CalendaRSS
BY Alan Rosenblatt | Friday, June 8 2007
One of the most exciting things about watching the evolving use of digital strategy in the presidential campaigns is seeing the emergence of new best practices. The Edwards campaign provides a great example of what I mean. While many campaigns, especially those with blogs, have set up an RSS feed, Edwards has provided several RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feeds on its RSS Central page for supporters to more easily keep up with news and information from the candidates, the Edwards campaign has created several specific feeds, including an RSS feed of the candidate’s events calendar.
An RSS feed for the candidates events calendar is a great resource for supporters who want to keep track of when the candidate is coming to a location near where they live or when the candidate can be seen on TV. It helps the campaign more efficiently disseminate its schedule, especially to dedicated supporters who are very likely to share this information with their own personal networks. It is a win/win arrangement.
The only other candidate I was able to find using dedicated CalandaRSS feed is Chris Dodd. His feed information can be found at the bottom of his events calendar.
And while Edwards and Dodd stand alone providing this easy access to their calendars, a few of the candidates do not include their calendar on their website at all, including Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Sam Brownback, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee (who is still seems to be relying on his exploratory committee website), Duncan Hunter, Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson (though he has not yet declared). This is clearly a worst practice.
The remaining candidates rely on email or you coming to their websites to get their event calendar information. This puts too much burden on the voter. The new best practice here is CalendaRSS.