True North

Dorothy Fleming, the Republican Party of Minnesota Deputy Chair asked me to put together a piece on blogging for her in a big hurry. The following now appears on her Official Blog with some minor [edits] on my part. As I said, I threw this together very quickly last week.

How a BLOG can benefit your BPOU

By SD51 Chair, Andy Aplikowski Blog:residualforces.com

1. It will save hundreds to thousands of dollars by being your immediate response vehicle. You can have responses or information up for all to see in moments with no cost and no arm twisting with the editor of your local newspaper.

2. It does take some time to develop a readership and get the blog out there, but current political bloggers are always more than happy to announce a new blog and point their readers in your direction.

3. You want to make this the place people go when they want to find out news or information on your race. Need to mention it at every event. Have some cheap post cards printed up to hand out. Update it regularly and keep fresh information on there.

4. You can get your newsletter and message out to millions in a fraction of the time and money it used to take you to mail your newsletters to a couple hundred people.

How do you set up a blog?

1. Blogger

The easiest and cheapest way is to use one of the free blogging services like "Blogger". They can host it, they have a great tutorial on how to actually enter your information, ready to use templates, AND it is FREE!!!

http://mybpou.blogspot.com

There are other free services as well that offer hosting and simple set ups and templates. Blogger is just the most popular.

2. Ask your current BPOU web host if they have an easy to add a blog feature. Maybe you can have something like http://www.mybpou.com/blog

3. Ask a pro. I've helped lots of people set up blogs. There are many of us out here who would be more than willing to help you get one set up on a server. Once you get it up and running, it is pretty much like using a word processor. If you can email, you can blog.

What about the blogs already out there?

1. Most bloggers love to have contact with candidates, officials, or party people. Now the big national ones get Presidents and other major players, but there are a lot of local ones out there, and probably one already in your District.

2. You do have to earn their trust. Most of the established widely read ones are fed up conservatives who RINO hunt. If you can't stand accountability and absolute conservative[ism] unbridled, a blog like Residual Forces, which is credentialed to the RNC convention, is not for you. That happens to be my blog, and I do help out as many candidates as I can, but only the ones I really like and can agree with. There are a lot of blogs like mine that ruffle the feathers of many people, most surely some of you reading this, but we do it [because] is our passion and desire to see the Republican party become better so that it can return to majority status in the MN House, and dare I say, get back seats in the MN Senate, like it was just 4 years ago. (see, that was an example of a blog post. :D )

3. There are scores of blogs out there, and most of them have earned a readership through their hard work.

Blogs in general are your best friend. They are not part of the traditional mainstream media that is instantly biased against you. Minnesota has one of if not THE biggest and most active blogging communities involved in politics across the country.

Candidates are blogging. BPOU leaders and CD chairs are blogging. Regular party activists are blogging.

Blogs are the new printing press. We are no longer beholden to some editor and his own political agenda. You can now get your own message out there as you see fit. Blogs have put the power of information dissemination at the finger tips of every single one of us. Some guys in their undies in their basement may have beat you to the punch, that doesn't mean you have to ignore the next generation of political campaigning.