Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Playing Catch Up

One tidbit from the article "What (Some) Bloggers Want" that I found interesting was the following quote:

Conventional wisdom and some research shows *JR* is in the minority in the blog world. About 47 percent of bloggers say they're to the left of political center, compared with 31 percent to the right, according to a 2006 study by the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University.
I have to assume those numbers are correct as I don't spend a whole lot of time on Liberal blogs. If there are more liberal bloggers, why?

rgravatt of Patriot Group Online explains how the Libs got ahead in the Blogger world with How Conservatives Can Close the "Online Communication" Gap.
...Democrats are reaping what the began to sow in 1998 when Moveon.org starting building an audience in reaction to Congressional impeachment efforts. The group demonstrated how to decentralize certain aspects of communication and then turn those conversations into action. While Democrat fortunes were down for the early part of this decade, they turned to the cheapest most expedient means of grassroots communication - the Internet - and used Web sites, search engines and e-mail.

It so happens that the interactive properties of the Internet also allowed their audience to talk back, recruit like-minded folks and build a community.

While Republicans inundating voters with mail and TV, Democrats were building communities. Democrats continued to loose races, but they built a community.

That community stood poised to engage...
The author goes on to recommend that in order to catch up with the Libs, Republicans need to "Start a dialog" and build a community to rival the Libs.

Senator John Cornyn is doing just that. Senator Cornyn is participating in conference calls with bloggers, meeting with bloggers and even has a campaign blog. Senator Cornyn is doing a great job of communicating with his constituents. More Republicans need to make use of the "New Media" to connect with the folks who put them in office.

3 comments:

Ross said...

FYI:

Just added links to the article. We're generally pretty good about it, but I just forgot this time.

Ross Ramsey, Texas Weekly

John R said...

Thanks Ross, I appreciate it.

Just John said...

I'm not surprised that conservatives are "behind" in the numbers here in the blogosphere.

The left is probably ahead due to the fact that they're so miserably behind in other venues. Nobody listens to their talk shows, they cannot get sponsorship for them, and they need to get Big Brother to step in on their behalf. Blogging simply makes sense for them.

Conservatives, or even those that are "middle of the road" types, have a large audience that is also well rounded.