Part of the How to Not Limit Your Political Life to the Ballot Box series.

In writing a friend back this evening about an e-mail they wrote to an elected official, I encouraged them to also follow-up with a phone call.

I have always been a purveyor of real-time communication, but tonight the following line was born:

Real-time communication is more memorable and cannot be deleted.

Think about it.  If you are a public official, or anyone for that matter, and you start to read an e-mail you want to forget or stop reading after the first line, you can click delete and be done with well thought out piece that took the author 29 minutes to write, pepper with hyperlinks, quotations, citations, and other well meaning research.  All are vanquished with the click of a mouse, never bothering you again, all the while with the constituent swelling with satisfaction at their comfortable cathartic keyboard activism.

Instead.  Be heard.  Prevent being deleted by employing real-time communication via the telephone.  Talk is cheap.  Pennies on the minute.

With a phone call, the communication is projected into the ear and onto the official’s brain immediately.  Scrubbing this impression away is difficult, takes time, and may, in fact, be impossible depending on the quality of the interaction.  You will have achieved mutual knowledge (another important concept I will elaborat on), creating a reference point to be recalled upon at a future engagement.

Getting people on the phone can prove to be an art within itself, but with some practice and determination, you can get the person you are looking for on the horn and begin your historical transmission.