Political Campaign Tips and Strategies by Online Candidate

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.

Use Online Candidate to build your next campaign website. Our Monthly Option is only $29/month.

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.

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.