Political Campaign Tips and Strategies
Practical guides for candidates running local and state campaigns. Find advice on starting a campaign, building your online presence, fundraising, messaging, voter outreach, and more.
Essential Guides for Political Candidates
How to Prepare for a Run for Local Office
Learn the basics of preparing for a local campaign, including qualifications,
budgeting, fundraising, building a campaign team, filing requirements, and
getting voters to the polls.
Read the guide
Political Campaign Timeline
See what needs to happen before, during, and after a campaign launch, from early planning and filing through fundraising, voter outreach, and Election Day.
View the timeline
How to Build a Political Campaign Website
A practical guide to planning, building, and launching a campaign website that gives voters the information they need and supports your campaign goals.
Read the website guide
Campaign Website Pages: What Every Candidate Needs to Include
Find out which pages and content your campaign website should include to inform voters, collect support, accept donations, and keep your campaign active.
See the essential pages
Comparing Political Donation Platforms
Compare common political fundraising platforms and the factors campaigns should consider when choosing a service for accepting online contributions.
Compare donation platforms
Differences Between a Campaign Slogan, Message and Platform
Understand how your campaign slogan, core message, and issue platform work together—and the different role each plays in communicating with voters.
Learn the differences
Need a Campaign Website?
Online Candidate has helped political candidates build their online presence since 2004. See our custom campaign website packages and campaign-specific features.
X / Twitter Tweet Post Ideas for Political Candidates
Starting up and using a Twitter account is simple enough, but sometimes it can be tough coming up with items to tweet about. Here is a quick list, in no particular order, of tweet ideas for candidates and political campaigns.
The Power To Hold Your Campaign Hostage
We recently heard a story of a small campaign that ran into some serious web problems. First, they spent a lot of money on setting up a campaign website. After paying north of $4000 for the website – they then had to shell out an additional $90/hour for updates…
Online Marketing With a Limited Campaign Budget
While budgeting for signs and mailers, how much of your campaign spending will go toward online marketing? While social media through Facebook and Twitter may be ‘free’, you may want to boost your online exposure with paid online advertising. Below are a few popular and low-cost advertising ideas suitable for local political campaigns.
Raising Political Donations Online
Running a successful political campaign costs money. Over the last few years, the internet has become a popular and powerful tool for political fundraising. As technical barriers have dropped, more and more local campaigns are raising money online. Here are the basic steps involved…
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, and her field-tested methods carry candidates through the entire process.
3 Dirty Tricks Political Candidates Pull Online
Here are three tactics that candidates sometimes use on opponents to gain an online advantage. Here’s a summary of our three favorite tricks. Only one of these is really ‘dirty’, though. Guess which one!
Fundraising Letter Templates For Success
Campaign fundraising letter templates are a great tool to help craft an effective appeal for funding and donations. But as a tool, a fundraising letter template has limits. For a campaign to truly succeed in raising funds and cash, your letters need to written with great care.
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.
Political Campaign Strategies That Stink
It’s something most voters claim to hate, but negative campaigning and mudslinging seems to rule American politics – from national campaigns right down to local elections. Unfortunately, these negative political campaign strategies tend to work. If they didn’t, politicians wouldn’t use them
Political Campaign Link-Building Tip: Related Blogs
Looking for links that will bring traffic and a positive mention? Consider reaching out to like-minded blogs and websites. With a little work and luck, you can help boost your campaign website’s rankings and pull in some additional visitors who may be interested in your campaign.
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