Mike Laub’s advice to Mitt Romney
I run this site:
because I am interested in politics, and I wanted to create Mitt’s beliefs as a starting off point for arguments. I would love it if Mitt created a site, that allowed people to submit reasons to agree and disagree with his beliefs, similar to what I’m trying to do. In brief, this would allow him to lead a cause, and for us to get involved. It shouldn’t be about one person, but about leading a cause.
To this end, I would love for Romney to create a website like this:
http://debatepedia.idebate.org/
or this:
I have similar goals to those websites, but want to do things a bit differently. I figured if I built the site, it would become popular, and people would want to join and help me make it better… I wanted to create a grass roots movement… It hasn’t worked so well… I mean I have hundreds of pages, all of Romney’s press releases, speeches, and I feel it is pretty organized, and has a lot of good content… but no one cares. Let me give you some stats about the site. Here are the stats over the last month for the number of visits that the different pages get:
1. http://myclob.pbworks.com/w/page/21956775/Ann%20Romney 15,240 visits last month
2. http://myclob.pbworks.com/w/page/21957741/George%20Romney 4,619 visits last month
3. http://myclob.pbworks.com/w/page/21959098/Photography 4,276 visits last month
4. Why did your father not give you any of his inheritance 2,362 visits last month
It is sort of depressing, but it seems that people care about Ann Romney, George Romney, want to see photos from Mitts life, and want to know about how Romney got his wealth. None of my other pages gets more than 1,000 visits a month. Its depressing to me on a couple of accounts: it seems like Romney supporters are not engaged in trying to help him win specific arguments, they are just curious about his biography. And it seems I was able to build a better Ann Romney page than Romney’s web guys.
If you google “Ann Romney” many of the top ranked images come from my site, but none of the top ranked images come from a Mitt Romney official website. How is it that his website sucks so bad? I suck at making website… I was just ticked off that all the Ann Romney photos were photo-shopped to show her in her underwear. I work full time as a Sr. Electrical engineer, have 3 kids, have no formal website design training, but I was able to build a better Ann Romney website than Mitt’s guys. What gives?
Romney’s website has 3 issues: Jobs, Healthcare, and Foreign Policy. I know Obama tried to do too many things, never focused on Jobs, and was spread to thin. It is important to focus, but on every issue someone else is going to define Mitt Romney, unless he defines himself.
I think Romney needs to read this article:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/wired40_ceo.html
change course, invite us all to help him, and lead our causes.
Romney has made many arguments over his career. These arguments need to be better organized than just dumped under 3 headings. Couldn’t he try to harness people power to do something like Wikipedia for his arguments? Couldn’t he be a little more transparent?
Am I wrong? Is it a problem that none of Ann Romney’s photos come from MittRomney.com? Should Romney be a major content provider? Should he his site be better organized? Should he follow the advice of the Wired article? Would it help people get to know him more? And should he do some sort of wiki or online project as as a way of getting people involved? I guess he is winning, so why criticize? Is he waiting for the general election to become more specific? Let me know what you think.