I see your concern. Unfortunately, whether it’s the potential for some boiler room that a company sets up in India to produce phony product comments, click fraud operations, or politicians paying for people to blog about them, there are ways to game a system that well be exploited.

You and I have both a responsibility and now a means to counter such unethical behavior. I hope and wonder, if what you describe as a “controlled” effort on the part of a politician will be able to be detected by the general population. You know, long before social media special interest groups regularly ask their members to sign a letter written by the group to send to their respective members of congress or to newspapers as a letter to the editor. Is that controlled or it is a way for everyone to be on the same page that supports that group? Whether it be the Sierra Club or the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, and everyone in between they all have a right to make their case.

Having said that and having been inside political campaigns, the best campaigns have a solid volunteer workforce. I believe it is a good thing to educate your supporters about the issues, and the candidate’s positions on those issues. I also think it wise to encourage those supporters to blog about issues of primary concern to them. And to my point in the original post, smart leaders of communication teams that are tuned into the electorate will use social media as a dialogue, not a monologue. In fact, I believe one of the qualities of social media is that it gives equal footing to all sides of an issue.

What I’m hoping to see is the dialogues created in the election cycle grow in such a way that the general tone of the conversation is, “What are they saying and where do we agree?” as opposed to “This is what I think and you should see it that way.” Some may call this idealistic, to them I say, you’re right and what’s wrong with that?

Thanks again for commenting. To keep the dialogue going, you can submit it to Digg or Stumble Upon or just pass it along.

All the best,
Albert Maruggi