with its unparalleled ability to connect people to a brand and garner immediate action is proof that email will continue to rise as a marketing staple in the years to come.

Andrew Burk is a Digital Generalist/Developer at CRAFT | Media/Digital. Andrew managed and created digital content and provided email marketing strategy and solutions for multiple campaigns in the 2012 election cycle.

As a FOX News producer, I was able to sit in on a few meetings with Roger Ailes. He imparted some simple concepts that stayed with me through my experience at FOX News—and I return to them often in my work booking clients on television.

Put simply, Ailes suggested watching TV with the sound off while flipping channels; once you find yourself turning the volume up, you’ve spotted one of the most compelling things on television.

So what makes good TV?

What does it take to get one of my clients to break through, get a call back, and enter the media bloodstream?

Ultimately it seems unquantifiable—but there are a few essential elements that make the difference:

• An impressive professional background – Anyone who is in a position to make it on TV has spent their career developing an expertise.  News shows are looking for experts who can address the issue of the day.  Use your expertise as a way to illustrate the value that makes a good news segment.

• Relevance with the current news cycle – News cycles are fleeting.  Every day news is breaking, which sends networks scrambling to find experts who can articulate a position or provide context on why a story is important.  Being relevant also means being ready to apply your expertise as news breaks.

• The ability to bring a new or original voice to a story – TV is full of talking heads jabbering from the same familiar positions.  These people don’t create buzz or excite viewers.  Standing out and taking a unique position can get reporters and anchors talking.  New facts, new angles, and a unique perspective make viewers pay attention and decision-makers at networks notice.

At the core, these elements are essential to grab the attention of a booker or producer and sometimes work together to make great TV.

During my time in television, these were a few of the factors that often resulted in a successful show—that, and the ability to get the guest to show up on time!

Alex Finland spent nine years working at Fox News Channel, the highest rated cable news channel for over a decade.  He is currently the Director of Media Booking for CRAFT | Media / Digital.  If you have any inquiries about booking or television, you can reach him at afinland@craftdc.com or on Twitter (@afinland).

You’ve worked hard to build a campaign website and cultivate followers—and as a result, a newly elected official has a valuable audience of constituents who can help share and promote content and keep the conversation going. Now is the time to update your campaign site and your official site. Here’s the CRAFT guide to managing each of them individually right now.

What to do with a Campaign website after Election Day:

• Continue to collect email addresses from constituents and groups.
• Continue to update website with accomplishments, news articles and information.
• Use your campaign site as an extension of your official website.
• Center the website around key issues and initiatives.
• Keep it active. Have a message ready to go after the election.
• If you’d like to keep up with me in Congress, sign up here!
• Don’t let the site go to waste—you’ve already put a lot of work in getting people there, and these are supporters you want to keep engaged.

And what about your Facebook page?

• If you will be or already are an elected official, make sure to keep your campaign page separate from your official government page.
• Synchronize legislative updates on your campaign and your government pages.
• Utilize social media graphics to illustrate accomplishments.
• Design digital flyers that show a side-by-side comparison of campaign promises and legislative milestones.
• Host personal videos on campaign page to keep the audience engaged.
• Use the campaign page to deliver more opinion. That page is a more appropriate venue than government pages and is a place you can get a little more personal with your constituents.
• Use both sites as teaching tools.
• Feature members of your staff to help your constituents get to know your team—and so that they feel like they’re a part of it.

Give your YouTube subscribers what they want—more content!

• Continue to post videos- your channel is not dead!
• You’ve developed a YouTube channel with several videos, and you likely already have subscribers that support your ideas. It is important to hang on to subscribers and maintain a place for them to find future videos.
• Set up a separate official account- why? If you are elected into office, you may consider making an official account for your new elected office while maintaining your campaign account.

• Reason 1 – This allows you to separate the messages. One would be for campaigns, while the other would be for official business and transparency.
• Reason 2 – Certain messages for campaigns are not appropriate for governing business.
• Reason 3 – You may want a variety of people to have access to your governing channel who wouldn’t have access to your campaigning channel.

• Shoot video of district events – You want people to see regular videos of you in your best light. Cut several highlights of speeches or events and post them online.
• Film video of accomplishments – Every success should be recorded and posted so people are aware of your accomplishments. You want your constituency aware of what you’re doing.
• Record a virtual tour of DC/Local offices – YouTube makes it easy to be transparent with the public. Introduce the public to your offices so citizens know what you’re doing from day-to-day.
• Record an intro video of your staff with their contact info – Introduce citizens to certain staff members who are made available to the public.

Pitfalls

• DON’T USE FEDERAL RESOURCES (time, equipment, accounts, etc) FOR NON-FEDERAL ACTIVITIES.

What are you doing for your campaign website? Comment below or tweet @CRAFTdc with the thoughts or questions you have on maintaining your online presence.

Today our team is thrilled to announce the launch of The Heritage Foundation’s brand new mobile application—now available on iPhone, iPad, and Android.

This application provides the latest news, research, videos, and infographics straight to your mobile or tablet device. Next time a liberal is debating you about how Paul Ryan wants to hurt helpless old ladies, pull out your phone and show them an infographic that will make them look dumber than Joe Biden.

And it’s got some pretty nifty features.

The Heritage Foundation wanted to change the way people share their policy information online. CRAFT made that happen by developing the Super Share function for fast and easy social sharing of multiple articles and blog posts through a single URL.

Anyone familiar with Heritage knows they put out more content then most policy experts could hope to consume. That’s why we developed the My Issues feature allowing you to customized your homepage feed with only the issues you care about.

And we’ve got four words for you, political wonks: Morning Bell Push Notifications. That’s right, users can get the Morning Bell sent straight to their device via push notification with a special Liberty Bell sound alert.

We know the Heritage app will be a hugely successful tool to educate and engage people on the issues that matter to them. It is available for download using the following links: iPhone, iPad, and Android.

First-person updates have to be spot on—even if it’s just an illusion. The voice is the most important skill we can provide our clients. Our ability to capture the unique personality and voice of our clients sets us apart from everyone else. It engenders a higher-quality, more engaging following—the kind that cares enough to vote or donate to a cause.

The bottom line is that people on Twitter love personal accounts. For the first time, regular people can directly communicate with celebrities and public officials and have their voices heard in real time. But nobody wants to engage with an account when they understand that a social media director or a summer intern is on the other side of tweetdeck, copying and pasting general messaging points in response. It’s boring and uninspiring and offers no information they couldn’t just as easily Google to discover.

So we want a consistent voice. Whenever you tweet on behalf of someone else—be it for a campaign or otherwise—don’t forget that you’re being that person.

Here are some general guidelines to get you started:

• Listen to the person. This might seem like a no-brainer, but it’s important. Pay attention to speech cadence and tone. Don’t take this lightly—you’re studying for a role. Imagine that you are creating that person in each of your posts.
• In the same vein, think about how word choice and punctuation affects that voice. Is the person monotonous? If so, it’s unlikely the person would use frilly words or exclamation points. Are you tweeting for an enthusiastic guy? Don’t let any followers think he doesn’t care. His followers will see him, in video or otherwise, and that’s important they see a consistent “whole person” on camera and in social media.
• Text doesn’t emote. If your client is sarcastic and witty in real life, people will assume his tweets are being written in the same spirit—proceed cautiously.

Here are some other tips for successful tweeting from a study by Dan Zarrella:

• Keep tweets between 120 and 130 characters if you can help it. This length gets the most hits. But that doesn’t mean a short tweet won’t get any attention. If you can pique interest in few words, do so.
• Use action words. More verbs and adverbs, fewer nouns and adjectives. The adverb rule goes against the conciseness of standard editing, but makes tweets stand out more against bland counterparts in the reader’s feed.
• Link your tweets. To websites, to other users, to hashtags. Research says using “@,” “via” and “RT” increases click-through and tweet visibility.
• Use some form of imperative, whether a direct call to action or in the structure of the tweet itself. Tweets with “please” and “check” got more hits. Send them to your site/video. If nothing else, separate tweet text with a colon or dash before your link. Don’t let them finish reading at the period and move on.
• Put your links in the first quarter of the tweet. Higher click-through rates = more retweets and more views. This is what we want. Interrupt the reader’s thought, let them read through and click. Ditto with the previous— don’t let them move on without clicking.

Remember that every tweet should have a purpose. Are you inspiring new followers, engaging in a conversation, making a bold statement to gain retweets and favorites? Know what you’re aiming for—and who you’re tweeting for—before you hit send.