So, I'm just about finished with my revamp concept. So far so good, but I wanted to provide an update:
I've virtually halted all live progression on the web site until the Constitution/RevPac moneybombs were finished. Having thought about this moneybomb for over a month, I felt it was important not to distract from the others, in case these updates prove really successful. Now that Black THIS Out is next, I'm excited to start proceeding to put all the various parts together now.
What I identify as the underlying problem is the lack of activity on the moneybomb web sites themselves and nothing really more. Simply put, there isn't anything on the web sites so far to attract return visitors. It should be something each and every Ron Paul supporter would want to visit each day. Considering the themes of all our moneybombs this year, they lacked a lot of ability to build onto the theme and produce a snowball effect.
Black THIS Out is significantly different, thanks to the mainstream media giving us constant fuel.
Here are the new features being implemented:
1) Pledge. Report. Share.
An objective-based funnel system to encourage viewers to do each of the three actions.
A) Pledge, is just what it is.. pledging a donation to the campaign for October 19th, 2011. B) Report, is to submit articles and videos of clear media bias, censorship, misrepresentation of facts. These will be screened, rebutted, and published on the web site. Each published counter-article will accept pledges specific to the article. On the day of the moneybomb, we'll do press releases and open letters to the media on how much money THEY raised for Ron Paul, through bias and censorship, and share that through the social networks. C) Share, which is providing a step-by-step guide to promoting the moneybomb. This will adopt a Facebook strategy (how to invite, good practices, etc.), Twitter strategy (Using the one started already), E-mail, Blogging, etc.
2) Conditional Pledges and Taking Challenges
This idea may take a little more time to finish up, but I think you guys will like it. The idea is that there are really two ways to donate to the campaign. Money and effort. Just as significant as 25,000 donations will be, 25,000 people taking it offline to promote Ron Paul in a strategic collaboration would be just as incredible. Therefore, the idea is to combine both of these together.
So maybe FRDMLVR 1 has $1000 to donate, but they want to make that pledge on condition that 100 people do a certain activity. So FRDMLVR 1 submits the conditional pledge and that challenge now shows up in a thread among other challenges going on. Let's say FRDMLVR 2 is completely broke, but wants to still contribute somehow. They'll not only be able to share the moneybomb online, but also take challenges that get them doing things offline.
The end goal is having our money work TWICE for us. If we can use our donations to leverage effort, then that money gets put back into advertising, which attracts more supporters.. we have a nice recipe to make our dollars twice as valuable to other campaigns' dollars.
This will take a bit longer to build and launch, but I feel it would be a great addition.
3) Widgets, Banners, and Badges
I'm just about finished up with these. The widgets will allow other web sites to embed pledge data onto their pages and I'm working on a way to pledge directly from the widgets themselves. So, if RPF wants to put a banner at the top of the forum that displays current pledge count and people could pledge directly from RPF, I think that would be a great improvement. I also have static banners and badges, if those are preferred.
I'll have more to show tonight. What do you guys think?