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 Articles
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
Setting Up Your 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
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
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
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.
Maximize Your Online Campaign Success: Avoid These 5 Mistakes
There are many opportunities for political campaigns and candidates to make online blunders. Here are five some of the most common and avoidable problems that we see campaigns make season after season.
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...
Maximizing the Impact: Best Practices for Online Political 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...
Yes, Even Local Campaigns Need a Website
When voters hear your name, many of them will look you up before they do anything else. If they cannot find a campaign website, or if what they find is incomplete, outdated, or unclear, they start making assumptions. They may assume the campaign is not serious, not...
How Does Running for Office Differ in a Major City Versus a Small Town?
Running for office in a major city versus a small town? There are few things that sets these types of campaigns apart. For instance: Voter Engagement In a big city, you're looking at a mosaic of voters. Each constituency might need a different message. You're also...
How To Remove A Volunteer From Your Online Campaign
The issue of removing a person from access to online campaign accounts has been an issue that has come up for a few of our clients. Here’s a repost of our advice…
Speak Like a Voter, Win Like a Candidate
Are you watching your language? I'm talking about the language of your campaign as you reach out to voters. In your advertising, speeches, campaign website and one-to-one interactions, are you conversing with or talking down to your audience? How do you talk down to...
Creating a Political Campaign Timeline
If you've ever run for local office, then you know that the stakes are high, no matter the position. And the competition can be as tough as any state or federal race. Planning out a timeline for your political campaign is an important step in winning. Knowing when to...
Will Your Social Media Past Hurt Your Political Future?
More and more candidates running for office today are dealing with the issue of social networking activities coming back to haunt them. Will it hurt you, too?
The Candidate Statement: Communicating Your Vision to Voters
Who are you to voters and consitutents? At the start of an election campaign, political candidates outline their positions on various issues. These are called candidate statements, and they are used to help voters make informed choices. In this article, we will...
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