10 Ways to Campaign for Rick Perry on the Internet

To help Texas Gov. Rick Perry prevail in Iowa, here are some of the social media sites and, for good measure, some techniques, for you to run your own mini-campaign for Rick Perry in Iowa.

1. Update your Twitter profile to indicate that you are supporting ‘Perry2012’ or the ‘PerryPosse.’

Let others know your intentions!

2. Increase your Twitter presence by following Perry folks

Get more Twitter followers. The way to do it is to start finding people who may have an interest in Rick Perry. I usually start by searching the hash tags #Perry2012 and #PerryPosse. Look for people posting positive stuff about Rick Perry and follow them. About 20% of those who you follow will follow you back. Don’t follow more than 200 (or so) people per day, or you may get banned by Twitter for suspicious activity.

3. Weed out Perry folks who don’t follow you back

Whenever you follow someone, Twitter sends a notification to that person via email or iPhone alert or both. They have the option to follow you back. If after a week or so (give us time to follow back!), that person hasn’t followed you back, UNfollow them!

An easy tool to see who isn’t following you back is to log in on Friend or Follow. Then, you repeat. Here’s the neat thing about this technique: Let’s say someone didn’t follow you back. You unfollow them. Then, a week or two later, you follow them again. That person gets another alert that you’ve followed them!

Finally, realize that popular figures like @GovernorPerry himself will probably not follow you back. There are simply too many requests being made. Media personalities like Sean Hannity are like this too. The Friend or Follow technique only works on other regular people like you and me.

Oh, and follow me at @RickPerryReport. I admit that sometimes I am slow to return follows. But I try to follow back all who are seemingly legitimate followers, but I am sometimes slow. As a general rule, you want the number of your followers to exceed the number of people you are following, so weed your Twitter garden regularly.

4. Be Great on Facebook

Change your “Info” page to include the fact that you are supporting Rick Perry. Then, head out onto the Facebook world and follow some groups and pages. Here are the pages I generally follow (or LIKE or JOIN).

1. Rick Perry Report Facebook Page (it’s a plug!) – I generally will post something every 12 hours. Just enough to keep the content flowing, but no so much that I drown out your mother’s postings of her favorite recipes. Usually if more news breaks in between wall postings, I’ll post it as a comment to the latest main post.
2. Rick Perry’s Official Facebook Page
3. Iowans for Rick Perry Facebook Page - LIKE this page, it's the official Iowa campaign Facebook page. The more the merrier!
4. Rick Perry Strike Force Facebook group - This is an open group. You can join right away,
5. Rick Perry for President in 2012 Facebook group

5. Be Great on Twitter

Here are some of the interesting people to follow to stay in the loop on the Perry campaign:

1. Follow @RickPerryReport
2. Follow @TeamRickPerry
3. Follow @GovernorPerry
4. Follow @Willisms

6. Manage your Twitter effectively

I use Hootsuite, others use TweetDeck or Seesmic.

7. Gather meaningful content

Don’t just post comments out there without saying something interesting. Have an arsenal of stuff to share, and share it in a meaningful way. Good places to find good content:

1. RickPerry.org Media Center – Browse through all of the videos of the Rick Perry ads, and video appearances and find good ones that you like or appreciate.
2. RickPerryReport.com - Usually a post or two is made every day, and each post is full of links to articles that you can share.
3. Follow the news on Twitter - search for @GovernorPerry, #rickperry, #Perry2012, @TeamRickPerry, and other Twitter accounts and hash tags that may contain good content.
4. Also, follow the #tcot (Top Conservatives on Twitter) hash tag for news from all of the conservative candidates and issues.

8. Use YouTube. Everyone loves a great video

The best place for the latest Rick Perry goodness is the official Rick Perry Campaign Youtube Channel.

9. Retweet Other People’s Stuff

It is encouraging if other folks retweet your comments on Twitter, so go ahead and offer encouragement to others and retweet with impunity!

10. Start a Pissing War with a PaulBot

Okay, I am half joking. But, if you really want to make some waves, or you’re just feeling rather mischievous, Tweet “@RonPaul will not be the nominee, retweet if you agree.” Then, duck for cover. (What’s a “PaulBot”? A fanatical Ron Paul supporter).