Earlier this week, we helped with online portion of the campaign launch for former Illinois Attorney Jim Ryan — who is now running for governor.
It’s been only four weeks since Jim announced his potential bid — and we already have built the strongest e-campaign of any other candidate in the race.
We, of course, launched a new campaign Web site. And, aside from the statewide Republican voter email list we have built (85,000 and growing), we also have the largest Facebook fan base of any other Republican candidate (and growing by several hundred each week), a growing following on Twitter, a heavy volume of viewership on Flickr, and full, comprehensive content campaign.
We also launched a new site (using the great tools at UserVoice) called Ideas.JimRyan2010.com — seeking ideas from Illinois voters on how to reform Illinois. This keeps with our commitment to empowering our network to get them involved and have ownership of the campaign.
Jim and the campaign leadership team have made the e-campaign a major priority, not just paying it lip service like most political campaigns. Photos, video, tweets, status updates … The e-campaign is part of everything we do — focusing on harnessing and creating content that we can deliver to educate, motivate and empower our online grassroots network.
Take a look at some of the early stats we’ve seen in just the first 24 hours since Jim’s announcement:
- An initial deployment of more than 85,000 emails to Illinois Republican voters.
- More than 1,200 viewers of our photos on Flickr.
- Almost 200 new Facebook fans (Facebook insights have a three-day lag and we are awaiting a full rundown of stats.)
- 72 new ideas submitted at Ideas.JimRyan2010.com — with hundreds of votes cast for reform ideas.
- 162 trackable click-throughs on our tweets (using Hootsuite).
- More than 100 volunteers signing up on online.
In the coming weeks and months, we will not only grow our email list — we will segment and target the list by issue, geography and intensity to keep people engaged, deliver our message and, yes, raise money.
Most important — we’re not only communicating. We’re also listening. We are constantly monitoring Facebook, online media, Twitter for conversations about Jim, so that we know who is talking about our candidate, what they’re saying, if and how we need to respond and how we can improve on our communication.
In recent months, we’ve observed the other campaigns here in Illinois abuse their email lists, ignore their online campaign and miss prime opportunities to use new online tools to engage voters and build their campaign organizations.
We are proud that Jim Ryan and his campaign team have brought us aboard to use our experience to manage their e-campaign. We are committed to victory.