Website Promotion for Local Candidates
The 1990s myth, “If you build a web site, they will come,” is still a commonly believed by companies, organizations, and people running for office who are new to digital marketing. The reality, however, is that people won’t come to your website unless you promote your website both online and offline.
Here are few basic tips for promoting a new website for a candidate.
Offline promotional materials
Prominently include your campaign website domain name in EVERY print piece distributed by your local campaign – flyers, press releases, posters, yard signs, buttons, banners, TV and radio ads, and anything else related to your campaign. Always let the media know that this additional material is available on your online campaign press kit. (Odds are, they will use it!)
Use your email list
By starting your site early, you can accumulate more e-mail addresses from your supporters and voters. Using the mail list to keep in regular (but not TOO frequent) contact helps get your word out and keeps supporters informed. Always provide a link back to your campaign website, and suggest that the recipient forward your newsletter e-mail to others.
Smart linking
Reciprocal linking is often used by small to midsized websites as an inexpensive way to increase visitor traffic and link popularity with search engines. (You DID create a Google account for your campaign, didn’t you?) If a newspaper writes an article about you, make sure the reporter knows your website address. When the article is published, do a short writeup about the article on your site blog and link out to it.
Are there local or regional web sites that would agree to link to your site? What about other local candidates from your own party? Ask other groups campaigning for similar causes to put a link from their website to yours, and offer to do the same for them. Reciprocate links, and you can both benefit from the cross-traffic and bring exposure to others interested in similar issues.
Viral marketing
“Viral marketing” refers to the phenomenon of people sending information about your site to other people, who then in turn forward it on to others, and so on! Viral marketing can be very powerful.
Below are examples of viral marketing that are easily implemented:
- Share buttons: Share buttons that allow your content to be shared to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter is an example of viral marketing.
- Newsletters: Encourage viral marketing by putting a line at the end of your campaign email newsletters asking people to forward your newsletters on to others.
- E-mail signature: Most e-mail programs allow you to create a “signature” that’s added to the bottom of every outgoing e-mail message. Make sure your campaign staff’s e-mail accounts contain a signature that links back to the campaign website.
Consider online advertising
While banner ads often garner “click-through” rates of less than one-half of one percent, local political ads often perform much better – especially when they appear on a local newspaper website near election time. Local newspaper websites are your best bet for direct online advertising. Newspapers already have a large built-in audience of potential constituents. If you are going to do any online advertising, pay-per-click text ads and newspaper advertising are your best bets.
Most publishers will design a creative ad (“creative”) for you, although many campaign organizations submit their own creatives or do multiple creatives, each focusing on a different topic. Hiring a designer to do an online ad for you varies, depending on what kind of creative you need.
We provide affordable campaign websites for candidates. Easy to start, easy to maintain, and includes tools and resources to help your online marketing.
An Alternative To Wordpress for Political Campaign Websites
WordPress is a very popular content management system (CMS) that runs about a quarter of all websites as of this writing.
Many political campaigns use WordPress as their website CMS. It’s a powerful solution, but whether it’s the right solution for your campaign depends on your needs, budget, and technical abilities.
WordPress uses themes for design. There are thousands of free and low-priced ones available. There are also a number of political WordPress themes available. However, all themes require installation and customization. If you purchase a theme with a lot of bells and whistles, the customization can take quite a bit of time.
WordPress plugins provide additional functionality without requiring custom programming. Again, there are thousands of free and paid plugins available. They may include forms, calendar features, and so on. However, for plugins to work, they must be installed, configured for use, and kept up to date.
While the WordPress software may be open source (and free) and themes are fairly inexpensive, getting the site configured and customized takes a lot of time. For a person without technical skills, there can be a steep learning curve.
You can get your site built on the cheap. However, you usually get what you pay for, so you might not want to put your online presence in the hands of an inexperienced developer or with a poor design. A WordPress template can become a mess in the wrong hands, or the site may not be optimized for search engines.
Another downside to WordPress is that you need to perform backups, security updates, and any necessary upgrades yourself. If you don’t keep up with updates, you run the risk of having your site hacked. Because WordPress powers so much of the web, it’s the biggest target for online hackers.
So, is a WordPress campaign website worth it? Ultimately, that’s up to you. It’s certainly not a bad choice, but only if the site is properly designed and configured.
Though we now offer WordPress Campaign Websites, the Online Candidate platform has been developed and refined to make websites simple to update, even for people with little technical skill. It contains built-in tools and functionality specific to political candidates. The templating system is built-in and is simple but very flexible. Even our custom designs are affordable because we have a fast and efficient production process, allowing us to pass on the cost savings to our clients.
Learn more about our Online Candidate political website platform and learn why hundreds of campaigns use us every election cycle.
Campaign Dollars and Sense
Money fuels the engine of every political campaign. The bigger the budget, the easier it is to rally existing supporters and spread your message to new groups. Once you have inspired the masses, the last thing you want to do is create obstacles for them to donate.
THIS PAGE HAS BEEN 301 to https://www.onlinecandidate.com/articles/raising-online-dollars
Power to the People
Imagine for a moment giving a compelling speech to a cheering crowd. The supporters have embraced your platform, endorsed you as their candidate, and vowed to donate to the campaign. The same energetic crowd goes home, reaches for their wallets and heads to your website eager to donate…except they find the only way to donate is by check. Suddenly, their desire to give has met a roadblock. Never take away the ability of your supporters to decide which method of giving is right for them.
Checks in the Balance
Writing checks used to be the golden standard for payments. Now, debit and credit cards have steadily taken over as the preferred payment method. Analysis by The Campaign Finance Institute has shown the average online supporter gives less than $200 per donation, but is more likely to donate multiple times over the duration of the campaign!
According to Pew Research, a non-partisan research group, nearly 54% of all U.S. adults receive their information regarding the 2010 elections online. With that number of engaged potential donors, doesn’t it makes sense to have an online donation option for them?
Choose Wisely
There are many companies willing to help you with campaign donations; however, they are not created equal.
1. Use your donation tool to your advantage. There are flexible programs that allow you to not only accept donations on your website, but also provide a secure payment page to send out by email.
2. Compare programs. Many processors charge up to 10% in fees and surcharges, and some charge as little as 2.19%.
3. Deposit your funds automatically. To avoid interruption in your campaign cash flow, your donation processor should deposit funds directly into your bank account within 24-48 hours. Many processors only mail physical checks to the campaign office once or twice per month.
4. Beware of long-term contracts. Choose a provider that honors month-to-month agreements. Don’t make the mistake of getting locked into a long-term contract.
5. Remove the risk of handling credit card data. The safest way to handle a credit card transaction online is to allow a compliant and secure third party to handle it for you. This allows you to collect the money, but removes the risk of handling or storing credit card data.
Donations Made Easy
Increasing your campaign donations can be easier than you think. By empowering your supporters with an option to donate online, you give them the ability to give easily and often.
Amy Airhart is the Director of Business Development at LawPay, a credit card processing program specifically designed for attorneys and is recommended by more than 60 Bar Associations across the country.
Election Day – Now and Throughout the Year
For many candidates, Election Day is here. The general November elections always seem to get the most attention and greatest turnout. But other elections are also held throughout the year. There are school board, local elections and primaries.
For candidates that have elections that fall in ‘off’ months, voter turnout tends to be lower, so supporter turnout is the key to victory. Engaging voters early is particularly important.
By getting people excited and invested in your campaign, they are more likely to actually vote for you. People are busy. If they have followed your campaign, gotten to know and like you as a candidate, and perhaps even contributed, then the odds are greater that they will take the time to go to the polls on Election Day. By then, they have become psychologically invested in seeing you win.
If you have an election in the spring, late summer or even next November, start building support as early as possible. With online political activity growing each year, candidates of any type cannot ignore the web. Begin now to establish yourself online and create your online reputation. Start using social media and build out your campaign website. (We are seeing many candidates starting their websites a year or more before the election). These are the building blocks to online promotion and fundraising.
Done properly, you will build a strong following that will turn out and vote for you on Election Day – no matter when it occurs!
Running for local office or just considering a run? Check out OnlineCandidateResources.com. It covers everything from establishing yourself online though building a campaign site to online promotion and fundraising strategies leading up to Election Day. Free for Online Candidate clients.
Are Short Links Blocking Your Campaign Email?
Link shortening services are a great way to reduce a long URL to a nice, short one. While these services have been around for quite a while, they’ve become very popular with the rise of Twitter and Facebook. While link shortening works well for social media posts, does it work well for email?
In a word, no.
While shortening links in emails (particularly text emails) is appealing, link shorteners are a favored tool by spammers. They like them because a shortened URL masks the true link that they want you to click on.
So how does this affect your email delivery? If a shortened link begins to appear in a large volume of spam, ISPs may block emails that include that particular link-shortening domain to block the spammers. If you are using the same link shortener in your emails, then your email messages may be inadvertently blocked, as well.
This can hurt your email deliverability rate.
Why take the risk? Send emails with an HTML version instead of plain text-only emails. With HTML email, you can easily link up text or images instead of putting the full URL in the message. (Most email marketing services primarily use HTML message builders.)
If you use a full URL, it’s probably better for your subscribers. After all, seeing exactly where a link points to is better than taking a risk clicking a shortened URL. Anything you can do to improve response on your email list is helpful, and using full links in your messages can improve your click-through rates. This can make a real difference in your fundraising and recruitment drives.
Link shorteners are great for social media, where space is at a premium. Just don’t use them in your email.
Hey! For less than the cost of a (print) mailing, you can easily build a political website for your campaign. Online Candidate sites feature a content management system, volunteer, and donation forms, social networking links, and more.
5 Common Campaign Twitter Mistakes
Political candidates and campaigns have several reasons for using X (formerly Twitter). They may want to build overall public exposure, establish branding, share information and increase voter support. While X/Twitter is simple to set up and use, it’s not without its quirks. To attract and keep more followers, avoid these common X/Twitter mistakes.
Mistweeting from the wrong account
Many people have multiple X/Twitter accounts. They may have a personal account and another for a political campaign. If you run multiple accounts, make sure you are logged into the proper account before you post! This mistake is more common than you may think, especially in the business world.
Confusing a direct message and a general tweet
Former New York Representative Anthony Weiner learned the hard way that there are big differences between a direct message and regular tweet when a lewd photo was posted to his campaign Twitter account. The scandal eventually led to his resignation. The lessons? Make sure you know who you are sending your messages to – and never assume that electronic communications will be kept private.
Being overly emotional
A little emotion in your posts is fine. After all, you don’t want to give the impression that you are a campaigning robot. On the other hand, too much complaining, vitriol, and anger can come across poorly. And keep your language clean, no matter what.
Letting the numbers fool you
The quality, not quantity, of your followers is important. You’re running to win an election, not a social media contest. Having 1.3 million X/Twitter followers doesn’t really matter if they are mostly fake. Honestly, do you think anyone actually compares the number of social media followers between campaigns and throws their support behind the more ‘popular’ candidate?
Being too ROI focused
Although marketing through social media is arguably measurable, it does not mean you should obsess over the traffic and repost metrics. The intangible benefits from relationships and message promotion are more important. (But for those who are interested, a few tools to help measure your social media ROI include X Analytics, TweetDeck, and third-party tools like Sprout Social.)
Online Candidate allows you to easily integrate social media into your campaign website. Start your campaign website today.
Online Candidate makes it easy to launch your political website and build your online presence.
