Why Blog in Local Politics?

I was involved in a race for state representative here in suburban Chicago a while back where the campaign was not sold on the merits of starting a blog. If you read my blog, you know which side of the fence I stood on. The other side wasn’t against blogging because they thought blogging didn’t make sense or wasn’t worth it. Rather, those against blogging were more concerned the candidate would not have time to write posts to keep the blog fresh and updated.

For several reasons, I thought they were misguided. In a local race, often information about candidates is hard to come because big city media only pays attention to the largest races and/or national issues. Candidates or elected officials’ websites and their blogs, are the best sources of information in the absence of media coverage.

For a local or state race blogs offer the advantage of:

• sustaining conversation with constituents or voters where paid or earned media offers only one-way communications
• putting the candidate on record on important issues so community members fully know where the candidate stands
• blog posts are shareable, meaning if you are “word of mouth worthy,” your blog visitors are empowered to share what they believe is meaningful with others
• regular blog updates (which don’t have to be long-winded essays) are great tools to build community and sustain momentum in a long campaign

Looking back on my “to blog or not to blog” discussions with members of the this campaign for state office, the argument “not to blog” because the candidate would be too busy, actually presented a huge opportunity for others close to the campaign to fill in. What better way to outreach than to give supporters, volunteers or donors the opportunity to guest blog on a candidate or elected official’s website?