Hell Hath No Fury...

After reading IPDI's interesting report Putting Online Influentials to Work for Your Campaign, I can't help but think that they left something very important out. It is important to ask for volunteers, but it is twice as important to follow up with them once they have signed up.

I'd venture to bet that every member of this class would qualify as an Online Political Citizen and what everyone seems to be complaining about from their strategy project is the lack of follow up when signing up as a volunteer.

Personally, I didn't know anything about Viola Baskerville when I was assigned to her, but I have a poor opinion of her now. I sent a Viola E-Card to myself, signed up to be a volunteer, and signed up to receive her newsletter. The E-Card was never delivered and I received the newsletter or a volunteer assignment. Maybe it's not fair, but this makes me think her campaign was disorganized and poorly run.

While it is important to reach out to online influentials, I would say it is twice as important not to piss them off. Most people tell more people when they are unhappy than when they are happy. The last thing a campaign needs is a bunch of influentials spreading bad things about the campaign.