Ever since Howard Dean’s ill-fated run for president, the world has become increasingly aware of the use of the internet in political campaigns. Check out this article in Wired on how the internet “made Howard Dean”. This, of course, has evolved over the few years and we are starting to see more and more sophisticated use of internet marketing and fund raising by todays candidates for various offices.

I came across one particularly awesome case today on Boing Boing about an unknown candidate for Kansas State Representative. Sean Tevis has decided he’s had enough of his anti-gay, pro-life, pro-censorship, pro-wire-tapping rep, and is going to “retire him” as he puts it. Sean seems to think his best bet is with a little niche marketing, by producing a web comic in the fashion of XKCD to speak directly to a politically active, if somewhat geeky, segment of internet users.

Frankly, I think it’s brilliant.

Tevis has put together a pretty amusing comic that explains his political positions as well as the progress of his campaign thus far. He realizes that winning an election has a lot to do with how much a candidate can spend on their campaign. Even better, he has taken a record-setting fund raising goal, and broken it up into small, easily accomplished bites. Best of all, he’s found a segment of internet users most likely to agree with his views, donate a small amount to his campaign, and spread the word through various social media channels. He’s received over 100 of the 3000 donations he’s seeking in a single hour, his page has appeared on Boing Boing and it’s climbing the ranks on Digg.

Go check out Sean Tevis’ site, as it makes a terrific case study, regardless of your political views. I expect we’ll be seeing similar tactics in larger elections in the not-too-distant future.

Subatomic Media is now accepting projects through Elance- the number one spot on the web for outsourcing just about anything. Those of you who are fans of the Four Hour Work Week know the importance of outsourcing, and 4HWW author Timothy Ferris gives his personal endorsement right there on the front page. Best of all, it’s free to post your project!

Go check out the Subatomic profile, and send us a private request to bid on your project. We handle everything through Elance that we would if you contacted us here, so don’t be shy.

I was sent a wonderful link today for WindexShine.com. SC Johnson is about to learn a painful lesson about user generated content. On paper, UGC sounds like a great idea- let your customers build your site content for you and you can save money and possibly ride a wave of viral traffic.

What the good folks of SC Johnson apparently did not take into account is that when the public is allowed to write your page content, it’s THE PUBLIC WRITING YOUR PAGE CONTENT!

UGC and the hopes of a campaign going viral seem to often put stars in the eyes of eager young marketers. The problem occurs when the campaign is ill planned to prevent abuse of the system. If you’re “a family company”, it may well be worth it to have your staff manually reviewing and approving content before it goes live.

UGC is a double edged sword, and this is one message you probably don’t want going viral.

comScore released the lastest round of search engine rankings with few surprises.

Of note: Google reached a new high, while Yahoo and Microsoft found new lows in overall market share. Both Yahoo and Microsoft saw upticks in total searches from February to March, however this trend was echoed across all engines.

With Google’s recently approved purchase of DoubleClick, they have also acquired the SEO company Performics. Google owning a company that sells services that help companies rank well on their engine is a clear conflict of interest, but there’s even more to the story.

Check out the open letter to Google that appeared on SearchEngineLand.com the other day. I think it does a terrific job of illustrating the uneasiness many are feeling about this particular aspect of the DoubleClick acquisition.

I received an email today about yet another class action suit involving pay per click search engines. This time, a slew of plaintiffs have alleged that MIVA and Lycos have not done enough to mitigate click fraud. I couldn’t agree more. MIVA has long been so overrun with click fraud that it’s not worth using for most advertisers. There are some companies that have turned tidy little profits with MIVA, some of my former clients among them, but it’s a terrible waste of money for most.

Reading further, we find that claimants will receive the settlement in the form of click credits on MIVA. I’m going to repeat that, in case you didn’t notice the fishy smell the first time. The PPC platform that is rife with click fraud (read: fake/worthless clicks) wants to settle a class action suit by giving free clicks (read: more fake/worthless clicks) to the claimants.

There’s going to be a court hearing in late April to determine whether or not this settlement is “fair, reasonable and adequate”. (It’s not.)

After years of dreaming and making idle threats, I’ve finally decided to turn my years of SEM experience into a new business. Subatomic Media has been founded to help small businesses and startups get the interactive marketing help they need, but cannot afford with other high-priced agencies. Our goal is to provide our clients with the quality service and results they need without breaking the bank.

Please feel free to contact us for a free consultation and needs assessment!