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.
Ready to start your political campaign website? Check out our affordable campaign site packages and marketing services.
How Does Retargeting Grow Your Political Campaign?
Retargeting is a form of online advertising that allows you to serve ads to people who have visited your campaign website. A staple of big brands and small companies alike, retargeting is a powerful way to stay in touch with people who have demonstrated interest in the company. Recently, retargeting has entered the political sphere. Now an established tool for national campaigns, local and regional political campaigns have begun to catch on too.
How does retargeting work?
Retargeting depends upon a few simple lines of code placed within the HTML of your website. When people visit your site, the retargeting code is able to tag your visitors. After people leave your website, you can serve them your display ads all over the web.
Why does retargeting work?
Retargeting allows you to focus your ads on people you know are interested in what you have to say. For political campaigns, retargeting can help ensure that you are serving ads to your key constituency and voters who are actively researching candidates, allowing you to create a more focused set of ads. Retargeting can help keep interested voters engaged until the election, helping to increase awareness and voter turnout. As the election approaches, you can update your ads from a focus on candidate awareness and relevant issues to a focused call to get out and vote.
This targeted approach lets you develop campaign messaging geared toward more involved voters who already know who your candidate is and has an idea of what she stands for.
When should you use political retargeting?
Virtually all campaigns can benefit from retargeting. However, if your campaign website is relatively new and you’re still not seeing much traffic it could make sense to focus on bringing new traffic to your site. When it comes to bringing new traffic, targeted display advertising could be the right solution. Like retargeting, targeted display advertising helps focus your outreach on the people who you want to get in front of.
There are several variables you can use to target your ads including geographic and demographic variables, interest, and political affiliation. Depending on who you’re hoping to reach, any combination of these factors could be relevant to you. For example, in any local or state race, geographic targeting is likely to be a good option. Demographic targeting can encompass variables like age, income, gender, and occupation. You can include multiple data layers as well, for example you could target women over the age of 40, in California, who are affiliated with the Democratic party.
One of the primary benefits of ad targeting is the ability to show different messages to different groups, ensuring all your messaging is as relevant as possible.
Targeted and retargeted display ads are a great way to segment ads to likely or undecided voters, and to get the right message in front of the right voter.
Caroline Watts is a Marketing Associate at ReTargeter, a full-service display provider specializing in audience targeting and retargeting.
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Fear And The Campaign Website
It’s tough enough to be a first-time candidate. Throw online campaigning and the whole computer thing into the mix, and it can be overwhelming. A lot of potential clients who contact us are really just nervous about starting a campaign website. Where to turn? Who can build it? Will it do what I need it to do? There are a lot of options out there, and trying to figure it all out can be paralyzing.
A lot of web firms are trying to break into the political sphere these days. Many of them bank on candidate’s fears (or ignorance) to get their business. These are the top concerns we hear from candidates who are new to the whole web/social media thing. If you are looking into your campaign’s online options, perhaps some of these fears may apply to you.
The fear of building a campaign website
A lot calls we get from potential clients are less about answering questions about our product and more about letting them know that, yes, we can get you up and running quickly and easily. Candidates don’t need to be sold on the idea of a campaign website anymore. They just know that they need one.
No matter what content management system (CMS) you use, there is a learning curve. Even though a basic installation of WordPress takes less than ten minutes for a decent web designer to set up, a person with limited computer experience is probably going to be overwhelmed by a website builder.
Add some plug-ins and customization, and it gets even more complicated and time-consuming.
And security? You better know how to keep your site secure. The only thing worse than an insecure WordPress site is fixing one after a hack!
We’ve worked to make our Online Candidate website system as streamlined as possible. Rather than burying the options and configuration across multiple tabs and pages, we centralized everything in one place (the Site Setup page). Pages can be named, tagged and edited all in one page. Forms, calendars or event lists can be easily added to any page.
The edit-save-generate functionality makes updates easy. It takes a few minutes to get familiar with our CMS, but we’re confident that our system is the easiest and fastest way to build a political campaign website.
The fear of making site updates
If you have a ‘static’ site that cannot be edited without an offline editor, then you are at the mercy of your web designer. That usually means that every time you need a change to the site, you are going to be charged. And don’t count on a fast turnaround time. The modern campaign moves too quickly for a one-to-two day turnaround for site updates.
Bad things happen when the web designer disappears and the campaign is unable to update the site or, worse, the domain name expires and website goes down – permanently. We’ve had candidates call us a few days before their election so they can get something up for the remainder of the campaign. Sometimes we are able to point the old domain name to their new website, but if the webmaster registered the domain in their own name, we have a problem.
Tip: Make sure your domain name is registered in your name. When we register domain names for campaigns, we always make sure the client is the registrant and owner of the domain.
You should be in control of your own website. Even if you do not do the updates, you should still have access to the site if you need it.
The fear of lack of support
Because a lot of our clients are not computer-savvy, a major concern is how they can get help if they are stuck. Most web firms either do not provide training (because they do the updates) or they will charge you for a run-though of making changes on the CMS. If you use a service, your support will usually be via email.
We’ve tried to make the Online Candidate system easy to use. On every page of our site administration is a help button that links to a relevant article with instructions in our extensive online knowledge base. If you still need help, you can send us a support ticket – or call us if you are in a bind!
There are also the articles on this site and even more resources and tools on OnlineCandidateResources.com.
First time running for office? Have questions about starting a website for your campaign? Call Carol at 845-926-3400.
Are You Measuring These Metrics On Your Campaign Website?
Knowing what your campaign website traffic does when it arrives at your site can help you tailor your web content for maximum effectiveness.
Google Analytics provides valuable information that allows you to find out where your web site visitors are coming from, what pages they are viewing, and what they do on your site. Here are three metrics to keep an eye on no matter what analytics program you are using.
Bounce Rate
The bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits where the visitor left your site from the entrance (or landing) page. Traffic sent to (donation or issue) landing pages, home page, and other internal pages will have different bounce rates.
Look at the pages with very high bounce rates. Is there are reason why people are not sticking around? Is there a call to action on the page? Is there enough content? Does the content match the traffic source? For example, if you are running a PPC campaign, are the ads pointing to the most relevant page on your site?
Average Page Views Per Visit
Your visitor’s overall engagement can be measured by how deep into your site they will go. The average page views per visit gives you an indication of how much interest your site holds for your visitors. When people find content that resonates, they will read more and tend to share that content with others. This ties into what content visitors see. If you find particular content is popular (such as issue pages), then you may want to create additional, similar content.
Average Time
This ties in with the other metrics. Are you reaching your visitors, and are your visitors spending time on your site? For example, you have a video on a page that is three minutes long, you’ll want to see that your audience has remained on the page for at least that long. Typically a high bounce rate will correlate with a low average time on the site, but not always.
Take a good look at your content when looking at your analytics. Try to see it through your visitor’s eyes, as if it’s the first page they see. Even better, have a neutral third party give you feedback on your site and page content.
Examining metrics on the page level will give you an idea of what content is most engaging to your audience and give you areas where you may want to change your content. Knowing what your visitors do is critical to understanding the effectiveness of your site and overall marketing strategy.
Analytics code can be easily be added to your Online Candidate website through the Site Setup. For more articles, information and tool about analytics and online campaigning, visit OnlineCandidateResources.com.
Political Messaging, Campaign Mission Statements, And Groupthink
There’s an old expression, “Too many cooks spoil the broth”. If you’ve ever written a campaign mission statement or campaign plan with a group of people, you know how a simple idea can become tweaked, pulled apart, and reassembled into a Frankenstein-like mess of vague goals, squishy feelings and half-baked ideas.
The same thing goes for campaign issue and advertising plans for local political campaigns: Over-analysis by a group can take simple idea can turn into on overreaching and broad goal that will only serve to confuse the voting public.
How to Write a Mission Statement That Doesn’t Suck [Video]
The average length of a political mission statement is less than 10 words. Is your campaign plan simple, effective and engaging? Can you tighten it up further and make it catchy tagline?
Is it concise like the mission statements and platforms of the major US political parties?
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