Don't Commit Web Suicide

Promoted. There's nothing that annoys me more as online political professional than politicians who refuse to continue the conversation with supporters after the campaign. Many of the former Republicans have hundreds of thousands of supporters they could mobilize for John McCain... or even keep themselves relevant and build a base for future runs or their activities in Congress. And yet most just don't. Only Huckabee is doing this well on the Republican side. -Patrick

As Hillary Clinton preps to concede that Barack Obama has the delegates to secure the nomination, I wonder about the future of her online presence.  Will her website continue to project her political activity -- positions, whereabouts, and calls to action?

Or, will she commit web suicide like so many viable major federal candidates before her?

You may ask why we should care about Clinton's online presence.  We should care because once she's a loser, she will join the cast of dozens of Republicans who lost in '06, and that will lose in '08, and we should learn from her mistakes.

She was an establishment candidate who banked on an outdated approach for securing victory.  She has suffered from the same mistakes of many in the GOP establishment.  Power leads to complacency leads to lack of innovation leads to political suicide.  

Will she learn from this loss?  Regardless, we should.

While there are so many lessons to be had from the Clinton campaign's failure, let's laser our focus to the web.  I've seen it happen often where candidates employ an aggressive online strategy day-by-day in their campaigns.  They promote calls to action, offer petitions to build their lists, post videos of their candidates appearances (at minimum) and unique videos (at maximum), and in some cases, have a blogger or team of bloggers offering relatively provocative content.  

Then, they lose.  And losing marks the end ... at least online.  Often, they continue to campaign -- for other candidates, causes, for a future run for office.  Yet, there is no evidence of this online.  No website, no blogging, no videos, no social outreach.  

Or they win.  They devote their efforts to their official web presence -- which comes with so many limits that engagement is nearly impossible -- and abandon their guerilla online campaign. 

Why?  If a candidate has even a smidgeon of a hope to run for office in the future, or nominated for a political position, or to run a political party or organization.  Basically, if they plan to remain a political figure, the web offers them the most effective, most efficient means for maintaining their relationship with their followers. 

For some evidence of what I mean, just take a look at some of the sites of competitive candidates in the 2008 presidential race: John Edwards, Mike Huckabee, Bill Richardson, Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson.  Does their online presence match their offline presence?  In most cases, these candidates are politically active, but you would never know it unless you happen to catch an interview with them on TV or to attend one of the few events they are holding across the country.

The only candidate who has adapted his campaign presence to his post-campaign presence is Mike Huckabee.  

I understand that for some of these guys, showing off too much might be interpreted as a run for VP, but what does going on TV do? 

C'mon guys.  How difficult would it be to hire one or two people to continue to market you?  You're wasting your time with political activity if its impact is not multiplied with the power of the web.