Online strategies for GOP 2012 candidates

Politico:

President Barack Obama’s prospective 2012 Republican rivals are investing heavily in the Internet, looking to cut into what was an overwhelming advantage for Obama in the 2008 campaign.

Through the first three months of the year, the political groups started by Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee have spent a total of nearly $600,000 building their web operations, according to reports filed this month with the Federal Election Commission and the Internal Revenue Service.

The online competition has taken a variety of forms. Palin has hired the two young founders of a fan site that zealously defends her honor and upbraids her critics. Pawlenty has hired ((a)) online consultant[[s]] from the 2008 presidential campaigns of Romney and Ron Paul. Gingrich has developed a sophisticated in-house micro-targeting operation. And Huckabee has deployed volunteers to man social networks. .

And, though each potential candidate insists the efforts – online and otherwise – are intended to boost conservatives headed into the 2010 midterm elections, their web operations suggest a keen awareness of the Internet’s importance for organizing, messaging and raising money – and certainly could help lay the groundwork for their own prospective bids in 2012.

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The biggest investment in online operations belongs to Romney, the former Massachusetts governor whose losing 2008 campaign had the most advanced online operation in the field, and Gingrich, the former House Speaker who flirted with running in 2008 and is already hinting about 2012.

Gingrich’s political group, American Solutions for Winning the Future has a major fundraising advantage over the others, because – as a so-called 527 group – it can accept unlimited contributions from people and corporations.

The groups started by Palin, Romney, Huckabee and Pawlenty, on the other hand, are federal leadership political action committees subject to contribution limits of $5,000 per-person-per-year and barred from taking corporate cash. They are, however able to give donations to candidates (which 527s are barred from doing), though such donations typically constitute only a fraction of expenditures.

American Solutions has used its cash advantage to fund a $600,000-a-year online operation. It includes outside contractors specializing in building membership lists and donor rolls through targeted web ads and building databases, such as ACF Solutions (which received $28,000 in the first quarter, according to an American Solutions IRS filing), and a three-person in-house team that has built a sophisticated micro-targeting system that breaks down the group’s email list into issue interests, level of engagement, congressional districts and zip codes.

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The best of these operations will also be searching the web on a daily basis for comment and content about their candidate. The Palin team is already very good at that. She has a huge built in net following and her Facebook comments get wide distribution and feedback.

Gingrich is also very active with an email list to conservatives. The others could learn from his operation. They need to expand their outreach to conservative bloggers.