Killer Campaigning » Political Campaign Websites

Squidoo for Political Campaign & Election Websites

killercampaigning — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 01:14:40 +0000

We’ve talked before about how to practice effective search engine optimization to get your political campaign candidate website ranking for local search terms. One of the most important steps in getting your election website indexed by major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing–and getting it to rank for local search terms–is by building links back to your new site.

One of the best free resources for building links back to your political campaign website is called Squidoo. By simply registering for a free account, Squidoo allows you to create unique web pages–or “lenses”–about any topic you want. These lenses also allow you to create links pointing to other external websites.

Squidoo lenses are very easy to set up and publish, but you should put plenty of thought into what the lens will be about and to make sure that it provides factual, useful information about the subject. I suggest that you make your first lense about the city, county or district you are running in.

Take, for example, the Squidoo lens that I recently published about Amherst, Ohio, where I am a city councilman at-large. I made sure that the lens was packed with lots of relevant, factual information about the City of Amherst and its demographics. I also included other easy-to-add Squidoo modules like a guest book and an imported RSS feed of the latest blog posts from my candidate website.

But here’s the most important part of the Squidoo lens when it comes to SEO: the relevant external links. I included several relevant links to Amherst-related websites that visitors might find useful–like the local library and police department–but I also made sure to link back to my political campaign website, as well.

This link back to my website will help it gain more authority in the search engines, and over time it will help my site rank higher for Amherst Ohio related keyword searches.

If you’ve recently launched a political campaign candidate website and want to get it ranking in the search engines for terms that have to do with your candidacy and district, then creating a Squidoo page should be the next thing on your agenda.

Free Political Campaign WordPress Theme Template Download

killercampaigning — Sun, 23 May 2010 03:00:14 +0000

Click Here to Download the FREE Political Campaign WordPress Theme!

Killer Campaigning is excited to announce the release of our first free Political Campaign WordPress Theme template, specially designed for candidates running for office in local elections. You can download the theme .zip file for free at this link or visit the theme website to learn more.

WordPress is a free content management system that gives you the ability to build a professional-looking, easy-to-maintain political campaign website. We designed our new theme to be as simple as possible for candidates to install, and it includes all of the options and features that an effective election website needs.

We even programmed the theme to let you automatically insert your political campaign disclaimer information in the footer of every page, as required by state election laws.

In order to show you what the theme looks like in action for a real political campaign candidate, I even installed it on my own campaign website as a demo. It looks great and is super easy to set up.

If you’re a candidate who is planning to run for office in a local election, there’s no reason why you need to waste any campaign money to launch a professional-looking website. Get the Political Campaign WordPress Theme today and you can create an effective candidate site that will help you win on election day!

New Online Political Campaign Fundraising Option: GoFundMe

killercampaigning — Mon, 10 May 2010 18:48:48 +0000

TechCrunch has a post today about a new online group fundraising website, called GoFundMe, that might be a great option for political campaign candidates looking to take donations on their site and track contributions with an interesting social media layout.

We’ve looked at raising political campaign money online with PayPal, but GoFundMe gives candidates a more interactive option for fundraising that lets supporters track contributions and interact with visually stimulating graphs and social features. After you’ve created your donation page, you can embed it on your election website and share it with supporters via Facebook, Twitter and email.

GoFundMe charges nine bucks a month to use their service, but doesn’t take any transaction fees. You will still have to fork over 2.9% of money raised to PayPal, since it’s built off of their API.

Democratic & Republican Party Websites List: All 50 States

killercampaigning — Wed, 05 May 2010 02:45:47 +0000

If you’re planning on ever running for office in a local election, then you should have your state Democrat Party website or state Republican Party website (whichever party you belong to) bookmarked for frequent visits. While your state party might not offer financial help for every local political campaign, most state party websites have great resources available for farm team candidates.

Additionally, most state Republican Party websites and Democrat Party websites offer information about election year training programs that teach new candidates how to run their first political campaign. Your state party has a vested interest in helping their candidates win across the state–no matter what the size of the race–and they are usually glad to help candidates in local elections with advice and resources.

Don’t be afraid to check your state party’s site for contact information, and give them a phone call to ask if they will be holding any candidate seminars in the near future. Introduce yourself politely, let them know what office you will be running for, and ask if they could recommend any resources or advice for someone who is running their first political campaign.

Don’t expect to talk to the state party chairman on your first introductory phone call; the chairperson of a state Democrat Party or Republican Party is often extremely busy, and have many campaigns and candidates to deal with on a daily basis. Instead, consider finding the state party chairman’s email or mailing address on their website, and sending him or her a nice message thanking them for their hard work and telling them a bit about your campaign.

Below are helpful links to the State Democrat Party and State Republican Party in every one of the 50 states and other territories of the United States of America. If you haven’t yet, be sure to click through to your state party’s site and bookmark it for future visits.

Republican State and Territorial Party Websites

Democratic State and Territorial Party Websites

PayPal Political Campaign Donations: Online Fundraising & Contributions

killercampaigning — Tue, 04 May 2010 01:33:17 +0000

Killer Campaigning got a good question today from Sue in Minnesota, who wants to know how to use PayPal for receiving online political campaign donations:

“Hi Killer Campaigning from a huge fan! I know that you have written in the past about political campaign websites and how valuable they can be for fundraising and online donations. I have a personal PayPal account, is there any way that I can use that account for raising money on my candidate website? Or do election laws not allow the use of PayPal?”

Thanks Sue! Good question. PayPal is a great online service that allows you to purchase items online, send money and receive funds. It’s a very convenient and secure option for online shopping and money transfers, and I have a PayPal personal account that I use quite often.

There is a way to accept political campaign contributions with PayPal and set up a “donate” button on your election website, but you can’t do it with your personal account. Setting up a PayPal account for political campaign fundraising is a bit more complicated, but once you do it, your supporters will be able to contribute money to your campaign securely using their credit cards or bank accounts.

In order to accept political campaign donations with PayPal, you’ll have to first sign up for a PayPal business account, select “nonprofit” as the business type, and choose the subcategory “political.”

After you’ve set up the account, you have to prove that your political campaign account is really a nonprofit. In order to do that, PayPal asks that you email them a voided check or bank statement in the name of your political organization, and a tax letter from the IRS.

After your political campaign account has been set up properly, you can then use the button designer on PayPal.com to generate html code that you can paste onto your website to generate a “Donate” button.

For a more thorough explanation of how to set up your own political campaign PayPal account for accepting online donations and contributions, please check out this PDF from PayPal.

And you won’t be alone in setting up a PayPal political campaign account to accept online donations. In fact, nine presidential candidates in the 2008 U.S. election used PayPal to accept donations, and many other local candidates in smaller races have done the same.

Political Campaigns & Local Elections: Become an Expert in Any Field

killercampaigning — Mon, 03 May 2010 14:22:31 +0000

If you get a chance, hop over to the widely-read blog Quick Online Tips and read a guest article that my wife Jessica Van Treuren and I wrote about using blogs to become an expert in any field.

While not directly applicable to running a political campaign or winning a local election, the article does have some great tips for campaign consultants, pollsters and managers who want to make a name for themselves in politics. Here’s the gist of it: thanks to free blogging platforms and social media, you don’t have to rely on other people to make yourself a recognized expert in your field anymore.

Becoming a popular and successful industry expert is no longer about moving your way up the corporate ladder. By providing helpful content, forming professional relationships online, and consistently building links back to your website, you can make yourself a recognized expert in whatever niche you want.

There’s no time like the present to get started . . . don’t let other people decide whether or not you are going to be successful in your field. Make the decision for yourself!

Local Politics: Starting a Successful, Popular Political Blog

killercampaigning — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 00:02:51 +0000

Are you thinking about starting your own local political blog, but aren’t quite sure what steps you need to take in order to make it a widely-read success?

The Blogosphere is home to thousands of politics websites, thanks in large part to the development of user-friendly, inexpensive blogging platforms like WordPress and Blogger. Most local political blogs, though, are only read by a small audience–and don’t have very long lifespans.

I live in Ohio, and two of my favorite local blogs that cover Buckeye State politics are Matt Naugle’s Right Ohio and Anthony Fossaceca’s Ohio Daily. Right Ohio is an unabashedly Republican blog, and Ohio Daily is unabashedly Democrat. I’m subscribed to both blogs, and always look forward to reading their posts . . . although they often have very different viewpoints on Ohio politics.

Right Ohio and Ohio Daily are very popular in their respective partisan corners, which is why I’m using them as case studies in this post. If you want to ensure that your politics blog quickly becomes a popular online hub for the local political community, there are some simple steps you can take to help ensure success . . . and these two Ohio blogs are great examples of how to do it.

1. Optimize Your Blog for Local Political Keywords to Generate Relevant Organic Traffic

Many local political bloggers make the mistake of jumping right into their first website without doing any competitive keyword research or search engine optimization planning. If you want more free traffic for your politics blog, then you need to make sure it’s optimized to rank highly in search engines like Google for phrases that locals are actually searching for.

One of the most powerful things you can do to rank highly for a specific keyword is making sure that it’s included in your website’s domain name. If you’re kicking off a politics blog that focuses on Cleveland, Ohio, for example, then you want to make sure that you try to include the keywords “Cleveland,” “Ohio” and “Politics” in the URL.

One word of warning, however: don’t stuff your domain name with too many keywords and make it difficult to remember. It’s equally important to practice good branding, and a blog that has a short URL is much easier for new readers to remember and recommend to their political friends.

Right Ohio and Ohio Daily both grabbed great domain names: they’re short, easy to remember, and include “Ohio,” an important targeted keyword.

There are other important on-site search engine optimization rules to keep in mind for your new local political blog, too. Make sure that you intersperse your targeted keyword phrases throughout your site, in sidebars and footers, to help your site rank higher and faster. And when you’re writing posts, put some thought into your titles. Always include a keyword phrases that locals might type in if they’re looking for information about your post topic.

2. Build Backlinks & Followers by Forming Relationships with Other Local Political Bloggers

Building good links back to your political blog is vital to driving new traffic and subscribers, and not just because people will click on the links and find your site. The search engine algorithms put a lot of weight on the number of incoming links that a website has when calculating its authority. In layman’s terms, that means that the more high-quality links your new blog has pointing to it from other websites, the more free traffic you’ll get from Google.

If you want to make your politics blog popular fast, then you should be aggressive in building high-quality backlinks. You can do that through link exchanges with other like-minded political websites, by guest posting on other blogs, and by publishing shout-outs to other local bloggers in hopes of a reciprocal link. It’s actually easier to build incoming links to political blogs than most other websites; local bloggers are very likely to include you in their blogroll if they like what you’re writing.

Right Ohio and Ohio Daily are good examples of political blogs that are deeply involved in the local blogging community, with extensive blogrolls and incoming links from other Ohio politics websites.

3. Keep Things Partisan for More Reader Interaction, Controversy & Attention

We keep things strictly non-partisan here on Killer Campaigning, because our target audience consists of political candidates who run as Democrats, Republicans and everything in-between. You can take the high road and keep things non-partisan on your local politics blog, as well, but writing with a partisan slant will generate far more buzz, interaction and traffic.

Reader interaction is one of the best Key Performance Indicators that a blog can have, and if your posts are generating a lot of comments and links then you know you’re on the track to success. By keeping things partisan on your blog, you’ll be providing like-minded readers with red meat that will make them coming back for more . . . and you’ll give your detractors plenty of stuff to get worked up about and mention on their own blogs.

Remember: the more mentions your political blog gets on other websites and social media outlets, the faster you’ll build success. It doesn’t matter if your incoming links are from people who love your blog or hate it; controversy is one of the best ways for a new site to rocket into the spotlight and generate huge amounts of traffic. If you steer away from partisanship, you might have a very well-written, impartial blog . . . but most people will find it too boring to comment on and link to.

When it comes to delivering partisan red meat for their readers, both Right Ohio and Ohio Daily do an outstanding job. Their supporters love them, and their detractors hate them. That’s exactly the kind of formula that leads to huge success for a local politics blog.

4. Gossip & Scoops are Good, but Libel & Slander are Downright Dangerous

In order to generate attention, there’s nothing better than being the first to break some local political news or get the dish on link-worthy gossip. In fact, one of the reasons that many main-stream journalists dislike politics blogs is that the smaller local sites often get the scoop on big media organizations. The elite media doesn’t like to play catch-up on juicy stories they missed or ignored, and local bloggers often do a better job than professional reporters at digging up great scoops on local politicians and political issues.

Here’s an important aside, however: while breaking a story or publishing the “word on the street” can help build traffic, you need to be very careful that your juicy posts don’t stray into the realm of libel and slander. If you’re publishing a scoop about a politician, candidate, group or organization, then you had better ensure it’s substantiated . . . or make it clear that your information is unconfirmed. The best practice is to never publish anything on your politics blog unless you’ve done your homework and can provide proof of your claims.

If you’re a local politics blogger, everything you write is going to be underneath a microscope and examined for accuracy by your enemies. And believe me: if you make a mistake, they will never let you live it down. In fact, there are plenty of local political bloggers who have been sued for publishing stories without checking their facts first.

I’ve seen some great political gossip and scoops published on Right Ohio and Ohio Daily, but neither (as far as I know) has ever gone as far as slandering a political adversary. While the other side might not like their posts, Right Ohio and Ohio Daily both seem to do a good job of checking their facts before hitting the “publish” button.

5. Don’t Damage Your Career with Careless Writing or Publicity Stunts

You might love being involved in politics and generating controversy on your blog now, but keep in mind that the things you write today could come back to haunt you if your career goals change or your employer catches wind of what you’re publishing online.

Local politics blogs, while they can be very fun and personally rewarding, almost never become a full-time income generator for their owners. The vast majority of local political bloggers have day jobs outside of politics (although some are lucky enough to work for local parties and politicians), and they need to be careful about offending current or potential employers.

Here’s the thing about the Internet: you can safely assume that everything you write online is going to be there forever, available for anyone in the world to read. Even if you decide to publish as an “anonymous” blogger, you always run the risk of being outed by someone online and being forever associated with all of the stuff you posted on your site.

I believe–although I’m not certain–that both Matt Naugle (of Right Ohio) and Anthony Fossaceca (of Ohio Daily) have full-time careers in politics, which makes it easier for them to publish the kind of partisan commentary they specialize in. Regardless of their day jobs, however, I’m certain that both Matt and Anthony are savvy enough to realize that their online writing will be forever available to to the world . . . and that they publish their content accordingly.

Google Analytics: Track Political Campaign Website Traffic

killercampaigning — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 02:12:37 +0000

Once you’ve launched your own political campaign candidate website, it’s very important that you have the ability to track visitors to the site and analyze traffic trends.

By watching your site traffic statistics, you’ll be able to see exactly where your visitors are being referred from, which pages they spend the most time on, and how long they spend on your site. Using this information, you’ll have a unique perspective on what tweaks and changes to your site might encourage visitors to stay longer, learn more about your candidacy, volunteer to help and donate money to your campaign.

The traffic tracking program that I use for my own political campaign website–and that millions of other webmasters use–is called Google Analytics, and the only thing better than its amazing features is the fact that it’s absolutely free to use.

To get started with Analytics, simply sign up for a free site (you’ll need a free Google or Gmail account to do so) and log in to the admin interface. Installing the Analytics tracking code on your political campaign website is extremely easy, and it basically entails copying and pasting a snippet of code into your site footer (there are numerous tutorials on the web that will show you exactly how to do it).

Once the code is installed and Analytics starts tracking traffic, you’ll have a wealth of valuable information about your site visitors to sort through and analyze every day. Referring sites, average time on site, pages visited and keywords that led searchers to your site are just some of the data that Google Analytics lets you see.

Analytics will even show you the exact geographic locations your visitors come from, right down to the city or town. This is especially valuable for political campaign candidates who are running in a local election, since it’s in your best interests to make sure that the majority of visitors are people from your district who have the ability to vote for you.

A quick word of warning, though: after you get used to using Google Analytics, checking your daily stats and visitor information can become pretty addicting.

Make sure that you don’t waste too much time refreshing your Analytics stats during the day if you have campaign word to do, and instead limit yourself to checking your stats just once every evening. It will lead to a lot more productivity!

Facebook Ads Advertising for Political Campaigns & Candidates

killercampaigning — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 18:25:11 +0000

Yesterday we focused on Google AdWords advertising for political campaigns, which is more suited for medium to large local elections. Today, I’d like to talk about another form of online advertising that can be much more effective for candidates in smaller local elections: advertising with Facebook ads.

While Google AdWords allows you to specify what geographical areas you would like your ads to appear in, Facebook ads let you get even more specific regarding exactly who you wish to reach with your political campaign advertising. Because users give the social networking site so much information about themselves, you are actually able to specify in the Facebook ads interface what age group, sex, location and other variables that you want your ad audience to have.

This kind of ultra-targeted advertising is great for political campaigns and candidates, since it allows you to target specific likely voter groups with individual messages. You could, for example, create a Facebook ad that is targeted at younger voters, and then set it up so that it only shows for users who are in the age range of 18 to 34 years old.

Many local political campaign candidates have used Facebook ads to promote their fan pages or groups, and it usually results in some moderately successful results (don’t expect to get hundreds of followers out of it). Like Google AdWords, Facebook ads allow you to set a daily budget for how much you want to spend per click, and your ads will stop showing after you have reached that budget.

If you do have a Facebook fan page or group for your political campaign, I suggest you try Facebook ads out just so you can familiarize yourself with it, because it’s going to become a much more effective form of online advertising as time goes on.

One warning, though: Facebook ads tend to drive a lot less traffic than Google AdWords ads, and their click-through rate is pretty bad (clickthrough is the number of people who see your ads versus the number who actually click on it). If you are running as a candidate in a smaller local election and target only people in your city to see your Facebook ads, don’t be surprised if you only get a few clicks a week.

Still, it’s worth setting up a few Facebook ads, setting a small daily budget of a dollar or so, and checking your stats every now and then. Facebook is evolving quickly and is becoming more important to successful political campaigning every day, so it’s a good idea to get comfortable with the system. In the process, it will probably send you a few extra fans and supporters.

Google AdWords Advertising for Political Campaigns & Candidates

killercampaigning — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 02:45:16 +0000

While it’s not the best thing to spend your political campaign money on if you have a limited budget or are running in a very small race, Google AdWords can be a good advertising option if you’re a candidate in a medium-sized or large election. I’ll write a more in-depth post about how to optimize Google AdWords ads for political campaigns later, but right now I’m going to give you a brief, high-level look at exactly what the program is and how it works.

The AdWords program is how Google makes a large part of the billions of dollars it rakes in every year. If you’ve ever used the Internet, then you’ve seen Google AdWords ads online . . . although you might not have realized it.

When you do a Google search, you’ll often see results in the sidebar under the heading “sponsored links” . . . those are AdWords ads. You have probably also seen AdWords ads on blogs and websites, where they appear under the heading “ads by Google.”

Any person or organization can purchase AdWords ads, and they can be very effective because you can specify exactly what states, cities and zip codes you would like your ads to appear in on the Internet. Additionally, you can set your ads so they only show up when someone does a search for a specific set of keywords.

Here’s an example: let’s say that you’re running for County Commissioner in Lorain County, Ohio. When you create your first AdWords ad, you can specify that you only want people to see the ad when they do a Google search at computers in the zip codes of specific cities in Lorain County.

Additonally, you can use Google’s free AdWords Keyword Tool to tell you what kind of keyword phrases people might search for that have to do with political campaign candidates, and specify that you want your ad to show up when those specific searches are performed in Lorain County.

In the AdWords program, you place “bids” on how much you’re willing to pay for each time someone clicks on your ad for a given keyword phrase search. For example, Google AdWords might indicate that the average bid for ads that show up for a search of “Lorain County Commissioner” is fifty cents per click. You could bid a similar amount, or you could bid a bit higher in hopes that your ad will show up higher in the queue for that keyword.

It probably sounds a bit confusing, but you’ll get the hang of it very quickly if you open your own AdWords account and start bidding on keywords. You need to have a political campaign website to direct your AdWords traffic to, of course–and it’s best to send your AdWords traffice to a pre-designed landing page that is optimized to get people to donate to your campaign, sign up for your newsletter, or some other sort of conversion metric.

In addition to giving you the ability to set your maximum bids for how much you want to pay per click on your ads, Google AdWords also lets you set a maximum daily budget, too.

If you don’t want to spend more than five dollars a day on AdWords traffic to your site, then you can specify this in the program and your ads will automatically stop showing when you reach that threshold.