Political Campaign Tips and Strategies by Online Candidate

What Type of Yard Signs Are Best For Political Campaigns?

Candidates often struggle with the type of sign to purchase. There are basically three types of yard signs for political campaigns: plastic bag, corrugated plastic, and double-sided cardboard.

Here are the pros and cons of each different sign type:

Plastic or Play-bag Yard Signs are affordable, cheap and easy to ship. They are basically plastic sleeves that can be slipped over U-shaped wires. The down side is that they tend to sag over time and do not work well as wall signs.

Corrugated Plastic (poly coated) Signs holds up well through bad weather and are easy to handle. They are most cost effective if a candidate runs often and is committed to the same message and look. They generally slide right over their metal frame. However, a light colored sign might not be entirely opaque. They tend to be a bit more expensive than other types of signs. They are also the most easily stolen.

Double-Sided Cardboard Signs come in all shapes and sizes. They are double-sided and are stapled or glued to their frames. They easily double as wall signs. However, they don’t hold up as well in rough weather as plastic signs.

Selecting the type of sign for your campaign should be determined by your priorities such as price, quantity and re-usability. An experienced sign manufacturer can help you determine what is best for you.

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Negative Linking Your Political Opponent

Link Political Opponent - DIrty Drick One online ‘dirty trick’ that is perfectly acceptable is to link to outside content about your opponent using the opponent’s name as the link text.

For example:

<a href=”https://www.localnewspaper.com/article/ councilman-caught-doing-something-wrong”>Councilman Bob Jones</a>

This type of targeted linking helps ensure that when someone looks up your opponent’s name, certain content may appear in the search results.

Make sure the page you link to is real, preferably from a reliable source like a newspaper, rather than some obscure blog. You don’t want to be accused of promoting bad information if what you link to later turns out to be false.

You also want to link to your targeted source from other places, particularly from social media. Ask you followers to like or retweet your posts to multiply the linking effect.

This technique works best against targets that do not have much of a web presence. If you are trying to have a negative article rank for someone’s name, Google will need to see the article as more important than a person’s website, social media accounts and other related information about them. That can be tough.

Repetition is important and this technique works better when multiple links come from a variety of sources. The more people that link something, the better. This can your campaign website, other websites, blogs, social media accounts and so on.

While ‘Google Bombing’ is pretty much a thing of the past, particularly after the technique was used against a former president, it can still work on a smaller scale.

In fact, we pulled a variation of this trick back in 2003. The work on that local campaign led us to create Online Candidate.

There’s no guarantee this technique will always get results. Your mileage may vary. Either way, you never want to pass up an opportunity to nail an opponent online.

For more online strategies, visit our exclusive companion site, OnlineCandidateResources.com.

Besides providing affordable, full-featured Campaign Website Packages, we carry popular digital products including our Campaign Letter Templates and a wide selection of Brochure and Print Templates.

Online Writing Tips For Local Campaigns

The web provides a cost-effective method for political candidates and campaigns to reach voters and supporters. However, writing for a website is different than writing for print. Simply copying your campaign print material onto your website limits the potential of online campaigning.

Nobody likes scrolling through pages and pages of poorly written, overblown website content. Studies show that people read from computer screens about 25% slower than from paper.

Make your website content more readable:

Start each written section with the conclusion. Put the main points of your document in the first paragraph so that readers scanning your pages will not miss your point.
Write concisely and stick to one idea per paragraph.
Bullet lists rather than using wordy sentences or paragraphs. Readers can pick out information more easily from a list than from paragraphs.
Use meaningful subheadings. Guide the reader by highlighting the main points of your information.
Remember that readers do not read web pages in sequence. Providing information in precise segments allows readers to quickly locate the material they seek.
Separate your ‘white paper’ information and link out to it for readers who want to know more detail about a particular subject. PDF files work well because they can be easily printed out for offline reading.

Online content layout tips:

Don’t set your text size too large or too small.
Capitalizing all letters gives the appearance of shouting at your visitors. SHOUTING IS RUDE!
Keep your text left-aligned. Justified text can be harder to read online, particularly if the width is wide.
Space out blocks of information. Large chunks of text are intimidating to a reader and probably won’t get read.

Or course, what works for one candidate or campaign may not work for another. These tips should be adapted to suit your unique needs as part of a larger, multifaceted online campaign strategy. To find out what content works best, use website analytics to measure the impact of your online content and make data-driven adjustments.

Remember that anything you put online becomes part of ‘the record’ and will not only be read by your supporters, it will be read by your opponents – and you can be sure that they will keep an eye on what you do!

Our exclusive client resources site, OnlineCandidateResources.com, has sample website copy and content tools that you can use for inspiration.

We are here to help! Start your campaign website today. Online Candidate website clients get full access to our political campaign resources and articles.

Political Campaign Design: Our Top Posts

In politics, style often trumps substance. For campaign websites, a good design is more than just an attractive header and complementary colors. A good layout, images, and even the arrangement of the site content effects how your campaign is perceived by voters. So here are a few of our more popular posts on political web design.

What’s Your Campaign Theme?
Hammer that message home so every voter can easily recall what you stand for, and why they should vote for you on Election Day!

Campaign Sites – What Impression Does Yours Leave On Voters?
You only have one chance for your campaign site to make a good first impression, and that chance might only be a few seconds.

How Much Should You Doctor Your Candidate Head Shots?
You wouldn’t go on television without makeup. Why wouldn’t you enhance an important online image?

Political Campaign Website Design Trends
Here are some of the biggest changes we’ve seen since we made our first site in 2003…

Campaign Writing Can Make or Break a Vote
First impressions will make or break a voter’s support. Words have meaning.

The image above is from the website of the 1996 Clinton/Gore political campaign. Designs like that just aren’t in style anymore. Fortunately, most campaigns today are able to put together something a bit more pleasing to the eye…

Here are some of our own campaign designs for websites:

See our client design gallery. Try our campaign site demo.

Get the look you want with a custom-designed Online Candidate campaign website. Our system includes an easy-to-use content management system and plenty of included tools to make building your online presence as pain-free as possible.

6 Political Microsite Ideas

Although we discuss political microsites in our training modules, we’re going to go into a little more depth about campaign microsites, how you can benefit from them, and a few reasons why you may want to use them.

Just by way of recap, the term microsite is defined on Wikipedia as:

“A microsite is an Internet web design term referring to an individual web page or a small cluster (around 1 to 7) of pages which are meant to function as a discreet entity within an existing website or to complement an offline activity. The microsite’s main landing page most likely has its own domain name or subdomain.… Microsites may be used … as editorial support…”

Advantages of Using Microsites

For a political candidate, microsites have several advantages.

Candidate can enhance their branding potential.
It is a way of building traffic. The likelihood of clickthrough traffic from a microsite to your primary campaign website is very high.
It provides another platform to solicit donations. “Donate today and help…”
You can segment visitors who sign up for more information to be particularly interested about the site’s issue or subject matter.
You can get very creative in design and functionality.

You can focus on topics you may not want to focus on your regular campaign website. For example, if your opponent suffers from ‘symptoms of corruptions’, you might not want to get into the details and allegations on your own campaign website. After all, your campaign website should be about you, not your opponent.

For SEO and search engine ranking advantages, you can take advantage of the focused content by using topic-specific keywords and key phrases throughout the microsite. Again, if you are doing a microsite about an opponent’s corruption, you can create a separate web page for each corrupt practice.

Political Microsite Ideas

Just so we weren’t totally misleading about the article headline, here are some reasons and topic ideas for starting a political microsite.

To expose corrupt practices. You can highlight candidate corrupt actions or conflicts of interest that may interest voters. Use featured videos and content to hammer home your points.
Highlight a specific issue. This may be an expansion of an existing campaign issue. With a microsite, you can go into more detail and specifically target support for that issue. It can also be used to fight back against a particular issue that is being pushed by an opponent.
To point out an opponents lack of work ethic. During the 2008 election, WheresLiddy.com was created to track Elizabeth Dole’s travels outside the state. This was used by her opponent to show that she was out of touch with her constituents.
Donor details. Use a microsite to point out exactly who is donating to your opponent – and why. This is more effective if can tie together legislation and/or conflicts of interest between your opponent and the donor(s).
To set the record straight. Here, the microsite is used to refute false claims against a candidate or to fight back against another mirosite. It can also be used as an ‘attack’ site to lay out facts against an opponent.
To play games. With a large enough budget and a little creativity, you can create an online poking fun at an opponent. Players can try to rack up points by adding up your opponents campaign contributions or trying to choose which positions your opponents have taken on issues. (Surprise! Your opponent has been quoted as taking both sides on every issue!)

Microsites should operate somewhat independently of your main campaign website. You may want to promote one from your main site or you may want to let it stand alone. Take the time to plot out your goals, come up with a catchy website name, and create the site content before you start.

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What Impression Does Your Campaign Website Leave On Voters?

You only have one chance for your campaign site to make a good first impression, and that chance might only be a few seconds. Good or bad, your online presentation will leave an impression with visitors and voters.

So, what does your campaign site say about you?

Does it say ‘Vote for Me’? Do you actually ‘make the ask’? Are the words ‘vote for’ and a date prominently displayed on the site? Too often critical information is nowhere to be found on candidate websites. Is your ballot name presented consistently?

Does it make you look like a leader? Does your site inspire active support? Is there a volunteer page asking for help? Does the site invite others to join the campaign? Easy to read content, captivating imagery, and concise calls to action are crucial for success.

Does it make you appear vague? Is there enough real information about you and the issues? If someone reads about your positions, will they get the sense that you know the issues and have serious ideas for dealing with them? On the flip side, too much information can work against you, as well. No one wants to scroll through screens of endless text. If you have a lot to say, summarize it and package longer policy information for download.

Does it say your campaign is underfunded? A bad-looking website will reflect poorly on your campaign. Make sure your website content is easy to read and laid out neatly. Even a well-designed site will fail to impress if the page content is jumbled mess. Quality affects perception.

Does it show that you are articulate? Again, this goes back to content. Poor grammar and misspellings reflect poorly on your competency and attention to detail. If you want people to take you and your campaign seriously, you need to proofread all of your content.

Does it say you’re open? Are there ways for people to reach the candidate? Do you invite feedback and questions? Is your campaign website too partisan? Will your content immediately turn off half the electorate? Does that even matter to you?

Does it say that you are socially networked or just a poser? We’ve covered many social media topics on this site. A Facebook page is nice but it won’t help if it’s just used to push out one-way, promotional information. A Twitter feed only helps if you’re really using the service rather than just posting infrequent updates. A lack of social media engagement shows that you either don’t know or don’t care enough to use the tools.

For most voters, your campaign site may be your biggest opportunity to connect with a voter. If it leaves a lasting and positive impression that lasts into the voting booth, then it did its job.