Hynes at Daily Caller: Is Capitol Hill tuning out social media?

Unfortunately, some advocacy professionals forget that the “social web” is just a tool to facilitate communications with decision makers. They allowed themselves to be misled by self-appointed social media gurus into spending lots of money on tactical gimmicks that are predictably ineffective. A watched phone never rings and an expensive, customized app never tweets unless someone uses it. The problem is that many advocacy groups in Washington, D.C. pay for numbers; they want thick reports with big totals. How many views your web video has and how many Facebook “likes” your op-ed receives trump actual persuasion.

But if your target audience consists of a handful of Members and staff on a specific committee, 15,000 views of a web video may be 14,990 more than you really need. And that means you are talking to a lot of people who willhave little or no impact on helping you achieve your goal. This is not to say that ambient noise is immaterial to a public affairs campaign. On the contrary, it is absolutely essential. But successful campaigns do not make it their master.

As the POLITICO story highlights, strategies — and yes, gimmicks — toproduce numbers for fancy reports have attracted the resources of advocacy organizations with ill effect. No doubt, many in the advocacy community will continue down this path, but the smart manager will recognize that in the world of Congressional relations, quality trumps quantity.

Patrick Hynes is the President of Hynes Communications.