Big-Seed Marketing

At the recent Modern Media Strategies workshop at the Heritage Foundation, Patrick Ruffini focused his entire presentation on the eternal killer app: email.

"Eyeballs" are everything for your online presence. As Ruffini put it: "Email is still the closest thing we have to mass communication on the web." He rightly notes that the famed Dean online revolution actually happened via email.

In May of this year, the Harvard Business Review published an excellent piece by Duncan Watts and Jonah Peretti entitled: "Viral Marketing for the Real World". In it they examine the elusive phenomenon where a single email thread or online piece replicates like wildfire across the Internet.

They point out that this type of "viral" event is really accidental, difficult to reproduce, and impossible to predict. Instead they advocate "big-seed marketing." Essentially, big seed marketing:

combines viral-marketing tools with old-fashioned mass media in a way that yields far more predictable results than “purely” viral approaches like word-of-mouth marketing.

They note that true viral marketing involved a "reproduction rate" of 1 or greater. That is, for every personal that receives the message he or she spreads it to more that one other person, thus leading to exponential growth. As the authors note:

By contrast, viral messages with an R of less than 1 are generally considered failures. That’s because purely viral campaigns, like disease outbreaks, typically start with a small number of seed cases and quickly burn themselves out unless their R exceeds the epidemic threshold, or tipping point, of 1.

Not everyone is into "forwarding like it's hot" (ala Michael Scott). Instead, your email send will slowly peter out to zero generation after generation.

However, the authors tell us that this "failure" can be seen as a boon if the initial seeding is large enough. For example, if you have a list of 10,000 and a email infection rate of 0.5 each generation would pass it on to half as many recipients. The math goes like this 5,000 + 2500 + 1250 + 625 + 312 + 156... After 6 generations your email infection burns out but you've reached an extra 20,000 in the process! Not a failure after all.

The authors note several examples of this type of viral marketing. An excellent read with great advice for any blogging marketeer.

New Media Strategies

Today I'm attending the Heritage foundation's New Media Strategies forum. There are a gambit of new media folk here including Robert Bluey, Soren Dayton, Patrick Ruffini, David All and more.

Essentially, this is a workshop to discuss how new media efforts can help the conservative movement. Google is co-sponsoring the event from their local Public Policy blog.

I'll be blogging throughout the day on the event.

Live Blogging Bill Kristol at Heritage

--------------------------------------------------------------
Quick note: like a J.K Rowling Horcrux, I have separated my blogging life into numerous venues:

• RightSideRedux - The original of the Justin Hart blogs covering all things political and "me" related.
• MyManMitt.com - The incredibly popular site in support of our next President Mitt Romney
• FamilyFragments.com - The job. The newly launched blog of the Lighted Candle Society with Ed Meese, Judith Reisman, John Harmer and yours truly

--------------------------------------------------------------
Now, onto the main event: Live blogging with Bill Kristol at the Heritage Foundation.

1:07 - Q: What does the war look like in a year from now?

"Its a very fluid situation. #14 on his list Politics of war are very fluid. If things change on ground all sorts of things can change... It can also get better than we expect. A Lt. Col. in August 2006 thought Ramadi was gone. Falujah was in horrible shape... much of that has flipped"

12:53 - Q: "You were at the forefront of the debate against Hillary. Are you going to weigh in on this?

Kristol: "I agree we've given up some ground on this. I thought we could defeat HillaryCare without compromise. It is easier to be in opposition than to govern We had a huge Medicate fight in '95... everyone got allergic to good Healthcare ideas... people were scared of the issue. I think that's a good instance... if the GOP agenda had been more reform oriented rather than slow the rate of growth down. Still, we didn't have a good explanation as to how this would help people. We paid some price for that defeat in '95... I have a hunch that Healthcare is coming back at a national level. .. We should not be timid. Romney and Giuliani have ambitious Healthcare plans. "

12:45 - Q: "What would a 'more energetic' government look like?

"I'm not sure... but the current administration could, for example, pay more attention to staffing your own administratrion. One thing Reagan did very well is that a lot got done under the radar... there were a lot of things that got done in ways taht were constitutional and legal and the Executive branche has a lot of discretion. The current administration hasn't done that. Good executives delegate but they get in and they get a lot of advice. I'm a little worried that they've gone on auto pilot..."

12:37 - Kristo: "I'm a energetic and limited government conservative... "

12:34 - Kristol: ""I'm more skeptical about Hillary's chances. The truth is the Dems could nominate some general mid-westeren modern democrat and they would be in "

12:32 - Kristol, in answer to the question: "What about the media war?":

"One problem has not thought of this as a war. When you get a military briefing you see a serious thoughtful interesting discussion. The media never thought of it as a way. The administration certainly hasn't No maps. No one explains what is going on like in past wars."

12:21 - Kristol:

"As a friend of mind put it the other day... everyone's focus is on the three I's: Iraq, Iran, and Iowa"

"The current Republican debate is very positive for the conservative movement.... There's no evidence that a good and heated debate among candidates would harm the party."

"I was struck in Iraq how much the generals emphasized Iran."

"The contrast of the debate among military leaders with serious discussion in contrast to the discussio in Washington is striking."

"The Rumsfeld strategy wasn't crazy but it was wrong and we stuck with it too long."

"The Petreus strategy is working. There is no one in the military that thinks we are not winning."

"The military is incredibly impressive."

12:14 - Bill Kristol on the war in Iraq...

12:09 - Michelle from Americans for Prosperity is touting an event called "Defending the American Dream Summit" in October here in DC including Mitt Romney.

12:07 - NZ Bear is explaining a new website to help get people set up to drive petitions in support of the war. (more info coming: see Victory Caucus.com

12:00 - Bill just entered