Political Consultants’ Top Conference; CampaignTech 2018

Campaigns & Elections is the top non-partisan publication for political consultants. They also host a range of conferences and events for political strategists and Republican and Democratic political consulting firms.

This past April, they hosted CampaignTech East 2018 in Washington D.C. They brought together a who’s who of political consultants from all sides of the spectrum with expertise in everything from digital campaigns to cyber security.

I hemmed and hawed about attending myself. The conference was expensive. However, I thought it would be worth it for the networking opportunity with such a wide variety of experts present. My expectations were blown out of the water. The sessions were truly a firehose of information, and I was hanging on every word of it. Here are my key takeaways from the event.

Top 6 Takeaways From CampaignTech 2018 For Political Consultants

Oh yes, that’s right. I’m doing a listicle. Buckle up.

1) The Love Affair Between Political Strategists and Facebook Is Over

In panel after panel, the frustration with Facebook as a platform was palpable. It wasn’t just how it was manipulated in 2016. It wasn’t even about its late, weak, and ham-handed response. No, the frustration is entirely practical.

Nobody is happy with the current platform for running ads. Everyone is cynical about Facebook’s effectiveness from here on out. Yet they all expect to still be plugging away at it because that is where the people are and their candidate clients are wanting to be engaged on the platform.

When all is said and done, I definitely got the sense that most political consultants would be happy if Facebook just disappeared.

In my view, all of the cynicism above goes a bit too far. Things may look dark now, but Facebook is working out the kinks. It’s billion-dollar business model is built entirely on its advertising platform. That are going to get it figured out in a way that is effective for everyone.

2) Political Consultants (Still) Love Email

-But they can’t agree on anything else about it. I’m not kidding.

One panel couldn’t stop talking about how long-form email is the next big thing in fundraising. Then another panel said the exact opposite.

At the end of the day, do what works congruently or your campaign. If your candidate has a reputation for being a nerdy policy wonk, and voters LIKE that about them, then a longer email with techno-babble sprinkled in would definitely be the way to go. On the other hand, if they’re a straight-shooter that cuts through the bull, then short and to the point is the way to stay on message.

It seems like an obvious point, but it was discussed at the conference as if it was a compromise position between the two extremes.

3) Twitter Bots Are Completely Under The Radar

While the conference was buzzing with talk of Facebook and Fake Video (I’ll get to that in a minute), the role of Twitter and, specifically, Twitter bots in 2016 was only mentioned when I brought it up in a Q & A.

Its true that Twitter was not used in exactly the same way as Facebook was. Twitter was a major part of the Russian Op though.

4) Republicans Are Willfully Unconcerned About Countering Fake News

The Mic-Drop moment of the conference, for me, was during the previously mentioned panel. It was in exchange between moderator Paul Sherman and Daria Grastara, a political advisor for several Republican digital campaigns. Sherman asked. “Is the GOP side concerned about Russian influence?”
Grastara seemed momentarily surprised by the question. Then she smiled and leaned into the mic like the answer was obvious: “No.”

In the context of the rest of the conference, the moment was jarring. Consider the following:

• Russian influence in the 2016 election was taken for granted by the bipartisan experts at the conference.
• There was wide consensus that the technology used (Facebook aside) has only improved since 2016.
• Russia expert Nina Jankowicz gave a show-stopping talk about Russia’s history of disinformation tactics. In it, she made the case that if there are no consequences for bad behavior, they’ll double-down.
• She also made the case that they could care less about Trump or Sanders. What they want is to sow doubt and distrust in our democratic institutions.
• Oh, and, by the way, trust in our institutions decreased by 37% in one year.

Failure to see Russian social media manipulation as an immediate existential threat and be looking at countermeasures can only be interpreted as grossly negligent.

5) Nobody Is Concerned About Campaign Information Security (CampSec?)

A candidate hires a political advisor out of trust. They trust them to take care of their blindspots. Sure, different political consultants have different specialties, but they should at least make an effort to have a perfunctory understanding of as many areas as possible.

The conference organizers were clearly concerned about cybersecurity, as they scheduled workshops and keynotes around it. Yet those were the sessions with the smallest crowds.

Google had representatives posted right next to the doors to the main room of the conference handing out free USB security keys for their “Advanced Protection Program,” yet those guys looked bored the whole time with nobody talking to them.

With all of the talk the past couple years about hacking and cyber war, it seems like people aren’t listening. Not the attendees of this conference any way.

6) 2016 Was Just a Warm Up

You probably saw this one coming.
For the most part the political consulting world has not learned how to make the process any better moving forward. To top it off, we have to get ready for this:

2016’s “Fake news” problem is going to look cute compared to what’s on the horizon. Fake audio is getting awful close to this as well.

The reality is, though, that the tech is already good enough to fool people. We see what we are told to see. There’s abundant research out there on how unreliable eyewitness testimony in a courtroom is. In short, the brain fills in gaps around the edges when we are focused on observing (or remembering) something in a particular way.

At the conference the consencus was that education and awareness is the only way to confront the spread of fake video paired with fake audio. I fear it may be too late for that. I have some ideas of my own, but will save those for a later blog post.

Wrapping It Up:

I’ll be really interested to attend the event in the lead up to 2020 and see how the discussion has changed. Hopefully I will look back at this blog post and be able to say that all of the concerns have been addressed.

Hopefully.

The post Political Consultants’ Top Conference; CampaignTech 2018 appeared first on Clout.

source https://cloutseo.com/2018/05/11/campaigntech-2018-political-consultants/

Common Online Reputation Repair Tactics And Services

If you’re seeking out online reputation repair, you’re probably at a low point.

You can relax though, because repair is possible.

We are living in an era where a slip-up or lapse in judgement can cost you your job, destroy your business, and haunt you for the rest of your life. It is not right that an honest mistake can destroy everything you have worked so hard to build.

The Good News: Effective Online Reputation Repair Strategies CAN Help.

There are some simple countermeasures to online reputation problems:

• Control as many digital assets in you or your brand’s name as possible ( for example: even if you don’t use Twitter, you should check if your name is available as a handle and reserve it if you can!)
• Monitor your Google My Business (GMB) reviews and respond publicly to any negative comments.
• Practice solid link building strategies to make sure your own website is featured higher than those with negative content in SERPS

Unfortunately, sometimes that just is not enough, and a more pro-active approach is required.

If you are in need of Aggressive Reputation Management services, be careful. It is well known that bending Google’s rules can come back to bite you, and that Google’s algorithms are getting smarter all the time. We strongly believe that reputation management is critical for the modern internet. With all of the ugliness out there, there needs to ways to fight back. However, you really should be cautious of anyone selling grey/black hat  reputation management services. They may use tricky tactics such as:

• Negative SEO
• Private Blog Networks
• Fake Reviews

They very well may work for suppressing negative mentions of your name or brand. For now. However, as with any black hat SEO tactics, you are betting that you are smarter than Google’s algorithm, which is increasing in intelligence much faster than you are. These tactics require a very light touch to get the tone and language right and should not be outsourced to third world countries.

DIY Online Reputation Repair May Not Be Enough

It is not uncommon for someone to hire a reputation management expert to handle their online reputation repair. These services are not cheap, but they may save you a great deal of time, not to mention bring peace of mind.

Clout Digital Marketing’s reputation management services are among the best in the business. No two people or brands are exactly the same, and neither are situations requiring online reputation repair.

The post Common Online Reputation Repair Tactics And Services appeared first on Clout.

source https://cloutseo.com/2018/05/08/online-reputation-repair-tactics/

Find Your People With Facebook Micro-Targeting

In spite of what you might think from just about every analysis of the 2016 presidential election, Facebook micro-targeting is not all bad. Micro-targeting has, in fact, been around a long time. Facebook just made it famous.

…Or maybe infamous.

Robert Mueller’s investigation is ongoing and speculation is building about collusion with Russia. No wonder the Facebook marketing ecosystem has started to feel tainted. However, Ignoring Facebook micro-targeting because of 2016 is a huge mistake. It has powerful uses not only for political campaigns but also for anyone that wants to speak directly to any constituency.

Facebook Micro-targeting is not, in and of itself, black hat

Digital marketing agencies have made Facebook a cornerstone of their strategies for a reason. It is enormously powerful. In the entrepreneurial world, the black hat tactics that get talked about are things like:

• Dark posts that do not show on your organization’s public timeline
• Blatantly purchasing followers from click farms
• Targeting users in third world countries purely to boost vanity metrics

Most of these strategies aren’t really anything to get up in arms about. At the end of the day, probably not very effective anyway. After all, if you aren’t collecting followers genuinely interested in your message, your Facebook page will have very low engagement. The algorithm will punish you for this and make it progressively harder for your content to be seen.

You see, the algorithm is quite smart. It makes the whole ecosystem self-correcting (or at least that is the goal).

Whether you are selling shake weights or climate change, there is nothing wrong with using Facebook to put your message in front of people that want to receive it.

Deliberately spreading information you know to be misleading and/or outright false? Clearly unethical in my book, but that alone does not require the manipulation of Facebook’s micro-targeting, re-targeting, or any other kind of targeting.

So, you see, it is the intention, not the tactics, that make a particular campaign ethical (or unethical).

Facebook Micro-Targeting Is Being Under-Utilized For Politics

With all of the scandal surrounding 2016, it may seem justified that these tactics are getting a bad reputation. In fact, outside of Trump’s campaign, it is hard to find any examples of campaigns embracing these tactics.

Take for example Revolution Messaging, a progressive political campaign agency. They position themselves as being high-tech and on the forefront of digital campaign tactics. After reading through every one of their published case studies, though, I found zero mentions of facebook micro-targeting campaigns.

One notable exception, however, was a small local marketing agency called StraightForward Media. They took the idea of micro-targeting as used by their corporate clients and applied it to help Sam Kooiker beat the incumbent Mayor of Rapid City, South Dakota. Aside from a brief write-up in The Guardian, these tactics are rarely written about outside of the context of the 2016 scandals, and that’s a crying shame.

The Devastating Effectiveness of Micro-targeting

As Straightforward Media explains, there are five main reasons for the power of Facebook micro-targeting:

1. Reach niche constituencies. You would give a different speech if you knew the audience was active military versus low income parents, wouldn’t you? You can put out tailored messages to specific groups.
2. It has better reach than any other broadcast or print media, and you know the audience is warmer to the particular message than the general public.
3. They say that an advertisement has to be seen eight times before an average consumer will stop to think about the product being sold. The Facebook platform is much easier to deal with in this regard than broadcast media.
4. The ability to target different groups with custom messaging, by definition, makes opposition research (on You!) much more difficult. You are paying for the ad to be shown to small business owners in Springfield aged 25-55, not political consultants in Jeff City, after all.
5. Finally, it’s cheap! Facebook’s platform is made to help local small business owners as much as it is large national chains, and they want it to be much more competitive than traditional advertising channels.

As you can see, the Facebook micro-targeting is just as powerful for local elections as it is for business.

There’s Blackhat/Whitehat, Ethical/Unethical, and then there’s Legal/Illegal

You may have noticed my careful choice of words regarding the 2016 election. While I have my own theories about what really happened, investigations are ongoing. The public likely does not have complete information about everything, but speculation is rampant.

I am greatly worried about drastic measures that may be by Facebook. I do hope that appropriate measures to counterbalance foreign influence in the elections of a nation (ANY nation, not just the U.S.) are found, no overcorrection.

There is good, positive, potential for Facebook micro-targeting. It could be used to improve public debate in numerous ways. If more people find honest and ethical applications of the system, the company is less likely to take an extreme measure like shutting the whole thing down. Not that they would ever do that, though, as it would severely cut into their own revenue.

As debate rages, the 2018 elections inch closer. Will it be a replay of 2016? Or will we see these systems used more responsibly and ethically this time?

One thing is for sure: either way, it will be merely a testing ground for 2020.

The post Find Your People With Facebook Micro-Targeting appeared first on Clout.

source https://cloutseo.com/2017/12/26/facebook-micro-targeting/

Search Engine Optimization Kansas City

Lots of men and women think digital marketing is like hiring someone to post for you on your own social networking accounts. That's ONE potential digital advertising and marketing service, but it goes much deeper than that.

Everything that I am studying applying digital advertising strategies started with analyzing how these tools are used in business. While a business might decide to count on either Google or even Facebook, the frequent denominator is that a determination has to be made about WHERE you're likely to steer this traffic that you're purchasing.

This page that a viewer first encounters is what's known as a 'landing page.' While your landing page could function as the already existing general small business web site (where you have your whole contact info, about us page, etc.), it's deemed good practice Digital Marketing Strategy to have a special landing page for each aid traffic effort you're running. Furthermore, each landing page is simply the very first step of one's 'funnel' (usually known as a sales funnel).

Here's What I am talking:

Let us imagine you're the office manager of a plastic surgery clinic and you employ an electronic digital marketing and advertising consultant to find out what they are able to do. Your clinic has a well-deserved standing for rhinoplasty, which means you figure that is a great place to begin. Your consultant sets up a squeeze page (a sort of landing page designed to be very straightforward and require some sort of actions, like entering a contact address in order to get yourself a discount coupon).

Since people often search Google for terms like "rhinoplasty in Denver" it makes lots of awareness to make use of a Google Adwords (paid) or even SEO (free, however a labor-intensive long-term plan) campaign to get the ball rolling.

Leads will begin ahead in in the first few weeks; probably even a few patients that are new. You may likely be satisfied with your time and attempt, but this is just the hint of what a digital marketing and advertising consultant can do for you.

Let us say that in your files that are patient you chance to have the mails of thousands of past patients. Your adviser can upload this list (provided you informed that your own patients that you may use it for promotion purposes) directly into Facebook being a willing togo advertising crowd. You may conduct targeted advertisements straight to those people with an A D coy something like "We hope you are enjoying your new nose! The first treatment is free!"

When one of THESE people clicks on your ad, it will not make sense to send them to the landing page which you are currently using to advertise your rhinoplasty, does it? Of course not. You need another landing page and funnel.

Your own DM consultant will constantly be tracking your landing pages as well as the adverts themselves and producing the fly edits and tweaks to find thebest possible results.Your adviser are also creating whatever landing pages that you need together with the copy (written text) to proceed with this. To put it differently, you don't have to pay different fees for websites out. Your adviser can make landing pages and funnels by duplicating those useful for previous clients.

Atleast once a month you should receive a report. This make computing the ROI on your own consultant an issue of some simple math that is ridiculously. A adviser won't hide this stuff because if your efforts are beneath performing your business may not be a good fit due to his or her expertise and it might be safer to allow them to move ahead to other customers.

That is what it's like, in broad strokes, to hire an electronic digital marketing consultant or bureau. I studied this firm model significantly for seven weeks in order to work out how the exact approaches can be substituted for the world of digital campaigns. I invite you to see more about accepting digital marketing strategies and tweaking them for digital campaigning, please keep reading.