Use these 4 Powerful Online Strategies from Mike Huckabee

Nonprofit marketers, listen up. Candidate Mike Huckabee is showcasing some powerful online communications strategies. Take a look at what he's doing right to build online audiences (and awareness) to learn to put these techniques to work for your organization:

1. Shares lots of user-created videos via his blog. These videos are provocative, informative and funny -- a trifecta. They also provide interesting apples-to-apples comparison with other candidates; showing rather than telling which always works better.
2. Reaches out to key bloggers twice-monthly, and not just the stars. Huckabee has invited bloggers to participated in regular conference calls (listen in here). He's become known for good listening, and has succeeded in building loyalty among this critical (and widely courted) group of influencers.
3. Delivers a user-focused Web site, easy-to-use for key functions (participating, giving, learning more).
4. Encourages independent action including MeetUp, and Huck's Army (a hugely active independent Huckabee forum), giving up the quest for control he can never achieve anyway.

Together, these strategies have led to a massive increase in traffic to the Huckabee site, far greater than that to Obama's or Clinton's site. Even so, Huckabee needs to do a much better job making it easy for site visitors to learn about his responses to key issues such as Pakistan. As it is now, his site just doesn't give users the tools to judge him. When he does, he'll find site traffic to build at an even greater pace.

Caveat:
Huckabee doesn't touch Ron Paul's supporter-led online fundraising coup of November 5th, which raised 4.3 million in a day. Perhaps this more organic effort -- led by Paul's supporters, not his handlers -- made the difference. After all, us communications folks are constantly framing social networking as controlled by users, not by content producers. Any thoughts on the root of Paul's success in motivating action/giving (other than it wasn't generated by Paul's staff)? Please comment below. I want to understand this phenomenon.

Disclaimer:
No, I'm not a Huckabee supporter. But I'm eager to showcase strong communications models, no matter the source.

Hats off to TechPresident for the tip.

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Comments

[Peter]

Hitler was a pretty good communicator, too. And Reagan. The list goes on and on. So, why not Huckabee, too?