By Ashley Fuller
afuller@cherokeetribune.com

A Towne Lake woman is part of a national movement to use a “Tea Party” to once again protest taxes levied on Americans.

Jenny Beth Martin is the assistant event coordinator for the Nationwide Tax Day Tea Party movement and co-chairwoman of the Atlanta event planned for April 15, the day income taxes are due. She also is director of congressional outreach for one of the movement’s sponsor organizations, Smart Girl Politics.

The first Tea Party protest, which she also had a hand in planning, occurred in February after CNBC on-air personality Rick Santelli called for a Chicago Tea Party to protest government spending.

“It hit a chord with conservatives,” she said of the idea, which soon became a hot topic through the Twitter social networking service.

Mrs. Martin participated in a conference call to plan the first Tea Party and, within a few business days, tax-protest events were staged in more than 40 cities.

The April Tea Party could grow to 300 cities, Mrs. Martin estimates.

“This has mushroomed in a way we never imagined,” said Mrs. Martin, adding people have been energized by the concept. During the conference call to set up the February event, she said “you could sense people had excitement and passion.”

Her duties for the Atlanta event to be held at the Capitol include communicating details to attendees, securing speakers, arranging sign-making parties, coordinating carpools to the Capitol, publicity and public relations. She also maintains the event Web site at www.atlantateaparty.net.

Her involvement adds up to about 20 to 25 hours a week.

“It is like a part-time job,” she said, adding the cause is worth it. “It is a call for fiscal responsibility.”

She said the message of the Tea Party is intended to be non-partisan, noting while many people involved in the protest are Republicans and Libertarians, Democrats are invited, too.

“It is aimed at everyone in D.C.,” she said.

This month, American Solutions for Winning the Future, a non-partisan organization created by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, signed on as a sponsor of the Tea Party. Other sponsors include the DontGo Movement (http://dontgo.ning.com) and Top Conservatives on Twitter (www.topconservativesontwitter.org) as well as conservative columnist Michelle Malkin, radio host Dana Loesch and GOPUSA.

Amy Kremer of Cobb County, event chairwoman for the nationwide Tea Party movement, said people are serious about making their voices heard to elected officials.

“We are tired of the excess spending. It has got to stop,” she said, noting another large Tea Party event for the Fourth of July is in the works.

Mrs. Martin said the event has been helped by social media such as Facebook and Twitter.

“The power these tools have is amazing,” she said. “Five years ago, this would not have been possible to coordinate as rapidly. The tools were not there to do it.”

Since I have never done anything like this, I consulted my personal PR/Blog Expert, @JessicaKnows.  Jessica had 15 Days of Marketing last year on her blog and I have re-read these posts.  She gave me some advice through twitter, which I will be implementing.

Yesterday, I was on a blog conference call with 2 Republican US Congressmen regarding the President’s budget and a Republican alternative that will be rolled out in the next four weeks.  Since I am a political activist, it is inevitable that some of my political activity rolls over into my blog.  But, how much of that political activity needs show up in my mommyblog?  Do my regular readers care very much about the budget or similar political issues?  I have been asking myself these questions for the past few months.

For the most part, I work to keep Jen’s Genuine Life on topics related to my life as a mom, my children, activities for children, food, tips that work for me, etc.  I have worked hard to keep most of the political posts to be more related to what I am doing.  Examples of these posts include the Atlanta Tea Party, when I campaigned with Gov. Huckabee, and Campaign Until You Barf.  There have been political soapbox posts, such as who I am voting for and why, but overall not too many.  This seems to work well for this blog.  People who may not agree with me politically do not seem turned off by my occasional political posts.  While blogs are networking tools, they are also about storytelling with detailed posts and conversations.

On Twitter, it is a different story. I post tweets about my life as a mom, cooking, recipes, crafts, politics, budget, Atlanta, etc.  Basically, Twitter is a very well-rounded glimpse into my life at any one moment in time.  I do not segregate political posts to a different account.  It seems to be working fine on Twitter because I am now over 4,000 followers.  I do get people who disagree with my politics on Twitter and I am fine with that, afterall Twitter is about brief conversations and network building.

Over the past few months I have thought about the direction of this blog.  How can my political life fit in a blog?  Should my political life fit in Jen’s Genuine Life or not?  How I can earn a little more money with the blog?  Do I have time, energy, and desire to post to more than 1 blog?  Will my readers mind the occasional product reviews or outright product pitches, such as recent post for Baskin Robbins?

Right now my plan is to launch a new blog to focus on my political soapbox issues, my advice to candidates and elected officials, etc.  I can tell more about Smart Girl Politics, other emerging GOP new media leaders, Georgia politics, how to campaign, etc. on the new political blog.

I still plan to post the occasional “this is what I have done post that may be political” post but I am going to keep most if not all issue oriented posts to the new political blog.

On Jen’s Genuine Life, I will continue to post about my menu plans, observations about my children and life, and other tips and tales that my audience hopefully finds interesting.  Additionally, I think I would like to post more product reviews and affiliate opportunities on JenuineJen.  The Ford event tonight will be a test to see if these types of publicity events are things that I am interested in doing and sharing with my audience.  I have been contacted by a couple of companies for product reviews and would like to take the companies up on these reviews.  There are several contests and opportunities for bloggers earn compensation or products as compensation for the posts in return for posting about products or services.  I am researching these options and will be doing more of this accordingly.  I do not anticipate nor do I want Jen’s Genuine Life to turn into a product review blog.  Personally, I do not enjoy blogs that focus solely on product reviews.  If there is an opportunity for me to earn a little more money promoting products or services that I find useful and I think you will find useful, I am open to that.  If there is a way that I can promote these products and give my readers the opportunity to win the products, then I am interested in doing that as well.

So, readers, what are your thoughts about my plans?  The plans are not set in stone yet and I am open to your advice and would very much like to hear your opinions.

• If you blog, do you have more than 1 blog?  If so, are you glad you have more than 1 or do you wish you had stuck to just one?  Do you have time to maintain both?
  
• Do you do product reviews?  Do you enjoy doing product reviews or is it more trouble than it is worth?  Do you have advice for doing product reviews?
  
• If you are a regular reader to my blog, what types of posts do you enjoy the most?  What types of posts would you like to see more of or less of?
  
• Do you have any other ideas or suggestions for this blog?

Please leave comments below or tweet me @JenuineJen.

I also have a Printable Chore Chart for Kids that gets a pretty decent amount of traffic. My Twitter for Dummies Part 1 and Twitter for Dummies Part 2 also gets a good bit of traffic. I spent a lot of time on the Twitter posts and when I published them there were hardly any other Twitter for Beginners articles. So, the traffic those receive is not too surprising.

Do you have posts that you are surprised receive the amount of traffic that they do? Do you have posts that you spent a lot of time on that receive no traffic? How about posts that you spent time on and do receive traffic? What are your most popular posts? Feel free to leave a comment below. My comments are “follow enabled” so if you comment, you get linky love back to your posts.

This week “K” has left a comment on almost if not every post I have made.  I really appreciate her taking the time to read my blog, reply, and let me know that people are actually enjoying some of what I write. 

As a thank you to K, I am spreading some linky love.  Check out Interstital Life, which is K’s blog.  She has a toddler and is now a work at home mom.  She has a degree in mechanical engineering and she loves to read.  For Christmas she is making English Toffee for Christmas gifts, which sounds really yummy. 

K recently came out of the blog closet.  I remember when I did that.  I think I was waiting until I thought the blog was “good enough” for people who know me in real life to see it.  I finally decided to get over that feeling.  Most of my friends gave me really nice compliments about it.  Do you let your friends and family know about your blog or are you in a blog closet? 

So, be sure to click on over and check out her blog and leave a comment there. I am sure she will appreciate it!!

Today is the the 15th day of November and my 15th day into National Blog Posting Month or NaBloPoMo. So far, I have posted each day. Some days it has been a challenge and other days I can think of several things to post. I have started a few posts that are not good enough for publishing yet.

I have learned a couple of important lessons. For instance, yesterday I could not think of what to post at all. I had several appointments, had tried to squeeze a post in between appointments and seemed too tired to post anything. Finally, I sat down with the intent to just do a photo meme and somehow the idea for the Why Does Georgia Have a Runoff Election just tumbled out. It seemed informative and I can point my friends and family to it when I send my regular “pre-election day email” to them.

Another time I could not think of anything to post and simply posted how thankful I am for my children. I posted from the heart and described some of their endearing habits. It seemed like a quick and dirty post to me at the time. I have received several comments and one person even stumbled it. When I write I seem to write in that controlled, methodical way that I learned for compositions in AP English when I was a senior in high school. I have learned I need to write from the heart more and tell more stories even when I am writing factual posts.

Finally, I have learned that I have time to write each day. The simple act of putting the ideas down can get your juices flowing very quickly.Some of the posts might be quick and dirty but that is ok and might even be a good thing.

Let’s see how I apply those lessons and what other lessons I learn in the remaining 15 days.