I’m on chapter 6 in Ireland and Nash’s book Winning Campaigns Online. One of the ‘essential features of an effective website’ listed in the chapter was an ‘email-to-friends form’ on the campaign’s website(p 34).
I was thinking that beyond having this form, a political campaign could run peer-to-peer email campaigns. A campaign would email their base and ask them to get 5 to 10 of their friends to sign up to contribute or volunteer for the campaign. The people who were getting the most new signups could be listed on the side of the homepage. This could dramatically affect a campaign’s ability to raise money and get new volunteers.
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Like you’re thinking - that ties in nicely with Fogg’s chapter on using competition and cooperation to persuade people to do things. You could even create different levels of membership, depending on number of emails they have collected, volunteers they have gathered etc.
Great thinking. This is why I believe that the Internet has enormous potential in affecting the way that we campaign. All it takes is a few creative thinkers to develop new ways to use the web to the their advantage and the political landscape will be changed forever.
For example, you just came up with this peer to peer option and Peter C expanded on it. If a candidate was to use it and get great results others would notice and adopt it as their own. Eventually every campaign might use your idea.
The use of the Internet in campaigns changes course each day as creative thinkers like you think outside of the box and come up with innovative new uses and techniques.