6 Data-centric Feature Requests for GOP.am
This article assumes awareness and knowledge of the practice of URL shortening. If you’re unfamiliar and interested in learning more, here’s a good place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_shortening)
Recently, Political Media launched a GOP branded URL shortener, http://GOP.am, created in collaboration with the Republican National Committee. At this point, the stated goals of the service are to provide a “tool for Republican activists to demonstrate brand loyalty” presumably through the visual cues inherent in the text of the link and the GOP branded frame it places around shortened websites (my two-cents on the frame: way too big).
The RNC and Political Media are to be congratulated for their innovation, but this service is capable of much more than simple brand loyalty. Indeed, it holds the promise of something far more valuable to the conservative cause: data.
With data in mind, here are six feature requests for GOP.am that would maximize its abilities as an intelligence, analytics and targeting tool.
1) Tracking: Mimicking a service like http://Bit.ly would provide valuable feedback (in the form of click-thru numbers) and networking opportunities for online conservative activists (by identifying other users and conversations that have shortened that URL). Fortunately, this is something we’ve been told to expect in the new year from GOP.am.
2) Aggregation: It’s reasonable to assume that conservatives will be more likely to be exposed to GOP.am links than moderate or liberal users. In this case, the creation of an aggregate dashboard in the vein of http://tweetmeme.com/ would allow activists and influencers to quickly and easily see what links are most popular within the conservative community.
3) Mining & Visualization: Providing conservative organizations such as the RNC with API access to GOP.am shortening data would allow for sophisticated data-mining, text analysis, and visualization. Mining this data for patterns would provide insights and intelligence to these organizations that could in turn be used in their messaging, outreach and activation efforts.
4) Real time alerts: A complement to aggregation and mining, those same organizations with API access to shortening data could set up real-time alerts linked to keywords, specific URLS, or even trending links. Timely customized alerts would allow for on-the-fly tactical reorganization by conservatives, increasing their ability to win the ever-shortening news cycle.
5) Linked GOP.com accounts: Previous feature requests work best if we know that it is specifically conservatives that are sharing GOP.am links. One way to virtually assure this is to key shortening abilities to conservatives’ personal GOP.com accounts. This does, of course, present a barrier to adoption, so it would likely have to be coupled with some form of use incentives to sweeten the pot. This hurdle is well worth it though, as linked accounts serve as a critical midpoint to the final, and most powerful, feature request.
6) Voter Vault integration: Joining URL shortening data with the RNC’s terrestrial database would supercharge the committee’s microtargeting efforts. With shortening keyed to GOP.com accounts, an individual conservative activist's digital footprint could be directly appended to their unique Voter Vault profile. Recency, frequency and click-rate data, coupled with keyword text-mining would be extraordinarily valuable inputs into predictive models of the electorate, increasing predictive accuracy and the potency of customized calls to action.
Brand building is important, but turning GOP.am into a data-centric conservative tool holds the promise of so much more: super-charged networking, intelligence, analytics and microtargeting abilities for conservatives around the country.
- Alex Lundry
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