The GOP and Technology

The GOP recently held a Tech Summit and invited people to join their grassroots Facebook group to participate in the discussion. Ideas were solicited and a pretty good following was established. As an interested citizen, I decided to throw in my two cents.

The GOP needs to stop focusing on technology and it needs to start focusing on people. Technology is just a tool — an ends to a goal. For example, just because Obama had/has a massive Twitter following does NOT mean that every Republican candidate needs to replicate that effort.

We need to figure out how to reach conservatives, Republicans and right-leaning "moderates" first — how to communicate with them, find them, understand them and convince them. We need to identify who the connectors are within these groups and use them as vessels to spread messages. The content of these messages must be crafted, scrutinized and tested. Then we can apply technology to connect all the dots.

As a plan of action, I would recommend:

• Get up to speed on all the current viral technologies (yes, including technologies such as Twitter — I know that may contradict what I said earlier). Obviously, the GOP can’t sit on its hands and figure out technology — it has to act now even if some current viral technologies aren’t effective for the party. This needs to be concurrent with the following points.
• Conduct audience research and determine "tipping points," information consumption patterns and trends of the people that need to be reached with the GOP’s message. This needs to be an ongoing research phase to find, develop and deploy new technologies.
• Recruit technology, web strategy and social/new media brains. Your efforts are only as good as the people who carry them out. I think some of the best places to find these people are Web 2.0 companies and cutting-edge PR firms.
• Deploy an immediate technology branding campaign. I would venture to guess that many people see the GOP as a dinosaur party. This public image needs to be fixed.
• Encourage or even require local party operations to develop communications plans for reaching local audiences. These plans must fit a mold cast by the people and research in the above points. Support local party operations with technology procurement, deployment and training. I imagine there would be a lot of grassroots efforts here.
• Develop a reliable set of metrics to determine the effectiveness of technology efforts. Test, fine-tune, monitor and repeat.

This is all my current thinking when I wrap my head around all this. I just think the GOP needs to have all of its bases covered before jumping head first into technology and social media. I’ve seen many organizations go head first with dire consequences.