“Find a partner and build a team. No one changes the world alone.” – Alan Khazei

As part of the live video podcast Rule53 Alan Khazei brought his passion for social entrepreneurship and his experience founding City Year to a room of young entrepreneurs Sunday the 22^nd.

The podcast – a production of DartBoston – pairs a proven entrepreneur with an under 30 Boston professional who has an early stage startup. On Sunday Alan was paired with Ashli Stempel a Northeastern senior who is founding PULSE. PULSE is a non-for-profit with a mission to help juvenile offenders transition back into their communities through activity based workshops.

The event brought out some of Boston’s young bright stars including entrepreneurs, social media folks and tenacious students. Based on my informal pole post event (“Hey, what did you think?”) The crowd was genuinely impressed by Alan’s deep experiences as a business man, entrepreneur and social activist. Alan’s ability to articulate and transfer his knowledge and experiences maybe his greatest strength as a public speaker. Several times during the show he provided one line bits of genius:

“We need a system to celebrate social entrepreneurs, like the system for entrepreneurs.”

“You need 5 people to start a project…you need a team”

“Sun Tzu – every battle is one or lost before it is fought….it’s not the battle, it’s the training and preparation.”

The show centered on how Alan was able to establish City Year and then turn it into such a successful non-for-profit. He also talked about how he had to fight to keep Americorps (modeled after City Year) alive after funding was cut for the program. This transitioned nicely into Alan telling the story of why he is running for senate. He made a great name for himself as a champion for big citizenship at City Year and that’s what he wants to bring to the senate.

There are 9 days left before the special elections on the 8^th. I hope you all get out and vote and choose someone who will be the kind of person you want in the senate. I’ve been working with the Khazei campaign for the last month and he is the candidate I want to fill Ted Kennedy’s old seat. He is a savvy business man, a tough negotiator and the peoples champion.

If Alan wins this election it will be because of a groundswell of support from citizens. It wont be because of money, TV ads, political leverage. I find this one of the most attractive ideas behind this campaign.

The word-of-mouth for Alan’s run, generated by the event was tremendous. The live podcast reached an online and offline audience of over 50 people and the video has since been watched over 100 times. The link to the show was shared on Twitter, Facebook, blogs and through email and was clicked through by over 300 people. On Twitter over 30 people sent over 100 tweets to a combined network of 27,020 people.

You can watch the whole show here:

Alan Khazei and Ashli Stempel – Rule53 DartBoston

If you are reading this you are probably involved with social media or online communications in some fashion. If this is indeed true I think you will be impressed by the support that Alan has demonstrated for our community and his understanding of the big ideas behind it. The video below expresses this.

I would love to hear your thoughts about how Alan can improve his chances in these final days. As always I appreciate any and all comments!

Thanks

-Marcus

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There are some 40 odd days until the Massachusetts democratic primary. There are four candidates vying for the seat vacated by the late Ted Kennedy. You may have heard that the commonwealth tends to be a little liberal. So it is almost guaranteed that whoever represents the Dems in the race will end up in the senate.

The four Democrats running are:

1. Attorney General Martha Coakley
2. Congressman Mike Capuano
3. City Year Founder Alan Khazei
4. Boston Celtics Co-Owner Steve Pagliuca

In such an accelerated race how voters get their information on candidates is going to be different. It takes TIME to produce and disseminate a TV commercial, design an ad campaigns or execute a PR blitz. It also takes time for voters to digest and understand these messages.

That is why social media is going to play such a huge role in this race. Social media happens in real time. A candidate can send out his/her stance on an issue that just happened via Twitter or Facebook instantly and then that message will spread like wild fire assuming the candidate has a large enough network. We all know how social media can have an effect on a campaign *Obama*. So which candidates are doing it the best in the race for Teddy’s seat? How can they improve?

The Grades:

Martha Coakley: Overall B-

Twitter: C         Followers: 962 Tweets: 183

The Coakley campaign has almost 1,000 followers which is a great base. They tweet often and are good at using links and hashtags.

The tweets are often coming in the third person, however. Martha is this or Martha is that. So if this isn’t Martha tweeting than who is it? The handle is also very broadcasty. Not a lot of @replies.

Facebook: B    Fans: 4,824

The Coakley campaign has a very strong Facebook presence with almost 5k fans. The do a very good job of adding updates daily. These update are heavily liked and commented causing them to spread virally over Facebook.

Again however there is no interaction between the fans on Facebook and the campaign. No responses to the comments.

Action items:

ENGAGE! The Coakley campaign needs to stop ignoring their followers and fans. These are the people most dedicated to the campaign. Engage with them and figure out ways they can spread the message.

Alan Khazei: Overall B-

Twitter: B         Followers: 1,162          Tweets: 265

The Khazei campaign is by far doing the best job at using Twitter to engage their people. They are doing a good job of @reply people, posting links and using hashtags.

They do need to continue to tweet more often though and build their following. This could be an easy piece of low hanging fruit for this campaign.

Facebook: C+  Fans: 4,025

What I loved about the Khazei Facebook page was that a lot of the content was being uploaded by fans. They also do a great job of posting great links and updates that get out in Facebook and go viral.

The setup of the fan page could use some work though. For instance adding an events and video tab could boost this page from a C+ to an A.

Action items:

Considering that Khazei doesn’t have the funds or name recognition as some of the other candidates, they need to win online and have a great opportunity to do so. If they continue to increasing followers and fans they will be able to spread the mission faster than TV ads or print pieces.

In this accelerated election if you win online you give yourself a great chance to win at the poles.

Mike Capuano: Overall C-

Twitter: D         Followers: 452 Tweets: 145

The Capuano campaign does do a good job of engaging on Twitter. They are adding links and using hashtags, but there really need to become more involved in the space. It’s such an easy way to make connections and there are not spending enough time on it.

Facebook: C+

The Capuano Facebook page is very well done. They have boxes for their Flickr and YouTube pages. They are using more function on the page than other campaigns however they are not updating regularly. On Facebook it is important to get as much content out into the public stream so that fans can like it and comment on it.

Action Items: With Capuano’s name recognition there is no reason he shouldn’t have followings the size of Coakley’s or Khazei’s. There campaign needs to make a commitment to being in the social media game instead of half-assing it.

Steve Pagliuca: Overall D-

Twitter D          Followers: 395            Tweets 133

I think that the need to take the time at the Pagliuca campaign to figure out how Twitter works. They don’t really have a grasp on the whole @replies thing but they are trying. They did get the big time twitter “celebrity” endorsement from @DonnieWhalberg.

Facebook:  F     Fans: 442

They are on Facebook and 442 fans is a start, but you have to do better than that.

I only took a look at Twitter and Facebook because I didn’t want to post to get to big. Also I didn’t compare website traffic because compete.com doesn’t have the Oct. numbers out and Sept. doesn’t tell the whole story.

How big of a part do you think social networks are playing in this campaign?

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