So You're Running for Office
Here are the 15 steps to get your online presence ready for the campaign of your life
You have secured the nomination (or, at least, the funding to get yourself into a primary) and now you are wondering what to do next! There are plenty of resources out there on messaging, assembling your team, and fundraising but precious few on how to get your digital footprint ready for public life. Here are the 15 steps to take before jumping into the political arena!
Set All Of Your Accounts to Private and Be Ready to De-Friend
The problem with your social media is you have probably been too social; you have posted, liked, and accepted friend requests that you should not have. In politics you need to always be in a version of scorched earth warfare, you always have to be destroying or eliminating anything that allows your enemy to wage war against you, and that is particularly true online.
Applying that here, we are getting rid of their ability to find photos or content that is problematic.
Go through your social media and erase any content that you believe will cost you votes. Don’t de-friend anyone yet, we will want to invite them to your new public pages as described below, but keep a list handy of those you want to cut off from your personal pages going forward.
You cannot cut too much or too many. If some item really means enough to you that you are willing to risk you candidacy then save it somewhere secure. However, remember, even those most innocuous thing can come back to hurt you.
You Too Can Get Cancelled: Create An Email List
You don’t own your social media accounts, some silicon valley tech giant does, and they do not care about you. They will delete your account at the drop of the hat and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it. “Those who fail to plan, plan to fail” and if you fail to plan for the day something from your past gets you de-platformed you will only have yourself to blame.
Creating an email list guarantees that, even if you are kicked off every social media site, you will always have a way to contact your supporters. To do this you will use Microsoft Excel or a similar product. Any program that allows you to create a CSV file, a text file format that uses commas to separate values, is ideal as that is the file type most services will allow you to upload to their systems (as discussed later).
You need to build the best email list possible using every asset at your disposal. Download addresses from your personal email server, collect them at every event, set up a website where people can provide you with their contact information.
The less people and services you have to depend on for fundraising, event planning, and getting out the vote, the more secure your campaign will be.
What’s In A Name? Everything. So Buy Yours Now
The next thing you need to secure is your name or, more specifically, the website version of your name. As Sun Tzu wrote in the “Art of War”, “victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.”
More people find businesses, services, and candidates through the internet than any other medium. Buying your name on GoDaddy or some other services increases the odds that when a voter searches you, they are likely to find you. Buy multiple versions of your name if you can including with your middle initial, the year you are running, and any shorthands which may come to mind. Any version you do not own, your opponent may likely snap up and use against you.
Reversing this law of digital campaigning, always check to see if your would-be-opponents has left their name unguarded. Connecting their name to your website or to an attack ad is a devastating way to do damage to your adversary.
Every Cereal at the Supermarket Can’t Be Wrong: Get A Logo
Humanity has been using symbols to communicate for 72,000 years. That is why the only thing more powerful that a good search engine result is good iconography. Thanks to the modern digital marketplace you can get a great logo for your campaign for pennies on the dollar.
Sites like Fiverr and UpWork can connect you to thousands of artists across the globe who can provide your campaign with a professional look at a price that fits your budget. Further, due to the incentive structure of tips and reviews built into these systems, the artists you work with are encourages to provide you with all of the resources you need to be successful. You can easily secure versions of your logo that will work in print, on television, and plastered on clothing. Further, most logos come with social media kits wherein you get versions that are tailor made for many of the big social media sites.
Be Everywhere. Start Making Campaign Accounts
The great philosopher Seneca wrote "To be everywhere is to be nowhere." Well, in 2023 he couldn't be more wrong. Once you have a logo and some basic digital assets ready to go it is time to build your campaign pages across Facebook, X (formerly known as Twitter), Instagram, YouTube, and others.
As we have discussed before, the best name for your social media accounts is your own. If you include “Vote For” or any campaign language you will not be able to instruct staff once you win to post on the page from a government computer. If you include the year you are running for office you are setting a date after which voters will not be looking for your page or will be confused as to your status if you find it. If you are already an elected official and you include your title you (a) can’t post anything political and (b) the argument can be made that the page is the property of the office, not of you, and can be seized when you move on.
This also applies to the handle of your social media accounts. A social media handle, also known as a username, is a unique identifier that individuals or businesses use to represent themselves on social media platforms. It's usually preceded by an “@” symbol and can consist of letters, numbers, and symbols. The more closely your handle resembles your name the more timeless and useful it is.
Further, if you do not secure a handle that closely resembles your name someone else might. As we discussed above when it comes to URL’s, if your opponent secures a handle that is more easily found than whatever you select there is a good chance voters will find their page instead of your own. Not securing your own name, the name most likely to be useful going forward and most likely to be searched, is the same as leaving a loaded gun for your opponent to find and use.
What Good Is A Weapon If You Don’t Use It? Sign Up With A Mass Email Service!
You have secured a URL with your own name, you have created accounts on every platform not controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, and you have built your own email list using your address book. Now is the time to put the latter to use!
MailChimp, Constant Contact, and other similar products will let you upload your email lists in a CSV format. However, while these services are well known, they are known for commercial use and not necessarily political speech. The distinction is important as the rules governing a marketing email as opposed to a campaign email are different.
All commercial mass emails are governed by the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing, or CAN-SPAM, Act of 2003. The CAN-SPAM Act established requirements for commercial messages, such as giving recipients the right to unsubscribe, and spelled out tough penalties for violations. While these regulations should be adhered to, especially if you do not want to upset recipients, political emails are protected by the 1st Amendment and cannot be regulated in the same way.
The key for so much of what you are doing is preparing for what could go wrong and what should go right in the weeks, months, and hopefully years ahead. Finding the right email provider, a company you can stay with and work through, is vital to future campaign efforts.
Be An Ant, Not A Grasshopper: Write 30 Days Of Content
In a perfect campaign, you would be posting three times a day during high traffic times to ensure the maximum amount of voters see your content. However, despite all of the door to door politicking and events, sometimes there isn’t anything you can post online or perhaps, due to the aforementioned, you just got busy and forget. To ensure that there is always something ready to go you should write 30 evergreen, timeless, posts that you can throw online at anytime between the day you announce and the day you win. As in Aesop's Fable, you want to be the ant with your ready supply of content and not the grasshopper struggling to find the time to get something together.
Ideally, you would start with your platform and mold several of your messages into statuses you can post at a moments notice. With those written you should also create statuses directing people on how to volunteer or donate. Since you will have signed up with an email service by now you should also create statuses directing people to join your mailing list to stay involved.
Below is the format I have used on dozens of campaigns over the years. You should have these statuses written and saved somewhere easily accessible so they can be posted at anytime and from anywhere.
Campaign Status 1/30
Facebook: Learn more about my balanced approach to restoring and rekindling our business sector by signing up for my newsletter! Click here today and join our movement! www.campaignsite.com/signup
Twitter: Learn more about my balanced approach to restoring and rekindling our #business sector by signing up for my newsletter! Click here today and join our movement! www.campaignsite.com/signup #Campaign2024
The high traffic times on Facebook are 7 am-9 am, 1 pm-3 pm, and 7 pm-9 pm, while the high traffic time on Twitter is Noon to 1 pm. To stay engaged and keep your audience growing you should be sure to post during one of these periods every single day at a minimum.
If They Can’t Find You, They Can’t Follow You: Create a Hashtag
When you are drafting those evergreen statuses be sure to create a hashtag that your fans and followers can use to promote you and find your content. Originally primarily used on Twitter, a hashtag (#) is a kind of user-generated tagging that enables cross-references of content by topic or theme. When clicked, a hashtag will bring up any post that has used that hashtag previously allowing users to follow a conversation across several accounts or find accounts discussing similar topics. Hashtags can also be followed on most platforms so that users can stay up to date on areas of interest that are important to them.
Now, yes, once you create a hashtag there is a chance your opponent will use it as well to attack you. However, they can create their own hashtag and attack you just the same. As long as you are the one primarily promoting and using a certain hashtag you will not only control the conversation but have a better idea of where the conversation is going.
Setting a tone and effecting messaging is an important part of any campaign. If you see voters starting to use your hashtag to complain about an issue or draw attention to a topic you are unfamiliar with you now have a chance to course correct before it spills over into the real world.
As the celebrated pollster Frank Luntz wrote in his seminal book, “Words that Work”, “No theme. No focus. No discipline. Message: discipline matters.” Setting the hashtag that everyone will use will allow you to know where to look for information on your own race and, in turn, how to turn that information to fit the themes your campaign is built on.
Lights! Camera! Action! It’s Time For a Launch Video
Whether it’s a video of your announcement speech in front of a loving crowd or you sitting at a desk laying out your vision, a launch video is an important piece of digital content that should not be missed. This video should be uploaded to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and any other platform you have set up that can host it. It should also be an important part of your campaign site when that is up and running.
While some experts will tell you that hiring a camera crew is a must I tend to disagree with proper preparation. A camera phone is fine so long as it is new enough that the video is of good quality. Your campaign should also invest in a tripod to hold the phone steady so as not to give your viewers motion sickness. If you have the funds you should also consider getting a wired microphone to connect to the recording device, be it a camera or a phone, to ensure high audio quality.
Once the video is created you could just upload it as is and begin sharing it on social media and via email. However, you may want to go back to Fiverr or some other service and have this particular video professionally edited. If you selected a good designer for your logo they should have provided a version of it that can be placed in an intro or in the corner of the video to give your launch a professional look.
Have a Website Built or Don’t. Just Make Sure That URL Goes Somewhere
You have content, a communication network, and you own your name for a website. The cheapest way to proceed is to just route the URL you purchased to whichever social media platform you consider the most important, this will depend on your voter demographics and your own style, but most will have a website built. Many of these rules are designed to make your campaign look as professional as possible and a polished, simple website can go a long way to bolstering that image.
You can (and most will) hire high end professionals to build their website or relay on their party apparatus to get it done. However if you find yourself low on funds or want more control you can always have one built via Fiverr or do it yourself with a platform like Wix.
No matter how you choose to proceed there are some fundamental rules you need to keep in mind.
Your donation button should be at the top right of your campaign site. That is the location most companies use and therefore that is where your supporters will look. Further, some studies have shown that the human eye tends to gravitate to that location regardless.
Include a “Paid For By:” section at the bottom of your page as required by law.
Make sure to place buttons to all of your social media accounts at the bottom of every page. You can’t expect your supporters to check your site daily but with the average American spending 2 hours and 27 minutes on social media every day (and checking their mobile devises 159 times) [1] you can be sure they will see you on social media if you can get them to follow.
Direct them to sign up for your emails! As we discussed above, mass email lists are incredibly important. However, building your initial list and signing up for a service will only get you so far. As your notoriety grows so too should you list and having a sign up on your site will help with that.
Put alternative text behind ever photo! Whenever you upload a photo to a site you are building it should have the ability to add alternative text behind the image. Not only does this make it more likely search engines will find and display your content to voters but it makes your site readable to people with disabilities. A failure to include this text is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act which could lead, at best, to some very nasty campaign attacks or, at worst, a lawsuit.
An expert web designer would be your best course of action but, in a pinch, following these rules will be enough to get your campaign started.
It’s Time. De-friend Everyone
Be honest, you are not friends with most of the people on your social media accounts anyway. That bully from high school, the weird ex-coworker with the fringe political beliefs, that ex-girlfriend you are pretty sure you are on good terms with… they all have to go.
First, invite everyone to follow your accounts as discussed below. You kept these people in your social circles for years so you might as well reap the possible benefit of them adding to your follower count. Once that is done go through and unfollow or otherwise disconnect from everyone and everything that could possible hold any hostility toward you or your campaign.
I understand that this may seem overly cynical but your chosen profession makes many demands of you and shrinking your social circle to those you trust has to be one of them. Every problematic person left with unfettered access to your social media accounts and any content that you may have missed are a landmine waiting to be stepped on.
It’s Also Time To Invite Everyone
Either on the day you announce your candidacy or the day before you need to go about inviting everyone you know to follow your social media accounts. On Facebook you will need to use your personal account (this is why I didn’t tell you to delete it) to “Invite Friends” to your page. On Twitter you will likely have to go out and follow those you want to follow you back. The rest of your accounts can be promoted in those evergreen statuses we discussed above, via your website, and via email as we discuss below.
The idea of all of your new digital assets is to create an online solar system which revolves around you. You will have your own gravity and we want all of your supporters (or possible supporters) to get caught in an orbit around you. The more diehard fans will be close, those just mildly aware will be further away, but they will all be part of your campaign to one extent or another.
Your First Mass Email
Take that launch video you shot, links to all of your social media accounts, and directions to your donation button, and send it all out as your first mass email. Right now we are not too concerned with how many people see the message but, rather, we are focused on delivery rate and open rate.
Delivery tells you whether or not your emails were received by the servers of your subscribers' inbox providers. An email counts as delivered if it did not bounce. So your delivery rate is the percentage of the number of emails delivered divided by the number of emails sent [2]. Basically, delivery tells you how many good email addresses you actually have.
Open rate for email marketing shows us the number of email recipients who opened the email. This is analyzed in percentages. For example, if your email open rate shows 60% that means if you sent emails to 100 subscribers, 60 of them were opened [3].
Going forward we will hope to grow the number of good email addresses and increase the percentage of those people who open your email but, for now, just getting the message out is a great first step!
Get Out In The World And Mingle (Kind of)
If you were raised like me you were taught to finish your food. Well, the same rule applies in all of politics but especially when it comes to your digital footprint. We do not leave meat on the bone. We take every opportunity to grow.
I don’t need to know your district to know there are dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of social media pages and groups discussing what goes on in it. You should join as many of these with your new public-life-ready accounts as possible. Simply search the name of a town or area in your district and join every group that comes up. Some may require surveys to confirm you are not a bot or that you are not looking to sell something. That is fine. You are there to serve and to learn, nothing more.
When it comes to these groups you are not there to engage in petty squabbles. At worst you are eyes and ears learning about what the most passionate members of your district care about. At best you are a resource to provide information and support to the community. The important thing is that you are there and you are engaged.
Anything that makes your constituency see you as a real person, not as an empty suit (or a committee run social media facade) , should be encouraged. The idea is to create a parasocial relationship whereby voters come to see you as a friend even though they don't actually know you (Read more about the importance of parasocial relationships here!) .
Get a Buddy! Everyone Needs A Buddy
Over the course of the last 14 steps you have build an elaborate digital presence for yourself! The problem is that you may be a little too busy to maintain it properly. This is when it becomes important to have a volunteer, assistant, or friend to help you out. You need someone who can post in your name and in your voice to keep the illusion up that you are always going and always engaged. Even if all they are doing is posting your evergreen content or hiding offensive replies, an aide is essential to maintaining the health of everything you have built.
Keep in mind, however, basic security. Never give over unconditional control to anyone. Even if they are completely trustworthy there is always a chance someone who is not can hack their devices thereby robbing you of some of your most powerful tools. Always have the recovery accounts connected to services you run so that a disgruntled individual can’t purposely steal your work either.
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” in life and in digital security.
Go Win That Race!
With your digital weapons sharpened it is time to descend into the political arena and wage war! Preparing not just for the best case outcome but also the worse is essential in the endeavor you have undertaken. Review these steps often, they are just as useful a guide as they were as a starting point, and you will be giving that victory speech in no time!
