Two or three folks from our strategy and business development team will be attending the Personal Democracy Forum Conference at the end of the month. The conference is a great time and a good opportunity to hear the latest thinking in the political internet space. We’d love to connect with you while we are in New York City — if you are attending the conference and want to grab a cup of coffee just shoot us an email: info@rallycongress.com.
1 year ago
Rally Congress is rolling out a new feature today— clean, black and white printer friendly .pdf files (here’s an example) of your petition are now available from a link at the bottom of the petition page.
We’ve had a number of requests for this feature. Folks are telling us they post Rally Congress petitions at work and hand them out at meet-ups and rallies. The printer friendly version will now allow your supporters to easily print and distribute the latest version of your petition offline!
1 year ago
The Obama Administration today rolled out the “Office of Public Engagent” or OPE with a new web site at http://www.whitehouse.gov/ope/ . (hat tip: Personal Democracy Forum ) The OPE also released a new 33-page Citizens Briefing Book with the final results of the user-submissions and votes on policy ideas during the transition last winter. The document also includes some word clouds and user comments. For kicks, here’s the “technology” word cloud:
1 year ago
Currently, 137 members of the House and Senate require a phone number in order to process an incoming email. The Rally Congress system asks for this information at the last step before sending, and only if one of the user’s officials requires it.
By popular demand, Rally Congress now tells users which Representatives and/or Senators are requiring a phone number. Here’s a shot of the new interface in action:
1 year ago
Oprah and even President Obama are now on Twitter, so Rally Congress is working to help you join the conversation in more effective ways.
“Hash tags” are one way Twitter users organize discussions. Now, Rally Congress petition managers can also create hash tags for their organization and petitions, and Rally Congress will automatically insert those tags when site visitors post to Twitter from a petition page.
This should significantly expand the audience for your petition on Twitter!
You create a hash tag simply by prefixing a short word or abbreviation with a hash symbol: #hashtag. Tags should be used sparingly— one is fine and never more than two or three for your organization or issue. A good approach is to come up with a specific hash tag for your campaign or organization, and add a second one for your more general issue set.
A great resource to search for existing tags and track the progress of your hash tags is http://hashtags.org.
1 year ago
Notice the “Bookmark” button at the top right of your petition pages?
A new report in your Rally Congress control panel tracks when users click one of these “bookmark” or “share” links. When the user clicks on the link it carries them to the third party site (i.e. Facebook) and pre-populates that site’s submit form with your petition link.
Links from popular sites back to your petitions will increase your traffic and improve your ranking with search engines. This new report gives you a good idea of which social networking sites are popular with your users and which might need more attention.
Here’s a screenshot to give you some of flavor:
1 year ago
This weekend Scott Murphy was declared the winner in a tight special election in this Albany-area district. The office became vacant when the governor appointed Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand to fill New York’s junior Senate seat. Once Representative-elect Murphy is seated, there will only be one vacancy in the House (CA -32), and one in the Senate— the Minnesota Senate battle continues in the courts.
1 year ago
A great time was had by all! Thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth and to the organizers of the conference at George Washington University and Campaigns & Elections. See you again next year!
1 year ago
Yesterday Congress swore in the Honorable Mike Quigley, who fills the open 5th District of Illinois after winning a special election earlier this month. The seat became open when Rep. Rahm Emanuel joined the Obama Administration last winter. Congrats to Rep. Quigley— we’ve got a backlog of letters waiting for you!
1 year ago
We’ve just finished two days at the annual Politics Online Conference in downtown Washington, DC, where we sponsored and had a table to demo the Rally Congress platform. We had a great time. Photos and details to follow!
1 year ago
