For those who are interested in the backstory of Online Candidate, check out our interview on WebsitePlanet.com.
Please describe the story behind the company: What sparked the idea, and how has it evolved so far?
A friend of ours ran for office way back in 2003. She was an underdog in the campaign and needed all the help she could get. We thought the best way to help was to build her a campaign website. This was back before having an online presence was a large part of political campaigning and fundraising.
The site was successful and had a large impact on the campaign. It helped raise issue awareness on local development and many of the back-room deals being made without public knowledge or input. We managed to get our website to show for searches on our opponent’s name. We also managed to get unflattering articles about the opponent to appear, as well. This was due to linking out to those articles from the site to influence rankings. (Today this would be called ‘Google Bombing’.)
The campaign promoted the website on signage and in local newspaper ads. This bad publicity spooked the opponent and led him to spend a lot of money on a competing site.
In the end, our candidate won the election.
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