The Campaign Workshop Blog

Gabriella Mirabelli is the CEO and Co-Owner of Anatomy Media, an Emmy Award winning creative marketing agency, which offers premium creative and research consulting services for world-class television and media brands. Gabriella Mirabelli also hosts the Up Next Podcast, which features new ideas in the media industry with innovative leaders in entertainment and business.

Paul Lage is the President and CEO of Gill Studios, which includes Gill-line: the largest producer of political yard signs, decals, and bumper stickers in the country. We asked Paul for some industry tips to help campaigns navigate the process of designing and printing yard signs and other campaign materials.

I love political and nonpolitical podcasts. But with the constant stream of political discourse that is our lives, it is good to get perspective from politics and listen to the occasional nonpolitical podcast.  When I was in high school I loved the drama of old-school radio. Somewhere there are tapes of an old radio drama I produced back in the day, but today’s podcasts are certainly much nicer than my productions and a great way to learn about a variety of topics. These podcasts are more than just interviews, some have great production values, and some really engage you in the story. 

Top 4 Favorite Twitter Tools 

No matter what day or time, it feels like there are five new digital or twitter tools that are all better, faster, and bigger than the last.

Bernie Horn is the Senior Director for Policy and Communications at the Public Leadership Institute, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization that works with a network of 13,000 progressive state and local policymakers on a wide range of economic and social issues. Bernie Horn is the coauthor of Voicing our Values: A Message Guide for Policymakers and Advocates, which describes how progressives can more effectively frame their arguments to persuade audiences. Below, Bernie Horn shares some tips on how to shape your progressive campaign strategy, get people to realize they agree on the issues, and make policy debates more accessible to voters.

When Donald Trump won the election in 2016, a wave of social activism took over the country and has been building ever since. People are taking to the streets and protesting on an almost weekly basis. Many advocacy organizations have benefited from this momentum and gained supporters and donations.

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach for an email campaign, but a solid email campaign management strategy can make all the difference for your organization or political campaign. Cultivating a fruitful relationship with your supporters takes time, planning, and strategy. Check out our email campaign management tips below to get the process started!

Twitter Video is a growing trend, especially as networks and individual users have started streaming live content. Videos can deliver complex messages and persuade individuals, as they often have an emotional component that static images and text-only tweets generally do not have. 

Just like first impressions, your Twitter campaign strategy can go a long way. After setting up your account, it’s time to actually tweet! Here are a few Do’s and Don’ts to keep in mind, and keep your tweets optimized all while focused on the overall goal of your campaign.

Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster and president of Lake Research Partners, is one of the top political pollsters and strategists of our time. Celinda Lake weighs in on what happened in 2016 and how Democrats can be thoughtful about polling and strategy in 2018 and beyond.

We often talk about how one big advantage of digital advertising is the digital targeting available to the advertiser. The same is true on Twitter, if not more so. Twitter, along with other social media channels, has the benefit of users providing their own information, making the targeting easier. In addition, as users log on and engage on Twitter, their profiles are updated to reflect how they behave online.

Mentionmapp is a digital campaign tool that allows you to map connections between Twitter users to visualize who’s saying what and who they’re saying it to. Mentionmapp can help you keep track of your brand and figure out who’s engaging with your content. We talked to co-founder and CEO John Gray about his digital campaign tool Mentionmapp, as well as larger trends such as the proliferation of Bots and misinformation.

VoterCircle is a digital tool that elevates friend-to-friend outreach over traditional campaign-to-voter contact. VoterCircle has been featured in our 100 campaign tools lists can change the way any campaign does volunteer recruitment, grassroots fundraising, and GOTV. We talked with founder and CEO Sangeeth Peruri about leveraging personal networks and more.

When it comes to social media, some folks are really active, some aren't. Some have a following and some don't. But if you want to use social media to advance your organization or campaign's goals, connecting with your key influencers is a great way to grow your following, and expand the reach of your message. 

We've all had our run-ins with internet trolls on a variety of different platforms. Here are our tips on how to deal with internet trolls.