One of the things I love about political campaigns is how fast they move.  In the case of Scott Brown’s US Senate campaign, things could not have moved faster- or come together so unexpectedly (and so well).

The Prosper Group had been hired to develop the website for Scott Brown in September- back when the campaign was not flush with cash and needed something together quickly.  We worked furiously over a single weekend and launched a website for Scott.

We first started recognizing an uptick in both traffic and fundraising soon after Christmas- perhaps connected with the Christmas Eve vote on health care.  Online fundraising began to pick up dramatically and crested after we collected about $375,000 the day when Scott appeared on Fox News with Sean Hannity (January 8th).

In the meantime, the campaign had been promoting a microsite (aptly named www.redinvadesblue.com) talking about a “moneybomb” to take place on January 11^th.  Originally, the hope was to raise perhaps $80,000 or so to help buy some additional radio advertising in the final days of the campaign.  For a few weeks, individuals could visit the site and pledge certain amounts to contribute on that day.  On the 8^th, we had just over 1,000 pledges that totaled around $29,000.

But now, with the campaign already raising over $300,000 in one day, we thought we could do better than $80,000.  However, it was our contention at The Prosper Group that we couldn’t accomplish that without setting a public goal, which had been left out of the Red Invades Blue campaign to that point.  We needed contributors to be able to join in on the excitement of reaching that goal together.  The campaign leadership, however, had long felt that by alerting the Democrats to our online fundraising success, we might “wake them up” and encourage a barrage of negative attacks on Scott (which, of course, they eventually did with reckless abandon).  This below the radar strategy had served the campaign very well.

Readers of this blog have no need for another example of how much the Internet is changing political campaigns.  Even local campaigns are seeing the importance now of a quality website, blogging and working with bloggers, email, and social networking.  The extent, however, that a candidates "Internet Reputation" affects their election is ultimately unmeasurable and as a result, overlooked.

That includes the candidate's Wikipedia profile.  For those of you who don't know, Wikipedia is a user-edited online encyclopedia with articles on topics from recent movies to Presidential candidates.  According to Alexa.com, it is the 8th most visited website in the US.  Because it's content is user-generated, articles are open to constant editing and graffiti- particularly for controversial individuals.  In my opinion, most articles on politicians tend to focus heavily on controversies and are light on accomplishments.  They also tilt to favor the left (reflecting the demographics of most editors).  But despite its volatile nature, Wikipedia cannot be ignored.  Learn more here.

Count on us to investigate.

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