Philip Bryan

So today Lindsay Waits (former Aladem comms dir) had the opportunity to address the P4All social media workshop today.  In an effort to find a "hook," we developed what the "4 I's of Social Media" if a group/candidate/issue is going to be successful with all of the different outlets - and they are:

Investment: you've got to immerse  yourself and invest enough time for social media to work for you. And for a company/group/party, you may have to make another investment into a full time staffer down the road.

Integrate: running twitter/facebook/politics4all is a challenge in and of itself, the most efficient way to stay on top is to link all of your posts. It is also critical to integrate all of the social media links into your main website.

Interaction: simply put, the "social" of social media. social media is social because you interact with fellow users/followers/fans/friends, that's what separates it from tv advertising/newspaper etc...If you are not engaging others in discussion (civil debate if you will) then you are wasting your time on social media. You must build rapport, trust, friendships and even enter into discussions with those who may not hold your same political mindset - remember, it's a social.

and if you do these things well, then you will be afforded the opportunity to:

Issue your appeal: by building the relationships, reaching out to folks, making it easy for them to find you, you put yourself/group/company in a position to ask these folks to volunteer, buy your product, donate to your campaign and then go tell 5 friends.

social media is free, so make it fun - make it social and engage others in conversation. it's not scary, it's social.