One of the many blogs that I read every day is The Art of Manliness, which is dedicated to promoting old-fashioned manliness in its many forms.  It’s always a great read, and features plenty of interesting stuff: from tutorials on shaving with a straight razor to tips on being a good father.

About a month ago, I submitted an article to The Art of Manliness about how to run a local election and was glad to see that they published it today.  Although it’s geared toward a male audience (it’s a men’s online magazine, after all), I hope you’ll check it out regardless of your gender.

The article focuses on traditional civic responsibility as a motivator for seeking local elected office, which I think is far too rare nowadays. Running for office was, at one time, considered the pinnacle of civic responsibility.  Today, however, running a political campaigns usually seems to be more about promoting one’s self than promoting the public good.

We try not to get too preachy about why candidates should run for office here on Killer Campaigning, instead focusing on tactics and strategies to win.  It’s worth saying, though, that the more noble  accomplishment is running a good campaign for the right reasons . . . not winning at all costs.

Although the Academy Awards aren’t often studied in political science courses when talking about guerrilla campaigning tactics, there’s a reason why the Oscars are often looked at as “political” awards.  The politics of the Oscars isn’t just present in the statements that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences sometimes tries to make in the choosing of its winners, but also in the campaigns that nominees and movie studios launch in their attempts to clinch a golden statuette.

Winning an Oscar in any category can help a film find a lucrative marketing re-birth or launch actors and actresses to super-stardom.  It’s easy to understand why many millions of dollars are spent on efforts to promote nominees to members of the Academy, and it’s a great study for political consultants or campaign managers who are fascinated by the psychology of campaigning.

Once nominations for the Academy Awards are named, there simply isn’t time for much campaigning to get done before Oscars are awarded a few weeks later.  Oscar nominees don’t have the luxury of putting together a detailed campaign plan months in advance of the “election” like candidates for public office have.

And they don’t have the ability to raise funds for a campaign from donors, either . . . although few Oscar nominees would need to do so anyway, with the hefty bank accounts of movie studios there to finance the best advertising that money can buy.  Making that advertising effective, and getting it in front of the Academy members who will be voting in each category, is the difficult part.

The members of the Academy who vote for Oscar winners are a relatively small, select group of individuals, and just because a film or actor has millions of fans across the country doesn’t mean it will equate to a win on Oscar night. Movie studios have to do a bang-up job of promoting their nominees to members of the Academy quickly, brilliantly and effectively.

While social media and Internet campaigning are starting to be used effectively by movie studios to promote Oscar nominees to Academy members, it’s not yet a medium that offers as much oomph for an Oscar campaign as it does for, say, a presidential or senate campaign.  Political candidates often have months or even years to build up social media fans and mail lists online, and movie studios only have a few short weeks to promote their films, actors and scores.

Instead, traditional marketing vessels like print, magazine, television and even billboard advertising play a much larger role in Oscar campaigns.  Studios and actors have immediate, large budgets to make big ad buys in these traditional markets, and it’s not uncommon to see advertisements promoting Oscar nominees in magazines and publications that are read by many Academy members.

If you’re a political candidate, there isn’t much to learn about good traditional campaigning from the yearly race for the Oscars.  Flesh-and-blood candidates don’t often have the limitless financial resources of a movie studio, and larger districts require a much more broad attempt to impress the electorate (your voters will be every resident of legal age, after all, and not just a select few members of an elite academy).

Still, from a strictly academic approach, watching how nominees for the Academy Awards pull off successful campaigns is worth paying a bit of attention to.  In the politics of the Oscars, there are often wildly successful underdogs who win in spite of being less glitzy and having less money . . . and the same can be said for political races on every level across the country, too.

After the Oscars have been awarded and the dust settles, take a moment to read up on some of the tactics that the different nominees used to campaign for their shot at the Academy Awards.  Pay close attention to the nominees who weren’t as well financed, and see if their tactics inspire any ideas for your own future political campaigns.

Oh, and if you have any hunches about who the winners are going to be on Oscar night this year, I hope you’ll let us know in the comment section below.  We’re always fascinated by any type of campaigning, and there’s an old saying among veteran campaign managers, after all: “Politics is just acting for ugly people.”

Here’s a cool new addition to Killer Campaigning: our political campaign jobs board.

If you’re a political consultant or campaign worker who wants to stay up-to-date on the newest opportunities for working in elections all around the country and the globe, there aren’t a whole lot of places to look on the Internet.  Killer Campaigning hopes to make your political campaign job search easier with our daily job listings.

Make sure you bookmark the Killer Campaigning Political Campaign Jobs Board to keep up-to-date on great opportunities in election staffing, campaign management, internships and volunteering!

If you get a chance, head over to the CandidateSigns.com blog and check out a guest post by yours truly about using Google Maps to track political campaign yard sign locations.

I’ll let you read the whole post at CandidateSigns, but here’s the gist of it: I used Google Maps to create a cool bird’s-eye view of every yard sign location in my city council race this year, and it works great.

You can take a look at the map I created right here.  Works great for visualizing where all of your campaign yard signs are located, which areas to focus on, and where to go and pick them all up again on election night.

We’re going to dedicate several posts to the subject of yard signs in the future here on Killer Campaigning, but all of them will likely revolve around a simple concept: yard signs are necessary for a winning campaign, but are very overrated.

Political candidates usually focus way too much time, energy and money on yard signs that could be spent on other, more effective strategies.  Yard signs are good for two things: to encourage your supporters and intimidate your opponents.

The old campaign saying “signs don’t vote” hits it right on the nose.  Spending all of your campaign funds to put out twice as many yard signs as your opponent is a great way to lose an election.

By the way, the CandidateSigns.com blog looks like a great blog to follow for anyone interested in campaign advice.  I’ve subscribed to their feed and encourage everyone else to do the same.

This doesn’t exactly constitute political campaign advice, but it is applicable to anyone who plans to become an elected official.

These “Eleven Rules” were sent in to Killer Campaigning by Joni Eastley, a commissioner in Nye County, Nevada.  While Joni writes from the point of view of a rural county commissioner, her rules can be applied to any elected official.

As a side note, it looks like Joni knows exactly what being a good elected official is all about.  In 2008, she was elected to her third term as Nye County Commissioner with the highest margin of victory out of any race in the entire State of Nevada.

Now that’s Killer Campaigning!

Eleven Rules to Survival as a County Commissioner

Joni’s Lessons Painfully Learned

1. You cannot do this job without the full support of your spouse or partner and your family. The hours are long, the time away from home is great, and the interruptions to your life are frequent. Your family’s support will be the main key to your success.

2. You don’t know it all! Always support county staff. Stay out of their way and let them do their jobs. And if you didn’t know it before, you know it now—the county manager is the board’s only employee. The board’s only employee—not yours.

3. You are only part of the power of the board of commissioners, not the base of that power. Understand and respect the Open Meeting Law.

4. Be responsive to your constituents. Return telephone calls promptly. Acknowledge every communication, even if you’re only copied and it’s not intended for you.

5. Be accessible to your constituents, but not too accessible. Be sure to establish reasonable limits to your time and boundaries to your accessibility.

6. This is what you DO, it’s not who you ARE. Recognize the difference between and doing and being.

7. You are now part of a machine with interchangeable parts. Always support your fellow commissioners and the final decision, even when it doesn’t go your way.

8. If there are town boards in your district, be available to help and support their members. Your district is only as strong as the sum of its parts.

9. Recognize the difference between emotional issues and business issues and act accordingly. Don’t allow yourself to get caught up in an emotional issue that results in an emotional (translation: wrong) decision.

10. NEVER make the mistake of listening to (and believing) the first “story” you hear. There are two (and sometimes more) sides to everything. Be a good investigator and gather all the facts before you make a decision.

11. And finally—under promise and over deliver!

If you get a chance, head over to one of our favorite blogs, JohnChow.com, and check out a new article he published today by Yours Truly: Five Things that Good Blogging and Good Campaigning Have in Common.

John Chow close to 70,000 daily RSS feed subscribers, so it’s a real kick to have him publish a post that we wrote linking back to Killer Campaigning.

I’ll let you click through to the article to read more, but this excerpt pretty much hits the gist of it:

Many of the qualities that make a great blog can also make for great political campaigning. Hard work, smart planning and effective networking are just a few of the strategies that both bloggers and politicians use to blaze a trail to success.