5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Running for Elected Office
Running for local office is an adventure, and it’s completely understandable to come across some unexpected challenges. If only you had known a few key things before diving into your campaign, right?
Well, here are five friendly tips that could have made your journey to elected office a little smoother:
Embrace the Power of Grassroots Support: Start early and build a strong network of supporters. Get involved early on by attending local government meetings and events and connecting with influential community members. Don’t wait until you announce your candidacy to start showing up in public. Also, listen closely to the specific concerns and needs of your constituents. By nurturing these relationships, you can gather grassroots support and rally volunteers to your cause.
Craft a Clear and Compelling Message: You must have a well-defined platform that focuses on the issues that matter most to your target voters. Don’t let your personal feelings dictate your platform. For example, we had a local candidate who seemed to be obsessed with dog droppings in the neighborhood. And while that is a quality of life problem, that seemed to be all she ever mentioned, and it became her signature “issue”. Needless to say, that issue did not propel her to victory. Make sure your own message resonates with the majority of voters.
Embrace the Wonderful World of Data and Analytics: Did you know that numbers can be your secret weapon in a campaign? Understanding your electorate’s demographics, voting history, and key concerns can revolutionize your campaign strategy. With solid voter data, polling, and targeted outreach, you can tailor your efforts to effectively reach the right people. In a local election, a high voter turnout from a small area or demographic can easily propel you to victory.
Tackle Fundraising with Finesse: Fundraising—the perennial challenge for candidates. The trick is to start early and create a solid fundraising plan. Consider a variety of sources, like individual donations and holding events. Be prepared to make plenty of calls and attend plenty of meetings. A campaign website and an online fundraising platform makes it easy to accept contributions. Just don’t start too early. (Some elected positions and local laws may require you to adhere to specific timelines and regulations.)
Get a Campaign Manager: Running your own campaign might seem like a tempting idea, but you’re better off with a campaign manager. We’ve seen too many local candidates try to handle all aspects of a campaign and burn themselves out. Having a campaign manager (and campaign team) by your side ensures that important tasks like fundraising, strategizing, and engaging with the community are handled efficiently and effectively. This way, you can preserve your sanity and focus your time and energy where it matters most.
Remember, running for office is a learning experience. Speak to others who have run. They can share valuable lessons and help connect you with others who can help. Despite the obstacles, campaigning is an opportunity to connect with your community, grow, and make a positive impact. So, go out there and make the most of your journey!
Start your campaign website with Online Candidate.
Should You Fully Automate Your Campaign’s Social Media?
Social media is a powerful tool for political campaigns. With various platforms to communicate with followers, it’s tempting to automate posts using tools like Hootsuite. While automation can save time, it’s important to find the right balance to avoid potential pitfalls.
Imagine crafting a meticulously written press release announcing a significant campaign event. It captures the attention of supporters and the news media alike.
But if you simply link out to the release with quick social posts, you may end up with generic tweets and Facebook posts that lack personality and flair.
By pushing out updates with the click of a button or just adding links into automation tools, you can miss out on the potential for genuine engagement.
For effective social media management, a hands-on approach is key. Each social network has its own dynamics, necessitating unique posting strategies. For instance, X / Twitter thrives on concise content displayed in short bursts. With just 280 characters, manually crafting tweets allows you to leverage #hashtags and @replies, enhancing your message beyond what an automated cross-post would achieve. (Just make sure your hashtags are relevant and not overused.)
Facebook offers even greater flexibility in updating. You can share longer status messages, include images, or even make video posts. Customizing your post enables you to add insightful comments, pose questions, or make impactful statements.
Certainly, automation has its place. Pre-scheduled posts work well for specific events and dates. However, when you invest time in tailoring important messages for each social media platform, the rewards are substantial: increased exposure and a more engaged audience.
To strike the right balance, consider the following strategies:
- Define Your Content Strategy: Develop a comprehensive plan that outlines the frequency of posts, optimal timing, and content tailored to the preferences and demographics of each platform’s user base.
- See What Others Do: Follow other successful politicians and see what posts get high engagement and response. This can provide you with insights on how to create successful posts.
- Post Directly: Post directly through your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Take advantage of links, hashtags, images, and emojis to make the most of each platform.
- Analytics and Performance Tracking: Leverage analytics tools to monitor and evaluate the performance of your social media posts. Measure post engagement engagement and find out what gets the most activity. Adjust your strategies accordingly to maximize effectiveness.
- Automation vs. Personalization: Strive for a healthy balance. Automate posts for routine updates and scheduled events, but reserve personalization for critical messages that require tailored content to foster genuine connections.
By adopting a thoughtful approach that combines automation and personalization, you can unleash the full potential of your social media presence. Engage with your followers, amplify your message, and cultivate a vibrant online community that supports your campaign or cause.
Finding the sweet spot between automation and personalization is just one key to success!
Packed with tips, tricks and useful strategies, Running For Office as an Online Candidate provides a digital blueprint for candidates to raise money, build support and win their race. Download a sample [PDF] or get the full version today.
From Bland to Bold: Elevate Your Campaign Writing with Personal Style
When it comes to political campaigning, communication is like the secret sauce—it’s the key ingredient that makes everything else work. One aspect of communication is having a ‘voice’, which is a unique style, tone, and personality. Candidates who can communicate with a specific voice can often gain greater voter support and ultimately come out on top.
Your voice is much a part of your branding as your campaign logo and color scheme. It’s what will make you stand out from your opponents and keep you top of mind when voters make a their choice on the ballot. While many people will vote for a party, many people – especially in local races – will vote for the person.
Here are 5 tips to help you inject your voice into your political campaign writing:
Know Your Audience
Understanding the demographics, values, and concerns of your target audience is crucial in political campaign writing. For example, say you’re running for mayor in a small agricultural town. If you fail to understand the concerns and values of your community’s farmers and agricultural workers, you may inadvertently create messaging that is irrelevant or even offensive to them. For instance, by proposing a policy that would negatively impact the farming industry without fully understanding its impact, you risk alienating a key constituency.
You don’t want that.
Do your homework. Take the time to really understand your constituents and their concerns. That’s the only way you can create positive messaging that resonates with them.
Injecting Personality Makes a Difference
Injecting your personality into your political campaign writing is essential for connecting with voters and building a sense of authenticity. Storytelling is a great way to convey your beliefs and values. If you’re running for office because of a personal experience, sharing your story can help voters understand why you’re passionate about an issue.
Personal disclosure also builds empathy with those with whom you engage in storytelling.
Use language and phrasing that feel natural to you. You can even use some humor or sarcasm to spice up your copywriting. By showing some real personality and humanity, voters can see you as a more relatable and trustworthy candidate.
Being Authentic Builds Trust
Look, voters can tell when a candidate is being insincere or using canned language. Just be genuine and authentic in your messaging. Don’t go too heavy with technical jargon or acronyms. This can make your writing feel inaccessible or even condescending.
We’ve seen clients create issue pages that read like technical drafts. Add and link to white papers if you want, but don’t make your average reader face screens of endless text.
Also, go easy on the talking points. The stock phrases used by national candidates or political parties can sound kind of hollow on a local level. Especially if that issue has nothing to do with the position you are running for. If you feel passionate about a topic, just explain clearly why you hold that position. Being honest and transparent (and with some personality) helps build trust with voters.
Vivid Language Inspires Action
Creating a sense of urgency is an effective way to inspire action and get voters engaged. Use language that highlights the stakes of your election. For example, you might emphasize the consequences of inaction or frame your campaign as a fight for the future of your district. Action-oriented language encourages supporters to get involved. Phrases like “join the fight” or “be part of the movement” can create the idea that the reader can be part of something larger. This can help inspire action.
Editing and Revising is Essential
No matter how talented a writer you may be, you’ll still need a second pair of eyes to help catch spelling and grammatical errors, and to clarify your messaging. A team member, a trusted advisor, or even a professional editor to help you refine your messaging and make it as powerful as possible. Before you hand off your material for review, make sure you check your spelling and grammar through Word or online tools like Quillbot.
If you’re running for office, don’t just dash off a quick policy draft and hope for the best. Work on developing your content to create your own winning recipe for success!
Ready to start your campaign website? Online Candidate has affordable website packages and options to build out your digital campaign.
Maximize Your Online Campaign Success: Avoid These 5 Mistakes
Online politics regularly provides voters with campaign gaffes, mistakes, and embarrassing moments. There are many opportunities for political campaigns and candidates to make online blunders.
Here are five of the most common and avoidable problems that we see every election season.
Writing website content in the first person
Many candidates use their site’s home page to write an open letter to voters. Too many ‘I’, ‘me’ and ‘my’ words can hurt your campaign website’s ranking in the search engines. If you want your site to rank well for searches of your name, then your name must be included in your site content.
If you use first person copy, try using ‘pull boxes’ that include your name. Combined with a good page title, page description, and image tags, you can overcome the limitations of first person copy.
Related: Why Your About Page Ranks Higher Than Your Home Page
Failing to take advantage of online fundraising opportunities
It doesn’t matter how small your campaign may be. Once you open a campaign bank account and have a website, you can accept online donations. A number of fundraising services that cater to political campaigns. These services provide online donation forms, social media tools, and the ability to easily process and deposit donations directly into your bank account.
Services designed specifically for political campaigns will handle disclosure and tracking requirements for you. (This is helpful for state or FEC reporting, so your treasurer will thank you!) Some services also allow you to collect recurring donations through Election Day. This will allow you to raise money throughout the season.
Don’t wait to start online fundraising or you will be caught short in your get out the vote efforts.
Letting your campaign social media accounts languish
If you start a social media account, you owe it to your followers to provide regular updates. If you start an account and abandon it, followers will be left hanging. Potential followers will see a lack of activity and might even think that you have abandoned your campaign. It’s better to start at a manageable level and grow your social media efforts over time.
Most successful political campaigns use Facebook and Twitter. Maybe Instagram, if they are ambitious. If you start building a following, keep posting updates through Election Day. If you plan to shut down or hibernate your accounts, follow up with a few posts to let them know your final status.
We see a lot of campaigns that simply stop posting and never update their websites after election day. You have to wonder what happened. Did they lose? If so, why not acknowledge the fact and thank their supporters? If they’ve won, perhaps they should let constituents know how to reach them in their newly-elected position.
Posting from the wrong social media account
These days, most candidates and campaign staff manage both personal and campaign social media accounts. If you have multiple accounts, make sure you are logged into the proper account before you post. A personal opinion posted to a campaign account could appear to be an ‘official’ campaign position and lead to an embarrassing situation. This mistake is more common than you may think, especially in the business world.
Always post, tweet and like from the right social media accounts. (Don’t do what this woman just did.)
Sometimes it’s a staff member who makes an erroneous tweet. Sometimes it’s the candidate. Either way, you can be sure that somehow a technical issue or some outside ‘hacker’ will get the blame.
Assuming you have any privacy at all, anywhere or anytime
Anything you ever say or share online (and offline) should pass the ‘New York Times Test’. That means that if you wouldn’t be comfortable with what you’ve said or done appearing on the cover of the New York Times, then don’t do it. That includes personal social media posts, email correspondence, and especially video meetings.
This rule also applies in real life. Almost everyone carries a mobile device these days. Any time you are in a public or even private setting, assume you are being recorded. Campaigns often send ‘plants’ to an opponent’s campaign events to record the candidate and try to catch a ‘gotcha’ moment.
Do or say something wrong, and it’s being recorded or livestreamed, it can be uploaded to social media almost immediately.
Don’t feel too bad if you make one or more of these mistakes. Even presidential candidates have made their own share of digital gaffes.
Avoiding these common mistakes is just one step toward managing a successful political campaign. For more ideas and strategies for online campaigning, subscribe to our email list.
Don’t wait any longer to launch your digital campaign! Every day counts when it comes to reaching voters and spreading your message. With Online Candidate’s quick and easy website services, you can have your site up and running in no time.
Related articles:
Listen Up! It’s Our Running For Office Podcast
Have you listened to our political podcast series, Running for Office as an Online Candidate?
If you are getting started in politics, this podcast series is for you. We discuss how to run a political campaign from the digital side. We cover the tips, tricks and ideas for candidates who want to leverage the internet to help win their election. Right now you can listen on Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, Apple Podcasts, BuzzSprout and more.
Podcast Episodes
Get the book: Running for Office as an Online Candidate
Maximizing the Impact: Best Practices for Online Donations
As anyone in politics knows, proper fundraising is crucial to winning an election. With the ease of online donation platforms, even local candidates are raising money digitally.
But once you’ve secured those all-important donations, it’s important to have a strategy for handling donors effectively.
From making it easy to give, to showing appreciation, to building long-term donor relationships, you want to get the most from your fundraising efforts.
So, whether you’re a seasoned campaigner or just getting started in your run for office, here are five tips for improving your online fundraising:
Make it easy to donate: There are fundraising platforms specifically designed for the needs of political organizations. They include proper data collection and reporting features, and allow donations through websites, social media, and even text links. Consider using a platform that allows for recurring donations. This allows donors to continually support a candidate without having to make a large one-time donation.
Sometimes clients ask if it’s better to have multiple digital payment methods. Generally, it’s best to use a single platform consistently. Having more than one fundraising system means more work for accounting and compliance. Also, by having your financial information collected through one system, it’s easier to track data and other metrics.
Read More: Comparing Political Donation Platforms – Our Recommendations
Personalize your communications: Take the time to personalize your thank you messages and other communications with donors. When sending a follow-up letter or email, don’t make it a generic thank-you message. Include the donor’s name and the amount they donated. Include other details that show you appreciate their support. For example, if the donation is for a specific issue or request, let the donor know what that money will be used toward.
Add donors to your email list: If it is not done automatically, add each donor to your campaign’s email list. For many successful organizations, email is the primary channel that builds long-term relationships with supporters. Email is a great way to keep supporters up to date about upcoming events and other election-related news.Over time, it increase the chances that subscribers will support your campaign in the future.
Read More: 9 Tips For Better Online Fundraising
Follow up with donors regularly: Don’t just thank your donors once and forget about them. Keep them updated about your campaign, upcoming events, news, and other relevant information. This shows that you value their support and are committed to keeping them informed.
Segment your donor list: As your overall donors increase, it’s important to segment them into different groups based on donation amount, frequency, and other factors. Tailor your communications to specific segments. For example, your large donors can be asked for larger subsequent contributions without fear of intimidating them. Ask small-dollar donors for similar follow-up donations or recurring donations. This sort of approach can maximize your messaging impact and improve your overall contributions.
Remember, your current donors are also your future donors. By showing them that you value their support and are committed to staying in touch, you not only build goodwill but also lay the foundation for future fundraising success.
Whether you’re running for local city council or the U.S. Senate, online fundraising is a powerful way to reach new donors, mobilize supporters, and build voter momentum.
Don’t just focus on getting short-term or one-time donations. Think about how you can build lasting relationships that can pay dividends down the road. By doing so, you’ll build a strong base of supporters who will be with you all the way to Election Day!
FAQs
What are the specific legal considerations or compliance requirements for online political donations?
The legal considerations or compliance requirements for online political donations are multifaceted. Political campaigns must follow federal, state, and local regulations. And these can all vary significantly. These regulations often dictate the maximum amount an individual can donate, the need for transparent reporting of donations, and the requirement to verify that donors are legally permitted to contribute (e.g., ensuring donors are citizens or legal residents). Campaigns must ensure their chosen online platforms can accurately track and report donations according to these legal standards, including the identification of donors and the amounts contributed.
How can campaigns effectively measure the ROI of different online fundraising strategies?
Measuring the ROI of different online fundraising strategies involves both analytics and strategic evaluation. Campaigns should leverage the data collection capabilities of their fundraising platforms to track key metrics such as donation amounts, donor acquisition costs, conversion rates (from solicitation to donation), and the effectiveness of different solicitation channels (email, social media, text messaging). By analyzing these metrics, campaigns can identify and adjust strategies that provide the highest returns. This optimizes resource allocation and also refines messaging and engagement tactics for future fundraising efforts.
What are the best practices for responding to and managing negative feedback from online donors?
Managing negative feedback from online donors is important to maintaining strong donor relations and a positive campaign image. Campaigns should adopt a proactive and empathetic approach to feedback management. They should acknowledge concerns and address them transparently. This might involve explaining decisions or actions that led to dissatisfaction, offering solutions or alternatives to disgruntled donors, and, when necessary, implementing changes based on legitimate feedback. Campaign communication should prioritize positive donor engagement, along with accountability. Handling negative feedback well can turn potentially damaging situations into opportunities for demonstrating integrity and even strengthening donor relationships.
Start your digital campaign! Online Candidate websites integrate with any online donation platform. We help hundreds of campaigns each election cycle. Find out what services are best for you.
Online Candidate makes it easy to launch your political website and build your online presence.
