Campaigns

In our last blog post, Digital Advocacy: Advertising Campaign Goal Setting Part I,  we talked about how to develop digital advocacy strategy, cost per acquisition (CPA) campaigns, email programs and the best ways to utilize ad testing. In today's post, we take a closer look at using tactics like paid digital advertising, social media and analytics for digital advocacy. You can also read more about this in our latest ebook, Guide to Digital Advocacy.

The lion’s share of your political or advocacy campaign will be spent on message development and saturation. But as Election Day looms, you’ll have to start focusing your efforts on get out the vote/ GOTV. While you should make sure to include the rest of your online platforms in your GOTV efforts, a good place to start is social media. Not surprisingly, it’s a great digital platform for social pressure. You can use social media in a few ways to encourage your target audience to vote.

Member public affairs strategies can be an amazing way to move your issue forward. Membership organizations should have a head start when it comes to public affairs strategies, but that head start is often complicated. Membership organizations tend to have bureaucratic structures that make it difficult to work nimbly, especially when it comes to public affairs. Because of this, some member organizations have avoided using member-based public affairs strategies and they are missing out.

Running for office or working on a campaign?  Check out The Campaign Worskshop's fifth e-book “Ready, Set, Go! Jumpstart Your Political Campaign. 

Much has been said about political email, especially as it grows in popularity. Email is certainly not going anywhere and political email has proven to be an effective tool in both recruiting supporters and raising money for your campaign. It’s important to pay attention to all aspects of your email, but how much attention should be paid to the sender?

In my 20 years working in politics, I have seen a lot of things change. Technology in particular has done a lot to change the way that we communicate with voters. Yet somehow, we in politics have access to more information about our audience than ever before, but our audience engagement is at an all time low.

Your nonprofit facebook ad will need an image to display on users newsfeeds or right-hand rails. In a platform like Facebook, where viewers are accustomed to scrolling continuously, you’re going to need an image that is arresting enough to stop the scroll. Make sure the photo or illustration you use has a clear focal point that is either intriguing or easily recognizable and relevant to a viewer’s interests.

Races are heating up, but there are a number of exciting opportunities for Democrats up and down the ticket. Here are some tips to jumpstart your Democratic campaign:

Candidate recruitment in many places is a lost art form.  Contrary to the popular myth, someone from the DNC does not appear on your doorstep one day out of the blue and proclaim that you should be the next state rep. from Omaha. The majority of candidates who run for office are never formally recruited; they recruit themselves.