Here's the Dish On 'Tweeter'-Using Texan Rick Perry's Online Presidential Campaign

Rick Perry's online campaign will be THIS BIG. Photo of Perry at the 2011 Republican Leadership Conference: Gage Skidmore / Flickr

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has come out shooting on the campaign trail, with headline-grabbing bluster aimed at Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and President Barack Obama himself — but underneath that rough exterior is a famously well-oiled fundraising machine. To keep its gears turning, the Perry campaign for 2012 will lean on many of the same online tactics that kept him in the Texas statehouse in 2010.

For many people, that might invoke the image of an Obama-style online campaign, full of phone banks and campaign emails to motivate repeated donations from small-dollar donors. But that's just one way to work online; Perry's fundraising modus operandi is to collect donations with higher dollar amounts from fewer donors, and one of the Texan's online consultants says the campaign will be deploying online tools to make that easier to do.

Perry has taken some jabs for demonstrating a less-than-complete grasp on social media, but his campaigns have been social-media savvy. He called Twitter "tweeter" in a video address to the Right Online conference in Minneapolis in June. In March, it was reported that he tried to block specific reporters from his personal Twitter account even though the account is public. Today, Ben Smith passed along one former Perry opponent's allegation that his 2010 gubernatorial campaign "created artificial people to Tweet." But Perry was one of the first governors to have a thoughtful Twitter strategy — keeping separate personal, gubernatorial and campaign accounts — and his campaigns are savvy, too. Last year, he sealed his 2010 gubernatorial re-election without investing much in collateral like yard signs or direct mail. That could have been as much a function of Perry's habit of winning as anything — he was en route to a third term as governor — but it's not a campaign move you'd make if you were wary of bucking the script and trying new things online.

"He's from West Texas and, that may just be his accent," said Ryan Gravatt, Perry 2012's online strategist and a veteran of his 2010 campaign as well. "But whether it's Twitter or 'tweeter,' he knows how to use it."

The campaign will try to cultivate the support of people with large social media followings — influencers — to help create online donors, and plans to roll out a special tool for its top fund-raisers to use to solicit donations, Gravatt told me. Software targeted specifically for the folks who tap their connections on the campaign's behalf — bundlers in political parlance — was one of the evolutions that began in 2008 and carried through to 2010. New software products for bundlers allow volunteers to do things like process credit card donations and mine their Facebook contacts for potential donors, all from a web-based interface. This will probably be of special importance for Perry, who has a reputation for tapping into networks of high-dollar donors. Gravatt is hip to the idea, but says the campaign hasn't picked a vendor yet to do this.

And bundlers won't be the campaign's only focus. As in 2010, Gravatt said, Perry's 2012 website uses software that presents visitors with different messaging depending on how they got there and whether they've been there before.

"If they come to us from Facebook, we're not going to ask us to like them on Facebook, we're going to ask them to make a donation," Gravatt said.

The online consultant had a busy weekend. He wouldn't give specifics, but said RickPerry.org has had a good couple of days, reaching six-figure traffic numbers. Perry's Facebook audience exploded over the weekend, from about 85,000 people on Friday afternoon to over 116,000 today; according to 2012twit.com, he gained nearly 1,900 followers in the last 24 hours, for a current total of 65,000. Audience totals don't mean much, but dramatic changes in social media following can be an indicator of forward or backwards momentum.

Last weekend was, without question, a buzzworthy one for Perry — but it has yet to be seen if that momentum is an indicator of a campaign fameball or a contender with a demeanor and a set of policy messages that will propel him through the primary elections.

"I really don't want to get out there and brag on it," Gravatt said when I asked him for more details about Perry's weekend haul. "I don't want people to think we feel like we've got this locked up and we're on easy street."

Update: Deeper into history — techPres editor and chief politicotechnical historian Micah Sifry drags up this Perry for Governor 2006 campaign artifact through the Wayback Machine: A points-based social activism network that may well have been the first of its kind.

This post has been updated.