Some thoughts on John Edwards online strategy

John Edwards by Liza Sabater

I have to say that John Edwards may be the hardest working candidate from the whole crop of presidential hopefuls on both ends of the political spectrum. It's not just the fact that he is the only one who continues to put out the most policy proposals on a regular basis. It's the fact that he started earlier and with a clearly long-term strategy represented by the community platform his developed under for JohnEdwards.com.

Whereas Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton have created sites to support their candidacies money making strategies, Edwards site was founded as a platform for communications, strategy deployment and community building before it became a source for his presidential fundraising.

You can tell by perusing John Edwards's site that he has a well developed and strategized use of blogs, forums, chatrooms and other new media tools. The feel and tone of his site is head and shoulders above the Obama and Clinton sites as far as full civic engagement that goes beyond his candidacy.

Which is why I am completely impressed by his use of Memorial Day to call for action. This is the kind of strategy that would not only spring from an online community but that would be called by someone who knows they can pull it off with the community of communicators, influencers and citizen leaders they have cultivated.

Many people want to knock down bloggers and users of online community sites as an elite who has far too much time on our hands to be connected to real people. My take is quite different, as someone who doesn't have the money to live as an elite.

Bloggers and members of online communties are what I like to call citizen leaders.

We are the people who build bridges between online and offline constituencies. We connect the digitally excluded to technologies that are changing the dynamics of our country's economies and politics. We are the translators, who get to explain these brave new worlds to those who don't understand them but are willing to learn and eager to participate.

John Edwards has built a network of leaders, influencers and connectors who have been explaining his vision for a new America a year and a half before he announced his candidacy.

I am looking forward to see how Edwards' connectors are going to help articulate and coalesce the amalgam of anti-war initiatives that have been going on for 5 years now --and hopefully become a catalyst for ending the war in Iraq.

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