Bloggers on the Bus

This looks like an interesting presentation- To stream this event live, click here

A Conversation About Media and Politics in the Digital Age
July 16, 2009, 5:00pm – 6:30pm

Last November’s elections broke barriers and made history on a number of fronts, making it one of the most transformative elections our nation has ever seen. One of the most groundbreaking changes was in the way Americans received and processed vital information about the most pressing issues—for the first time in American history, blogs, social networking sites, and other web-based media were the primary sources of information for many voters. They helped shape individual opinions and the public discourse at large.

While the Internet has proven to be instrumental in disseminating intelligent, well-developed information on public policy, it has unfortunately also been a medium for disseminating hateful rhetoric and promoting the politics of fear. The progressive movement’s challenge moving forward is to not only help curtail the spread of this inaccurate information, but also seize this new media’s benefits to help promote a factual, intelligent, and broad progressive policy agenda.

Please join us for the Internet Advocacy Roundtable on Thursday, July 16 from 5:00-6:30 p.m. This month’s discussion will moderated by Media Matters founder and CEO David Brock and feature Media Matters Senior Fellow Eric Boehlert and ThinkProgress.org Editor-in-Chief Faiz Shakir. They will discuss blogs and other new media’s impact on the public discourse, and how the progressive movement can use new media to help promote a broad policy agenda in 2009.

Twitter Just a Blip So Far

Someone recently shared this study with me, and I thought you might find it interesting as well! Interesting to note the very low percentage of people actually using Twitter...

Findings of the Online The Harris Poll, conducted between March 31 and April 1, 2009, show that 51% of Americans do not use Twitter or have a MySpace or Facebook account. 48% of adults have either a MySpace or Facebook page, with 16% of adults updating their page at least once a day. While the media may have found Twitter, only 5% of Americans are currently using it.

There are some substantial differences in who is and who isn't using these social networking sites, says the report:

• 74% of those aged 18-34 years old have a Facebook or MySpace account but this quickly drops off the older one gets. Only 24% of those 55 and older have an account


• 8% of 18-34 year olds use Twitter, 7% of those 35-44 use it, 4% of those aged45-54 and just 1% of those 55 and older


• Men and women use Twitter at the same levels (5% each), but women are more likely to have a Facebook or MySpace account (52% versus 45%)
• Two in five people with a high school degree or less have a Facebook or MySpace account compared to 55% of those with some college and 52% of those with at least a college degree.

There has been some discussion about whether these social networking sites may, at some point, become a threat to search engines such as Yahoo! or Google. Right now, that doesn't seem to be an issue, concludes the study, as 45% of adults believe the sites are popular, but they won't pose a real threat to the domination of search sites while just one in ten say they may become a threat. 46% of Americans are not at all sure. Even among the largest users of the social networking sites, 18-34 year olds, 62% say they will not become a real threat to the search engines.

Here's a link to the press release of the study:
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/pubs/Harris_Poll_2009_04_16.pdf

AHU Courses of Interest

American Heart University has just launched a series of five courses called “Dialogue with Decision Makers”- these can be found in the Volunteer Management and Engagement School in AHU. These courses focus on building the skill of staff in having effective discussions with key volunteer and corporate decision makers. The course of particular interest to us is focused on conversations with Leadership Volunteers.

Course content is customized to the AHA. Each course contains relevant content, followed by quizzes, and a role playing exercise at the end that is to be conducted with a supervisor. There are also ongoing coaching opportunities that we hope will reinforce new skills. The course takes about 40 minutes to complete

You can check out what the course looks like by taking a few minutes to review the teaser at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_GX2Shoa2g

If you’re interested in taking coursed through AHU, talk with your supervisor first. You can visit www.heartu.org to enroll.

A Note about Facebook 'Notes'

This blog has a great post about how to take advantage of the Facebook Notes section to drive traffic to your blog, providing you have an RSS feed. Check it out!
http://www.corporatedollar.org/2009/02/leverage-notes-application-facebook-traffic-blog/

If you give this a try, please share results with all of us by leaving a comment below.

DDC Tip: Formatting Your Emails

Before sending out any email to your advocates, you check to make sure the spelling is correct and you’ve hyperlinked and inserted the correct merge fields… but, have you formatted? The formatting features in the email toolbar help your email to appear clean and easy to read. It’s great to use when highlighting important aspects of a bill and informing advocates of key message points.

If you need to indent your text, you can use the “TAB” button or the “increase indent” on the toolbar. Using the spacebar will not guarantee your formatting will show up in an advocates’ inbox the way you’d like it to!

You can use bullets to spell out what provisions are in a bill you’re asking for their help on. Highlight the text you’d like to have bulleted and then click on the “Bullet” button on the toolbar.
Feel free to test out some of the features by emailing to yourself first! Happy formatting!

Twitter for Beginners

If you're new to Twitter, this site has some great information and resources to help you get started. Check it out at http://p2pt0.wetpaint.com/page/Twitter.

The #p2 wiki is part of site- Progressives 2.0- for progressives using social media. In addition to learning how you can get started with your own Twitter account, you can find a list of other organizations using Twitter, learn about associated tools like TweetDeck, and read about the benefits of hashtags.

With all these great resources, I just might be propelled into the world of Twitter myself. See you there!

Tweet, tweet

Some great information about using Twitter for business, I find a lot of it is relevant to our efforts as well. Check out this great internet marketing blog for lots of recent posts about Twitter.
A few to check out:

* Is 22 Tweets-Per-Day the Optimum?
* New Data on Top Twitter Applications and Usage
* Can Having a Twitter Bio Get You 8 Times as Many Followers?