Voice in the Wilderness

Online Identify Management a form of Search Engine Optimization with William Beutler



"Search Engine" = Google, all other search engines run similar to Google

Need to get to the top. 1st three results get the most hits. Only 1/3 goes to the second position.

At most, some will go as far as the third page to find something.

Monitoring:

• Google yourself
• Set up Google alerts to see if anyone is talking about you, can receive via email and/or RSS. (BTW: Technorati.com not as good in blog search anymore)
• Set benchmarks

Then, blog, twitter, use social networking accounts (see New Media Strategies)....throw content out there.

Google seem to favor blogs vs regular new sites: more cross-linking increase the credibility score.

Then, build out the online profile: LinkedIn, YouTube, FriendFeed, Flickr, RapLeaf, Naymz. Create accounts using my name as I want it to be searched. RapLeaf, Naymz take it a step further for online reputation management. FriendFeed aggregates the other sites.

Cross-post blog entries: Find allies where can comment or submit guest posts.

Use digg, magnolia, newsvine, delicious.com, stumbleupon to ID user use and tagging, as well as more content for Google to find.

Find something bigger than myself to which to connect.

Answer stories about you.

Use consistent names when commenting

Buy opponents names on Google to make their reputation management harder

Wikipedia: Own the topic; find one strategy and stick to it - have one person be the owner, preferrably one who is trustworthy, competent w/Wikipedia, and some "distance" from the client or campaign

Stay ahead of new platforms and technologies. Consider mahalo.com

Employers, voters, opposition will all "Google" you.

Memerandum.com (sp?): a good aggregator for political blogs - ID's blogs getting linked to. Good place to find what bloggers are talking about, contribute to the conversation, link and get links. Use it to build relationships with higher tier bloggers, but don't be a sychophant about it. Might track along with their content and write posts that build upon or relate to their posts.

Wikipedia: Check out the "Village Pump" forum to ID the guidelines that you really need to follow

Ralph Benko: "We're at the inflection point of a revolution."

NTU YouTube vids



Elizabeth Terrell on web 2.0 tools to learn



Tax Freedom Day song and vid: Uncle Sam eating my paycheck...nice visual
The song is funny, entertaining and makes the point in less than 3 minutes.

UStream.tv
Digital video stream
Includes a built in chat feature and archiving

Qik.com
Computer or phone vid streaming: great for streaming city council meetings on the phone

Seesmic = Twitter + YouTube. Post vids, get quick feedback.


Ralph Benko remarks
How to use these tools to win political battles? Don't use only for communicating a message. Must use to build community, make them simple direct, and action-oriented. See moveon.org example where a lot of people can do a little bit.

• Post a Tsunami story, then have a "Contribute" button
• Post a story on a bill, then show a link to contact your Congressman

Build partnerships, not just an audience.

See AFourP YouTube channel for Al Gore gas-guzzling entourage. Find and capture the daily hypocrisies of elites. Also, see TheNextRight.com.

Q. Libs are more agile with technology, how can we make a better use of web 2.0 technologies
A. We haven't had to be ahead online before. Should avoid duplication, but try to innovate for independent conservative thinkers.

See "How to Use the Web to Help the World" By Ralph Benko
Benko's Laws include:

1. Joseph Pulitzers Law: Put it before them briefly, clearly, picturesquely, accurately


2. Thomas Nast's Law and Boss Tweed's Complaint: Tweed - stop those d--- pictures! Use pix, vids


3. Arthur C. Clarke's 2nd Law: The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to venture slightly past those limits into the impossible


4. Limon Beecher's Law: No great advance has ever been made in science, politics, religion without controversy


5. Emma Lazarus' Law: Web can be the means to unleash the "imprisioned lightening" of the American people


6. Metcalfe's Law: The value of a telecom is proportional to the square of the number of users


7. Beinchini's Law of Viral Loops: If you create something people naturally enjoy, they will sell it for you. Then you become a public utility.

So, get the style clear, compelling, sexy. Make it hip to be conservative!

C/C Obama vs. McCain website: Lots of social network features on Obama site, like Twitters, Meetups. Sam Adams people have researched Obama, McCain sites. On top of that, many voters seem to be wrapping themselves up in his identify. Obama's site seems to make it sound like he cares about other's message, and let me tell you how it fits in with mine. It makes connections locally and socially.

A similar dynamic occurs in churches: newer churches focus on building community, small groups, etc.

Ron Paul supporter: Felt excluded, though agree on 90% of issues.

BTW: "Focusing on the 90% we agree on" has been a common theme in all the sessions I've attended so far....perhaps a pre-emptive maneuver to prevent a mini-Ron Paul Revolution at the conference.

Benko: Check out thedemocracyproject.ning.com. 3 classes of people

• Spectators
• Commentators
• Players

The real battles played out in the nominating process, not necessarily elections. So, volunteer on the county committee.

Hosted by Matt Sheffield of Dialog Media, formerly of RatherBiased.com

Why we're here: to have blogging enabled for activism

"Someone should do something" that's the activist impulse.

Know your site

• What is the genre? Political, Personal.


• Avoid schizophrenia

ID a focus area or a few focus area(s) to have the most impact. Concentrate on doing a few things well to distinguish yourself

Be a reporter to control the information and the debate. But also must be responsible and have facts to back up the story.

Originality: Find something that other people aren't saying. Do original stories, analysis, pix, vids, interviews....write about pols and bloggers will make them care about your.

Find way to plug into posting stream with other likeminded blogs hitting the same topic.

To get the word out, email links to reporters. They're lazy and will likely welcome sources of easy content. Write about:

• Events
• Public Meetings
• Election Coverage

Use Twitter

To improve search engine score:

• Use category tags on blogs
• Use same phrase for same topic to improve search engine score
• Use key words in the title tag
• Surround search terms with teaser content to drive click throughs on search engine

Vids

Can be good supplement to content

Include maps/graphs to illustrate stories

Vids are high work/high reward actvity (be sure to rate vids as needed, low for libs, high for conservative clips)

Agenda for Blog Audience Generation

• Organize
• Connect: Find sites that want my content: blogivist.com, redstate.com, freerepublic.com, youtube.com, wikipedia on topics in which I'm interested (and have blog posts to link to), word content in a neutral-sounding tone and constantly visit and edit the page..."own" the wikipedia page
• Report: Report new stuff! What are other people not talking about that's important? And get to know MSM reporters too, even if they're liberal, they can be good to get to know. Also, in the Web 2.0 world, sharing information is power.
• Market: To boost traffic, write about/link to other bloggers, email original content to other bloggers (whole post, or maybe teaser content). Traffic expectation: 1/day and cross post to other sites: w/in 6 months, could get 1000 unique visits per day. Though there's more to blogging than just traffic, need to also think about influence close to home.

Time and content production: should post once per day....fit activism into your lifestyle. If crunched for time, may join group blog.

Stream of Consciousness Brain Dump on the Samsphere session

Judging from the agenda, there are some promising themes to explore:

• Intro: the SamSphere and Blogivists.com
• Objectives, Strategies, Tactics
• How the Other Half Lives
• Building and Sustaining the Texas blogosphere
• Blogivists and Wiki's

I. Introduction

SamSphere: community building, invite-only "jam session"

blogivists.com

II. Discussion #1

Group sharing session: The questions seem intriguing, but the format seems a little awkward...maybe I spend too much time online. It's not entirely clear which group I'm in. Could use a facillitator....but, like all good bloggers, we're beginning to self-organize.

How to make money with blogging? Need to make my blog part of something bigger. Should also discuss how to measure, monetize, and capture the value created by quality web 2.0 content.

Bulverde Standard publisher: Send him our blog links. Interesting perspective about how newspapers have a built-in editorial filter, but the web does not. Later, we should talk more about how to make web news and blogs a better, self-policing entity.

"My name is Harvey and I'm an alcoholic"...oops! Blogs to re-establish constitutional principles.

RightWingSparkle.com: blogging for the children ;-) Wants to influence her children.

YeahRightWhatever.com: Home schooling her kids, wants to influence them. Being conservative is not only a political exercise.

III. How the Other Half Lives

Emily Z.: why do this exercise...to start building community...."community is the soul of revolution". Good point. What are the ongoing, purposeful community-building activities we should engage in and who should do it?

Liberal bloggers are better at and started with community. They seem to be far more invested (emotionally, spiritually even) in politics. Can independent-minded conservatives, with jobs, coalesce in the same manner? How?

Thinking Globally, Acting Locally:

• Develop clear overarching message
• Select an idealistic, achievable goals
• Make contact with like-minded person
• Share your information
• Connect and build your network
• Identify specific big goal and move forward (or a lot of something small)

In order to change, one must be bold. "Well behaved people rarely make history." Think w/courage.

Send information on to friends, family, online associates....do "Drill here, drill now, pay less" on a local scale.

See americansolutions.com for contributing and bubbling up ideas.

Be a part of other mainstream communities: Wikipedia, YouTube.

Online Community Building

• Helps counter isolation, online and face-to-face
• Connect groups that are issue-oriented
• Connect the groups to state parties

Why here, now? Why do we care?

• Blogosphere is a sanity aid
• Serve as rsc for other media

IV. Discussion #2: Building a Liberty Minded Online Community

Should start an Austin conservatives blogger alliance, make it more open, moderated but otherwise freewheeling like RedState.org.

Erick Ericson chat:

Libs have fewer bloggers, but more group blogs. Conservatives are more individually-reliant.

2008 is a big election, but 2010 is the really big election: That's when state legislatures will be reapportioned. So, now's the time to organize. \

See the Georgia example: local bloggers can have an impact.

Cross post to RedState, TownHall, even local content....Add to the conversation!!!

Nic Hall: Online ID managment

Be sure to make online personas the same across social networking communities and applications

What's the attraction of Blogivist.com

1. Community
2. Support
3. Recognition

Wiki's: Use them to aggregate and evaluate content on a particular topic.

Check out UrbanGrounds post and pix on this session here: Good resolution pix, tell-it-like-it-is commentary.

Ballotpedia.org and Judgepedia.org are also useful research tools.

Sunshine Review: Could be a useful tool for digging deeper into government activities and ranking their (mostly inadequate) websites.

Today marks the beginning of the first RightOnline summit, a confab of conservative and right-leaning libertarian bloggers from around Texas and the nation, convening in Austin on June 18-19.

The RightOnline home page says: "RightOnline will serve as a meeting place for the free enterprise movement, focusing on how we can more effectively leverage the power of the internet and work together to achieve our common goals. "

To better understand web 2.0 technologies and build the Texas conservative online community, I propose that the the issues below more thoroughly explored at the conference:

• Why do we blog? What needs are being met by blogging? How can the broader Texas conservative blogging community address those needs to increase the community's numbers, quality, and influence?
• Community building: Should there be some intentional shepherding of the Texas conservative blog community? If so, what form would it take?
• Unified online presence: Is there some aggregation portal (like a community blog populated by RSS feeds from member blogs) that could serve as a community rallying point and clearing house of quality content from Texas conservative bloggers (similar to the RedState.org model)?
• Multimedia authoring: I really need a primer on how to create quality podcasts and streaming video offerings, as well as integrating them with other media, like blogs and wiki's.
• Credibility: How is it built, maintained, and lost in the web 2.0 world?
• Influence: How can the community of Texas conservative bloggers influence the broader media and public policy? How can we learn, analyze and disseminate goings-on at the Texas Capitol?
• Sustainability: What would be needed to ensure the Texas conservative blogging community continues creating a critical mass of compelling content and increasing its reach?
• Monetization: Related to sustainability, is there a business model that would help make the conservative alternative media presence more robust and self-sustaining? How can consistent, quality content producers (be it blogs, podcasts, video, etc.) capture some of the value produced by their efforts?
• Next Steps: What should we do between now and the general election in November and the beginning of the Texas legislative session in January?

Also, for some principles on user generated content, see this post from the editor of OhMyNews.com: 10 Preconditions for the Value of User-generated Content

Am I asking the right questions above? Are there others that should be addressed? Please add your thoughts and, even better, links to your blog posts on any of the issues raised above in the comments section of this post.

More later....

School Choice an Hispanic Opening for Texas GOP?

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal carried a story on the opportunity John McCain has to make in-roads with Hispanic voters: School choice. Money quotes...

Fifty-two percent of Hispanic voters have a favorable view of school choice, according to the poll, while only 7% had an unfavorable view. When asked about vouchers pecifically, 32% expressed a favorable opinion compared to 13% unfavorable.

Unexpected numbers for sure and definitely at odds with the teacher's lobby, one of the Democrats' core constituencies.

But where the poll really gets interesting is on school choice as an electoral issue: 65% of those surveyed reported that they would be more likely to support a candidate for office who supports school choice, including 35% who said they would be "much more likely." Only 19% said they would be less likely to vote for a pro-school choice candidate.

65% are more likely to support a candidate who supports school choice?!? That is a game-changing number.

Hispanic voters are overwhelmingly young and have exhibited a propensity toward political independence -- and no issue is more tangible for them than educational opportunity. If Hispanics align their voting with the educational interests of their children, it could alter the electoral landscape -- not merely for this election, but permanently. (Emphasis added)

And as if that were not juicy enough, consider that, in Texas:

• Nearly 25% of eligible voters are Hispanic (nearly 3.6 million total potential voters)
• Nearly 63% of vote-eligible Hispanics are under 45 vs 52% for the overall population
• Hispanics are projected to become a majority sometime between 2025 and 2035

1/4 of Texas voters, at the family stage of life, will be the majority within a generation: Will someone please call the Texas GOP and let them know a big opportunity has just dropped in their laps?

Ideas have legs. Unfortunately for local politicians, so do most citizens.

It's been a year of life changes for the my family, including marriage, a new job in different part of town, and our first child on the way. Thus, my wife and I were faced with a decision about where we want to reside for the next chapter in our lives.

My fashionable southwest side bungalow was too small and too far away from work and family, so we had to undertake a move. Furthermore, the weirdness of south Austin was a little too present in my old neighborhood. Booming car stereos, bizarre lawn ornamentation, the occasional transient, six cars per house in some cases, and generally careless attitude of some residents may seem quirky or even chic for a young person aspiring to urbane hipness. But for my money, those items are deal killers when it comes to raising a family.

Thankfully, God opened a door to move to a charming house in culturally conservative, southeast Cedar Park, just northwest of Austin. As our home search progressed, we were presented with decisions that brought into sharp relief the differences that exist between municipalities. The decision makers at city hall have tremendous power to shape the lifestyle and environment of the lowly property owner and resident.

Our target neighborhoods were quickly narrowed down to two: Forest Oaks in southeast Cedar Park and Avery Ranch in far northwest Austin. Separated by only Brushy Creek Road and a couple of miles, at first blush the two neighborhoods are very much alike: similar location, both close to the popular Brushy Creek Lake Park (like Lady Bird Lake without the bums), similar demographics, both in Leander ISD.

However, an analysis of property taxes reveals an important difference: comparable houses in our price range in the Forest Oaks are taxed at an average rate of $2.10/square foot versus an average rate of $2.56/square foot in Avery Ranch. Both neighborhoods are in the same school district and in Williamson county. Therefore, for a 2100 square foot house, that comes out to a $964.35/year or $80.36/month premium for the privilege of living within Austin city limits. That's over 20 gallons of gasoline/month!

The difference can no doubt be attributed to the City of Austin's proclivity for incrementally bumping up property taxes through fashionable referendums for questionable school improvements, the largley unaccountable county health district, and stealthily gaming the property tax equation by slightly reducting the tax rate but dramatically increasing property valuations.

And I'm not encouraged that the Austin City Council will be able to restrain itself from further gorging itself on city property owners' bank accounts. City leaders have been signalling their appeasement radical environmentalists for several years. More recently, they've been trying to put this collectivist worldview into action by imposing "point of sale" restrictions on property owners trying to sell their properties that require several thousand dollars of "green" upgrades before a house can be certified for sale for the supposed cause of "protecting the environment". A recently elected city council member bragged she would "Support the City's Climate Protection Plan and ensure that an inclusive stakeholder group develops future energy efficiency standards. " The past, present, and future omens are seeming very favorable to radical ambitions.

Therefore, I assess that the risk of increasing local tax burdens, even in the face of increasing gas and food costs, is too high in Austin. So, for the benefit of my current and future family, I chose the Cedar Park neighborhood even though it is slightly further away from work than the Austin neighborhood. How about that? The Austin City Council's kowtowing to environmental radicalism is encouraging suburban sprawl.

...With Affordable Housing and a Good Economy

Seen in an AP story on Yahoo News this morning:

"Four Texas metropolitan areas were among the biggest population gainers as Americans continued their trend of moving to the Sun Belt in 2006 and 2007, according to Census Bureau estimates to be released Thursday. ....

"People are running away from unaffordable housing, from the economic slowdown," said Karl Eschbach, a state demographer in Texas. "I would expect Texas to stay at the top of a slowing game." ....

According to figures compiled by Eschbach, 16 percent of Americans who moved to other states between July 2006 and July 2007 came to Texas, which led the nation for the second straight year in that category.

This story highlights why it is important to fight the good fight for limited government, individual freedom and responsibility, free market policies, and traditional values at the state house and city hall. By keeping state and local taxes relatively low, encouraging people to take care of themselves, fighting off the most onerous environmental regulations, and enabling developers to build homes, Texans have created a place where other people want to live, work, and start businesses.

Our exertions in blogging, organizing, advocating, for the traditional worldview in government are paying off! But it also shows what is at stake if we should slacken our resolve.

I've posted on See Ya Dubya on the call for counting Michigan and Florida. Take a look and check it out.

It's getting depressing reading the news these days, especially the comments made on some of the articles. It seems that there are a large number of people out there whose favorite sport has become Bush Bashing. And I'm fairly confident that it isn't just Democrats.

My question to all of the Bush-bashers out there is: Did you vote in the last Presidential election?

I'm guessing some didn't because the frequency and number of diatribes bashing the current administration would suggest that the number of Americans who voted in the last election should be sky high, but it wasn't.

I strongly hold to the view that if you don't voice your opinion of who should be leading us by casting a vote, then you give up your right to complain. So with 08 being a Presidential election year, and the primaries coming up, I say to all the current administration-bashers "Shut up or put up at the polls".

I realize that this comment may be somewhat inflamatory and could possibly result in Hillary running the country for another 4-8 years if enough people actually go to the polls and vote for her (which she shouldn't be allowed to do because she's already had her chance to run the country for 8 years and didn't take care of the things she's campaining on now - i.e. health care), but it's a matter of principles. It is not just a right, but a privilege to be able to vote on who leads our country.

Stepping off the soapbox now.