The Dark Magicks of Political Blog Interaction

Someone asked for advice about how campaigns should deal with bloggers. Behold, I reveal to you a great mysterie... secrets of the dark magick of dealing with bloggers:

• Bloggers are vain, egomaniacs with inferiority complexes. Be nice to them and you will own them. For example, Barack Obama owns the Ohio Democratic blogosphere (expect for Russo.)
• If there is a blogger that really drives you crazy, be extra nice to them. Their heads will explode.
• Create your own blog feed. Fill it with good content, especially multimedia. Make it easy to share with bloggers. Be the media. Think about the audio and visuals of events. Give them multiplying power by posting them online. Good content is the key to any successful internet effort. So too blogs. They will see your work and echo it automatically. $300 dollars for a digital camera and mp3 recorder should be one of your first investments.
• Record everything. You never know when it will come in handy. One 30 second clip of Jean Schmidt talking about Abortion raised a ton of money for Hackett and fueled a stay home campaign by a Republican fringe group.
• The single most important thing that a web site does is recruit volunteers and keep them focused and energized.
• Good exciting pictures of your campaign and a small army of young volunteers marching in some stupid parade are much more important than detailed position papers.
• Attack. Bloggers love a good fight. They eat up aggressive campaigning.
• Aggressive online fundraising doesn’t effectively raise money online. Hard attacks against your opponent effectively raise money online. Attack!
• Blogs like poker games thrive on action. You gain nothing by shutting down your opponents supporters.
• Fun is a critical element in your online presence. Politics is depressing these days. If you can radiate fun you will be ahead of the curve.
• Hiring a blogger you like kills them. They only survive in the wild.
• Don’t be fake. Bloggers can smell it a mile away.
• Don’t get into squabbles with bloggers on either side. They are beneath you, and besides, that’s what other bloggers are for. Laugh them off and stay on message.
• If you aren’t getting any attention from the “main stream media” start inviting bloggers in for exclusive interviews and feeding them scoops. Soon the main stream media will feel left out and get off their asses. Reporters are also vain, egomaniacs with inferiority complexes. They feel threatened that bloggers will loose them their jobs.
• No monkey business. It will backfire. You are not as smart as some nerd. Don’t try to game the system. If you have staffers that are, fire them. They are idiots. If you smell monkey business, you’ve got to nip it…NIP IT IN THE BUD.
• Establish good security procedures for your staff, and enforce them. Warn them about their personal habits bleeding onto the campaign. Make sure that they know that their bootslave@hotmail.com email address is NOT to be used on campaign computers or networks. Have someone periodically monitor logs on campaign computers. Many campaigns will have spies with their own agendas.
• Give people on your campaign online diplomatic papers if they are worthy. Tell everyone else that if they are caught writing online about the campaign that they are fired.
• Keep bloggers at an arms distance. They are all insane and you never know when one will decide to create a website comparing your opponent to Hitler and thus help your opponent raise $250,000 and give them free press attacking your campaign as a pawn of liberal Hollywood elitists.
• Just because something helps a blogger's traffic doesn’t mean that it helps your campaign.
• Your online traffic is not as important as you think. You are connecting to connectors. Quality is much more important than quantity. People online are not your primary target for victory. You need them to help you get to the people who have never heard of you, and think a blog is a really big booger.
• The closer you get to election day the less influence blogs will have on the campaign, unless they get very lucky. Don’t chase your tail because of their vanity. Focus. Stay on target.
• Run a good, aggressive campaign and bloggers will be drawn to you like flies on shit. Hackett owned the blogosphere because he was too busy campaigning to worry about any dumb-assed blogs.