February 23, 2014 10:58 AM UTC

Campaign Bloggers - How to Post Here Effectively

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• by: DavidThi808

(Good advice from a longtime Polster – promoted by Colorado Pols)

Someone walks into a party, climbs up on a table, drops their pants, squats over the punchbowl, and drops a gigantic turd in the punch. At this point, while you have everyone's attention, no one is listening to a word you say.

If your goal is to get attention. If your goal is to leave an impression of a pile of shit, then there's no reason to read on. However, if your goal is to effect the conversation, to persuade, to make people think, then read on. Because most political shills (liberal & conservative) make all of the below errors. Consistently.

1. Be honest. When you post something that is a known lie, you then taint everything further you post with the likelihood of also being a lie.
2. When something you posted that you thought was correct turns out to be wrong, admit it. The statement "I'm sorry, I was wrong" is incredibly powerful.
3. Discuss other issues. Elle joined Pols to post supporting McInnis. But she posted on multiple other topics becoming a member of the community. And that gave her major cred.
4. Admit to your candidates negatives. No candidate is perfect and pretending yours is is not going to convince anyone that you have the one perfect human in the history of the world. It will however lead readers to believe everything you post is marketing bullshit.
5. Respond to replies. You don't have to respond to every reply. You don't have to answer every challenge, just as others will not respond to all of yours. But you need to be communicating and that requires responding back and forth. If you don't respond, you've lost the argument.
6. When you see a point you can agree with, say so. Agreeing with your opponent on something is not a weakness, it's a sign of strength. Even if it's just "while I disagree, I see your point."
7. Don't beat a dead horse. If you've got a wild hair up your ass about Benghazi, then one comment a day is fine, two is pushing it, and with three you've lost everyone as they think you're a conspiracy lunatic. If you've got to say more on the subject, write a diary.
8. Don't paste talking points from other sites. Especially don't paste the talking points du-jour from your side. All you are then is an unthinking robot and no one will have any interest in what you have to say.
9. Don't thread-jack. If a diary or comment thread is about Hick's efforts to protect the Oil & Gas industry, don't post there about his support for gun legislation. People aren't thinking "good point," they're thinking what an asshole for thread jacking.

A giant part of this is get out of the echo chamber that most politically active people live in where everyone you work with agrees with you. And you all agree that anyone who disagrees with you is clearly an idiot who wants to destroy the American way of Life. After all, are you going to listen to what someone says when they treat you like an idiot that hates America?

It's a lot of hard work to have a positive impact for your candidate here. But while having everyone notice your turd floating in the punchbowl, that approach isn't helping your side, it's hurting it.