Political Campaign Tips and Strategies by Online Candidate

Book Review – The Campaign Manager by Catherine Shaw

Our first book review is The Campaign Manager: Running and Winning Local Elections. In this book, author Catherine Shaw draws on experience from her three terms as mayor of Ashland, Oregon, and dozens of campaigns to provide practical, proven advice. Her field-tested methods carry candidates through the entire process.

In this fourth updated edition, the entire campaign process is laid out for the reader – from putting together a campaign team to fund-raising, targeting voters, evaluating media effectiveness, to GOTV efforts and everything in between. Issue-based campaigns and ballot measures are also covered. The topics are supplemented with anecdotes about the author’s own campaigns and campaigns she has worked with. The appendix includes information on conducting a precinct analysis, predicting voter turnout and more.

It’s a dense book, and one that should be read well in advance of any campaign.

The Campaign Manager provides an excellent blueprint for offline campaigning. It covers every step of the process in organizing and running a US political or grassroots issue campaign. Each topic is examined in detail and packed with valuable insight and useful suggestions. The political quotes sprinkled throughout are also fun. The book is geared toward campaigns that have (or plan to acquire) some money and resources, as it delves into direct voter targeting strategies and media buys – both of which can cost significant money.

While The Campaign Manager does a terrific job of laying out the nuances of organizing a campaign, it’s coverage of online campaigning falls a little short. Even though this is the 2010, 4th edition, the book provides only a cursory mention of campaign websites and other online opportunities and strategies. Despite these omissions, it’s still a must-read for anyone considering a run for local, county or state office. It makes a fine library addition for even experienced candidates and campaign managers.

Recommended!

Order The Campaign Manager: Running and Winning Local Elections through Amazon.com.

3 Dirty Tricks Political Candidates Pull Online

Dirty Political Tricks Here are three tactics that candidates sometimes to gain an online advantage over an opponent. These are three of favorite dirty tricks, but only one of these is really ‘dirty’, though. Guess which one!

Stealing a domain name. This can be painful if your opponent registers your name as a domain name. You can try to get the name for yourself, but that can take time and become an unnecessary distraction. If an opponent registers a domain of your name, does nothing with it and does not send the traffic to another site, you might want to move on and register a different name.

Back linking bad things about a political opponent. This really isn’t a ‘dirty trick’, and it’s a strategy that any party can implement. Basically, you take a bad or embarrassing article about an opponent and link to it from multiple sources. This works better on smaller campaigns with less overall online exposure. Done properly, you may be able to ‘push’ up that item in the search results for people searching for that person. One tip – use the candidate’s name as the text of the link!

Micro sites. This is where a campaign sets up a small website that focuses on a single issue or a flaw of an opponent. These sites are typically negative by nature. By targeting a more specific audience, you can provide with a single point of reference. One advantage of this technique is that you can keep ‘negative’ material off of your main campaign site. (Online Candidate websites can be used for this purpose.)

There are, of course, much nastier things being done online between political opponents. We don’t advocate stealing domain names, but back-linking and building micro-sites are effective tactics – particularly if they are backed by facts and the truth.

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Fundraising Letter Templates For Success

Campaign fundraising letter templates are a great tool to help craft an effective appeals for funding and donations. But as a tool, letter templates do have limits. For a campaign to truly succeed in raising funds and cash, your fundraising letters need to written with care.

Potential donors do not want to read plain, run-of-the-mill appeal for donations. An endless rotation of form letters begging for cash will only turn off potential donors and cause them to do nothing more than keep their wallets shut.

Sample fundraising letter templates are just that – templates. Simply filling in a candidate name and dollar amount will not do the trick. It takes time to modify a template to fit the specifics of a particular candidate, campaign and donation appeal. Every voter has particular issues and needs that should be weaved into the narrative of your letter.

Your fund raising appeals should be crafted with care. Whether you are using them as mailers or as e-mail solicitations to your supporters, there should be specific goals related to that each solicitation of money. Donation appeals – and especially your first appeal – should be genuinely crafted to appeal to readers on both a personal and emotional level. A template helps with the letter structure and provides proven phrasing to tie it all together into copy that sells.
Add a few sentences about how and why a donor’s gift will make a difference to the campaign. There should be specific reason why that donation is critical and necessary. It might be to get a last message out to the voters before the primaries, to fund a final mailing before the election or to help get another 100 campaign signs printed to replace those that were stolen early on in the campaign.
Let your donors know what their past donations have helped accomplish. Show them how that last mailing pushed through your success in the primaries, or how the donor last push was used to send two new brochures to the local voters. Past success inspires future support and repeat donations.
Give your donors a set date in which to reply and donate. Time-sensitive requests often get a better response, because there is an incentive to act sooner than later. Remember to include an addressed envelope. If you can afford it, stamp it as well. Many people would rather donate a small amount than to let a stamp go to waste.

Finally, let your donors know about your campaign website and their ability to donate through your website. Many donors who won’t take the time to open a checkbook will make a quick online donation.

Below is a Sample Fundraising Letter Template for political candidates.

Used properly, donation letter templates can be useful to any local political campaign. They can inspire ideas and help structure an appeal for maximum effectiveness. With personalization and the addition specific goals, you can connect with your donor base and raise the funds needed to sustain a successful campaign.

For more fundraising letter templates, donation request letters, political press release templates and more, download our Online Candidate Political Letter Templates today.

Become an Online Candidate website client and get access to our online Campaign Letter Generator and other online tools.

Leveraging Campaign Yard Signs Online

In a tight race, you are always trying to get the edge over your opponent. One way to stand out is to combine offline campaign tactics with online ones. When field and the campaign’s web team are working together, great things happen. Campaigns can even leverage the humble yard sign to connect with voters.

Run a Contest on Facebook

Contests are a proven method to increase engagement on social networks. It is easy to set up a contest using campaign yard signs. Here is the basic process:

A contestant takes a picture of the candidate’s sign on their lawn
The contestant inserts the picture on your fan page. Be sure that your page’s settings let fans insert pictures. A variant on this contestant would be to ask contestants to upload a photo and tag the candidate. It’s important to note, however, that users can only tag personal pages.
At random, choose one of the photos and offer a prize such as a complimentary admission to a high dollar fundraiser or to “star” in the next commercial or radio spot.
Finally, follow up. Send an email announcing the winner and plug the fundraiser that the contestant won a complimentary ticket too!

A contest like this will increase the candidate’s exposure online because the campaign’s yard sign will show up on many walls and news feeds. Unlike many pictures of the candidate or events on the campaign trail, a voter gets a clear message of who the candidate is and what office he or she is running for when they see a yard sign online.

Will Tweet for Yard Sign

A lot of campaigns are announcing that their yard signs are available on Twitter. This is a great opportunity to get some valuable mentions. Instead of just announcing that yard signs are available, tell your followers that there are a limited quantity of signs, the campaign expects them to go quickly, and that they can reserve a campaign yard sign by tweeting why they are voting for the candidate and mentioning the campaign’s Twitter account. It’s a small price to pay to ensure that they are going to receive a yard sign and will result in a number of supporters tweeting to their followers why they are supporting your candidacy.

Experimenting with Hashtags, Like “Buttons,” and QR Codes

The best campaign sign designs aren’t cluttered. Great signs generally only include the candidate name and office the candidate is seeking but it’s okay to add some graphics so long as they don’t detract from the candidate name and office sought.

For example, consider using a yard sign to promote a Twitter hashtag. Simply put a pound sign before the candidate’s name on the sign and Twitter users will understand that when referencing your campaign they can use that hashtag.

Likewise, consider putting a like ‘button’ on the yard sign so that voters know that they can connect with you using Facebook. It worked for Victoria’s Secret limited edition “you like this” panty, why can’t it work for your campaign?

Finally, candidates in residential districts might consider using a QR code on their campaign sign. A voter with a smartphone, like the iPhone or an Android phone, could scan the QR code and be directed to the campaign’s website. QR codes were once popular, then fell out of usage, and have recently become popular again for marketers of all types.

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Conclusion

This is just scratching the surface for ways you can integrate your online and offline organizing to get the edge over your opponent. While this post offers a number of ways that campaigns can connect yard signs with technology, you should get creative to integrate all forms of traditional campaigning with the web.

Tracking Your Campaign Video Success

Larger political campaigns have been using video for years now, but now even smaller campaigns are getting into the multimedia act. With the rise of YouTube and other video sharing sites, it’s easier than ever to store and share content.

The most common video uses for political campaigns include:

Personal messages from the candidate
Campaign Ads
Events and rallies
Broadcasting legislative sessions and meetings

Once you add video to your site(s), how do you know how successful they are? How many people are watching them, passing them along, or donating after viewing them?

YouTube provides some pretty good analytics for your video channel. YouTube recently enhanced its reporting tools. Besides number of views, referrers and basic visitor demographics, you can also track audience attention to measure your video’s ability to retain its audience.

Tracking your video usage data can help your campaign create more engaging content which can help increase click-through and conversion rates. For example, if one particular ad is being heavily forwarded to others, you might want to consider making a follow-up. On the other hand, videos that are not being watched at all may just need something as simple as a different description and image to attract interest.

Another video hosting/tracking service is wistia.com. This site allows you to track viewers in real time with video analytics. They provide video heat maps, which can tell you how long and what part of the video was most watched. It also features:

Share videos by email or link
Embed video into your email campaigns and track who’s watching.
Create a play list
iPad support
Email alerts of activity
A 15-day trial.

If anyone gives this service a try, let us know how you like it in the comments below.

Adding video to your Online Candidate website is as simple copying & pasting a few lines of code directly into your page source code . Check out our Campaign Site Demo!

Preparing for Candidate Name Searches

When voters begin searching for your campaign, are they finding what you, as a political candidate, want them to see? If you are not actively laying the groundwork of online content about yourself, you’re leaving it up to others to define you online.

Ideally, when a candidate’s name is searched, the best search results that a candidate can hope for will include the candidate’s campaign website, profiles about the candidate (Facebook, LinkedIn, candidate profile pages, professional affiliations, etc.), positive articles and press releases. A good mix of those items on the first page of search results provides a good overview of the candidate (that’s actually controlled by the candidate) and helps push down negative listings to the second page and beyond.

Starting early with specific pages tends to help ‘cement’ those results over time. For example, having a campaign website and a Facebook page over a series of months will likely show up in search results for just about any search phrases related to the candidate. Google tends to favor ‘established’ content and – more recently – ‘fresh’ content.

Fresh content includes updated content on your web site, press releases and recent articles. That’s why it’s important to capitalize on recent events. Say, for example, a scandal of some sort erupts during the campaign. It’s important to immediately put out a press release and address the issue on your website. Events trigger searches, so when voters start searching about this scandal or event, they will find your content right away in addition to anything else out there.

Keeping track of what is being said about you online is important, as is your ability to provide a rapid response to events.

The key is to define yourself through as many online channels that you can control. Cross-link and have them reinforce each other. Don’t wait until a week before the election to start creating online content about your campaign. By then, it will be too late!

Free up your valuable time! Our political brochure templates can add a professional edge to your campaign materials and handouts – or view all of our digital products.