The Campaign Workshop Blog

There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all political campaign, but there’s one strategic element that no campaign can afford to leave out: GOTV. A strong get-out-the-vote (GOTV) program may get you the handful of votes you need to win your election, whereas failing to make that final push to get voters to the polls may hasten your demise.

This is probably the most meta blog post ever written. A blog post about writing a blog post. However, writing a blog post is not always intuitive for folks. Often, people who are asked to write a blog post for their organization don’t get the direction they need to write an effective post that yields traffic. As the saying goes, practice makes perfect! Become a master blog writer with these tips:

Every good campaign manager is always thinking about how to develop and grow the leadership skills on their team. Everyone dreams of retiring someday, but many campaign managers and organizers often think there will be no one to pass the baton.

Since the 2016 election, Facebook has been working on making sure that every political campaign that advertises on their platform is verified to do so in the United States and has made their ads more transparent in terms of who is paying for them.

Kelly Dietrich is the founder and CEO of the National Democratic Training Committee, the largest organization in the country singularly focused on providing free campaign training for Democratic candidates, staff, and local leaders. He’s spent more than twenty years in Democratic politics working campaigns all across the country at every level of government. His specialty is new campaign creation, strategy, and fundraising. After getting his start on a congressional campaign in Kansas in 1997, Kelly went on to work and advise dozens of candidates for U.S House, Senate, governor, mayor, and more.

When was the last time you saw something particularly eye-catching in a political campaign ad online? We spend so much of our time online these days – for work and for play – and digital ads are everywhere we look, so it’s easy for your political campaign’s creative to get lost in the shuffle.

I traveled to Manhattan in May to attend the Adobe 99U Design Conference. I had never attended this type of conference before, so I was concerned it could be very brand forward and salesy. Luckily, it was not. In fact, it wasn’t anything I expected at all. Speakers were very philosophical, and workshop sessions were inspirational rather than technical. To be honest, some of it went over my head, but that was the point. To get us creatives to look up and into the future.

Every year and every election cycle, we all have important decisions to make about which political campaign to throw our time and resources behind. Whether you’re looking for a full-time job on a campaign, or simply a volunteer opportunity, it’s important to be thoughtful and strategic about which political campaign you choose.