The OC Weekly quickly jumped on the story, as their lead investigative reporter, R. Scott Moxley, welcomed Pedroza back into countywide political blogging:

For seven years up to 2010, Libertarian-leaning Art Pedroza often dominated Orange County’s political blogosphere by breaking news and offering biting commentary on area politicians, journalists and activists.

Along the way, Pedroza picked up plenty of readers, fans and, of course, enemies–none more bitter than the folks at TheLiberalOC.com.

Pedroza handed his Orange Juice blog over to Vern Nelson–a humorless, knee-jerk Democratic Party loyalist–who turned the once exciting website into a mind-numbingly boring, frothy fellatio party for liberal elected officials. Pedroza went on to create the New Santa Ana Blog that seemed to lessen his controversial impact on countywide politics as it touted stained, establishment players like Mayor Miguel Pulido.

But on Jan. 1, Pedroza emerged with his new, sure-to-be-entertaining enterprise:OCPoliticsBlog.com.

John Seiler, an investigative reporter at CalWatchdog, also welcomed Pedroza back to O.C. political blogging:

Art Pedroza Starts Great New Blog

John Seiler, CalWatchdog

Our old friend Art Pedroza has started a great new blog,OCPoliticsBlog.com. I’ve known Art for something like 15-20 years. Back when I was at the Orange County Register in the 1990s, he wrote great letters to the editor on the shenanigans in Santa Ana city and school politics.

When blogs came around in 2003, he started the Orange Juice blog, which quickly became the top local blog in Orange County. He gave that to others about two years ago. He then started the New Santa Ana blog about the city where he lives.

Art wrote, “Have I learned a few lessons over the past couple of years?  You bet. My new blog will be informative and I am sure my sense of humor will pop up, but I am going to try to present OC politics in an informed and entertaining way — and we’ll steer clear of the nuttiness that was the old OJ blog.”

Even if you’re not in Orange County, its politics affect all of California, and America.

So check out OCPoliticsBlog.com.

Pedroza published this introductory welcome on his new blog’s “About our Blog” page:

I started Orange County’s first political blog, the Orange Juice, back in 2003.  Over time it became the dominant political blog in Orange County.  I stepped away from it in November of 2010 – and turned the Orange Juice over to Vern Nelson.  I had started a new civic blog in Santa Ana, called the New Santa Ana blog, and wanted to focus on growing its readership.  Mission accomplished.  The New Santa Ana blog racked up 340,000 visits in 2011.

I took a hard look at the Orange County political blog landscape recently and found that while the left and the right are well-served, there is a hole now in the middle, that the Orange Juice used to serve while it was under my watch.  Nelson has added a member of the Democratic Party of Orange County’s (DPOC) Central Committee, Greg Diamond, to his blog team and the result has been that the Orange Juice is now not all that different from the Liberal OC.  It is a bit nuttier but they both tack to the left and cater to the DPOC machine, such as it is.

The Red County is still doing their Republican thing, and they will probably do well in 2012, with the nation seemingly poised to elect a Republican to replace President Obama.  But while Republicans still dominate Orange County, this is now a majority-minority community.  Long-term trends don’t favor the GOP – although it is hard to imagine the dysfunctional DPOC ever being able to outpace the OC GOP.

I was a lifetime Republican when I was elected to the OC GOP’s Central Committee in 2006.  At the time I was the only Latino elected to that body.  I quit the party and the Central Committee in 2007, having at last had enough of the GOP’s attacks on immigrants and civil rights in general.  I eventually joined the Libertarian Party, and then switched to the Democratic Party in July of 2011, but I have had my fill of the blue party too.  They aren’t much better than the GOP, in fact Pres. Obama doubled deportations, as compared to Pres. George W. Bush.  And the Democrats here in California seem hellbent on raising our taxes and passing one job-killer bill after another.  So I am starting the New Year by leaving the Democrats behind and returning to the Libertarian Party.  We may not win much, but how will we win if we don’t take a stand for what we believe in?

The mission of this blog will be to serve as a clearing house for Orange County politics.  You will find RSS feeds and links to all the popular O.C. political blogs and media here.  I won’t write as much as I used to at the Orange Juice, but I will attempt to touch on the political issues and candidates that matter to the people of Orange County.

If you are a candidate or would like to let my readers know about a political event, please email me by clicking here.

Thanks for reading this blog!

The O.C. Register’s Food Frenzy reporter, Jeff Overley, visited one of our clients, El Pollo Norteño, this week – and he loved not only their food, but also their blog, which we designed and continue to maintain.

Here are a few excerpts from Overley’s article:

It’s hard out here for a hole-in-the-wall. These restaurants are run by moms and pops. They tend to have unenviable locations. Money for advertising is nil.

And so I’m intrigued by El Pollo Norteño, a humble-looking outfit with five local locations. For a place with an ethnic name operating in lower-income neighborhoods,  it’s making a noteworthy effort to gain mass appeal, making me think of what El Pollo Loco’s early days are said to have been like (although El Pollo Norteño is 30 years old).

For one, EPN has a website, which itself is noteworthy as far as ethnic restaurants are concerned. And the website is actually impressive, featuring an interesting pop-up 3D-looking woman, among other things.

EPN has a rewards program, is on Facebook and Twitter, distributes coupons, does catering and offers delivery in a fleet of decal-wrapped compact cars.

Thanks Jeff for taking note of El Pollo Norteño’s commitment to great food and aggressive marketing!

Are Orange County’s political blogs still a potent force in local politics?  Some of them have apparently already peaked and are now headed downhill, while others are continuing to develop new readership.

The Orange Juice blog, which was Orange County’s first political blog, has changed substantially since Vern Nelson took over as their Editor/Publisher late last year.  But they remain Orange County’s only multi-partisan blog, with a bullpen of Republican and Democratic bloggers.  Their traffic has remained fairly consistent since Nelson took over.  They are averaging over 40,000 visits a month, along with over 70,000 page views.

The Liberal OC blog, on the other hand, has really tanked over the past year.  Just look at their Sitemeter traffic data, which reveals that in July of last year they had over 30,000 visits to their blog.  This July however they have only 8,984 visits – which means their total at the end of the month will be about 18,000 visits.  And their page views have dropped from over 49,000 last July to 28,373 this June.  Not good!

The New Santa Ana blog is something new – it offers plenty of political coverage but it also has a lot of event information.  It is a civic blog that covers both Santa Ana and the County of Orange.  In the spirit of full disclosure, the New Santa Ana blog is published by Art Pedroza, the owner of OC PR & eMedia Solutions.  Pedroza started the Orange Juice blog, handed it off to the aforementioned Nelson, and then began publishing the New Santa Ana blog late in 2009.

In July of 2010, the New Santa Ana blog had just over 10,000 visits.  This July the New Santa Ana blog has already racked up over 12,000 visits, according to Sitemeter, with half the month left to go, with an astonishing 22,947 page views.  It would appear that Pedroza has once again started one of Orange County’s top blogs!

The Friends for Fullerton’s Future blog isn’t new but it does remain hot, in North Orange County.  There really is nothing like it.  Last year they were able to help their friend Bruce Whitaker get elected to the Fullerton City Council, and one of their own, Travis Kriger, got appointed to the Planning Commission.  They don’t publish their readership data but we’ll have a look at their Alexa ranking later in this post.  Alexa has them ranked higher than the Liberal OC and the Orange Juice blogs.

What about the Red County blog?  It is very hard to gauge their readership as they don’t use Sitemeter.  Alexa ranks them as the 29,048th website in the U.S.  Remember that Red County is a collection of over thirty blogs throughout the U.S.  If you were to rank their Orange County blog by itself it would be a much smaller piece of the pie.  Incidentally, their search traffic appears to have plummeted since 2010.

Another newcomer is the Voice of OC, which is run by a board dominated by trial lawyers and paid for by OC labor.  It is currently ranked #145,143 by Alexa.  They don’t use Sitemeter.

There are also a few smaller blogs, such as the Capistrano Beyond the Blackboard blog, that focuses on public school issues.  Their traffic is so low that Alexa does not rank them.

The Mission Viejo Dispatch does a good job covering news and politics in Mission Viejo.  Alexa has them ranked at # 147,358.

How does Alexa rank the O.C. political blogs?

1. The Red County blog is ranked # 29,048 (national ranking – their OC blog is likely quite a bit lower)
2. The New Santa Ana blog is ranked #45,590
3. The Friends for Fullerton’s Future blog is ranked #105,870
4. The Orange Juice blog is ranked # 140,028
5. The Voice of OC is ranked #145,143
6. The Mission Viejo Dispatch is ranked # 147,358
7. The Liberal OC blog is ranked # 276,729

Are these blogs still a viable force in Orange County? Yes and no. They would be a lot more powerful if they worked together. The Orange Juice does allow the Friends for Fullerton’s Future bloggers to cross-post on their blog. That is a standard more of these blogs should follow. They should also provide links to each other’s blogs.

These blogs do well during campaign season, but they can also be viable all year long of they modify their content to include more than politics.

Above all, they must stay fresh and interesting if they intend to continue to make a difference in Orange County.

They had a full agenda, including fifteen minute talks by a number of speakers from the social media industry.

The agenda included:

• Welcome by O.C. Register Publisher Terry Horne
• Panelist Introductions by Jonathan Lansner
• Promote and Organize Your Event Socially: How to host a successful event, by Bryan Elliott, founder of Linked OC and the SoCal Action Sports Network and Cheril Hendry, Brandtailers and co-organizer of TEDxOrangeCoast
• You’re the News: the rising influence of community-generated content, by Eric Bryant AKA TheRECoach, V.P. of Internet Services at Coldwell Banker Coastal Alliance, Ian Hamilton, OCR technology blogger/reporter and Burt Herman, CEO & Co-Founder at Storify
• Big Food, Big Money: How the food industry uses social to drive sales, by Nancy Luna, OCR reporter and Fast Food Maven, Beth Mansfield, Director, Public Relations at CKE Restaurants, Inc., Marcy Massura, Weber Shandwick digital community manager for Oscar Meyer, and Rob Poetsch, Founder and President, Rob Poetsch Consulting Group
• Buying Influence: How social influences purchasing decisions, by Lauren Drell, Assistant Editor of Supported Content at Mashable and Sonya Quick, OCR leader and also a consumer
• Social Media for Social Good: Using social media to change the world, by Kohl Crecelius, CEO of Krochet Kids International, Jeffrey Friend, manager of Social Good Today (and director of social media & marketing at The Culver Group),
  Max McGhee, Art Director for Saddleback Church and David Simmons, Professional Services Responder for the Orange Country Sheriff’s Department
• Do you need an expert? by Gary Robbins, San Diego Union-Tribune, Mona Shah, founder of Moxxe PR of Laguna, and Debbie Tesla, Dippin Dots franchisee
• The ROI: Real-life examples of how social media pays off, by Kelly Borgen, marketing consultant, creator of “I Heart Old Towne Orange,” Eva Smith, Co-Founder of Latina Mom Bloggers, and Suzanne Broughton, blogger, columnist and SM community manager for OC Family Magazine

I got there about a half hour late and the auditorium was already full.  The Register’s staff had set up more monitors and seats upstairs, but it was hard to hear the speakers and folks were just chatting and networking.

I caught Assemblyman Jose Solorio, as he was leaving, but didn’t see any other elected officials.

Outside there were a bunch of food trucks set up, and the attendees were busy trying the food truck fare and voting on their favorite food truck.  You can see pictures of the trucks in the slide show above.

I find it odd that the Register would host this event as they represent the dead media that is newspapers.  And they were very slow to turn to social media, losing a lot of ad revenue in the process.  They have in fact been playing catch-up for a few years but had to deal with a corporate bankruptcy at the same time.

The Register conducted tours on Thursday, of their plant.  How many more years will they even be printing their paper?  You might as well be touring a mausoleum or a museum.

I also did not see many bloggers, who aren’t part of big media, on the speaker list.  That seems quite an oversight, in my humble opinion.

Blogs are just part of social media, of course.  But Facebook and Twitter are limited. Blogs can do so much more.

I would like to see this event move to a larger venue and have longer sessions.  Surely there must be an enterprising hotel in town that would like to host this event in return for free publicity?

Topics I would like to see next year include:

• Twitter versus Facebook?  Which one will do more for your business?
• Reaching minority demographics with social media
• How social media has changed politics
• How churches are using social media to fill their pews
• When will social media kill off print media?
• Status of the blogosphere today

It looks, thankfully, that reports that the blog is dead are greatly exaggerated.

You probably saw the headlines over the last few days that blogging has declined, a phenomenon attributed to the fact that blogging is not as popular an activity as it once was, especially among young people, those aged 12 to 17. The research that led to some of the premature obituaries comes from the estimable Pew Internet and American Life Project; the research also pointed out that, others of us, like those positively elderly who are 34 and up, are actually becoming more likely to blog. Among 34- to 45-year-olds, the report said blogging is up, on a per person basis, by 6%; among those 46 to 55 it increased by 5% , and among 65- to 73-year-olds, it increased by 2%.

Click here to read the rest of this post.

Does your company have a website? How about a blog? If you don’t have a blog yet, your competitors might already be ahead of you!

Blogs are websites that initially acted as journals. Today they also can serve as corporate websites – with the major advantage that they show up far better on search engines.

At OC PR and eMedia Solutions, we specialize in helping companies to create their corporate blogs – and we will connect your blogs to Facebook and Twitter. Stop making excuses! We can connect you to the top Social Networks today.

Our clients include:

• El Pollo Norteno
• All Star Running
• Your Wonderful Life, Pastor Andy Quient’s Radio Show on AM 830
• New Santa Ana Blog
• OC Safety News
• Pedroza and Associates

Are you ready to enter the blogosphere?  Click here for more information.