The Campaign Workshop Blog

List building for nonprofits is extremely important. These are people you can turn to for donations, taking action on your behalf, volunteering, and more. When list building, it’s important that you follow a few best practices. This will ensure you’re getting the best possible supporters and doing so in the best possible way.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be tricky and at times confusing. SEO is an online content specific strategy to help increase the number of views and visitors to your website. By adhering to certain tactics and rules, your website can obtain a high ranking placement on a search engine such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo. A higher placement equals more visitors and views. We love SEO so we broke down the basic best practices to follow with a one of a kind SEO Checklist!

Our contributor today is Bob Kearney, who had worked in politics for many years before becoming a social worker. Bob and I have worked together on many a campaign, and he has a unique understanding of the stresses folks are going through this time of year and had some very actionable answers to my questions on navigating family politics.

Digital Storytelling is the "it" thing for advocacy but with enthusiasm around digital storytelling and user generated content  has come big expectations that it is a panacea for driving traffic and donations.  Digital storytelling can be a great option for your assocation, but it will take a while to develop and use the content in away that it will do everything you want or need it to.  So here are some of our (hopefully) helpful mediums to engage in digital storytelling in a thoughtful and fulfilling way.

For a long time, I have said that LGBT Candidates ( Lesbian, Bisexual Transgender and Gay candidates), tend to be better candidates than their straight counterparts at running for office. It’s because LGBT candidates have to be. If you are breaking a barrier, it is only those with stellar qualifications and incredible drive who get through tough election fights and win.

Campaign best practices can make a real difference on your political campaign. Over the course of my career, I have pretty much seen it all happen on political campaigns. From the candidate’s brother dying mere weeks before Election Day to losing power at a staging location and everything in between. Murphy’s Law states “anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” Part of being a good organizer is always hoping for the best on political campaigns, but planning for the worst.

As someone who has recently gone through the daunting and tough task of job hunting, I can completely understand and attest to the fact that it’s tough to find political jobs in DC and even tougher to find a job that is the right fit for you. With so many newly minted undergraduate, graduate, and even law school grads hunting for jobs in the same market, it can sometimes be a very overwhelming and discouraging undertaking. But in the end, all your efforts will be worth it. Here are the tips I learned along my journey to finding a great job with wonderful people, and how you can do the same.

Friend and mentor to The Campaign Workshop, Hal Malchow, wrote for Campaigns and Elections about applying social pressure GOTV tactics in smaller campaigns.  Malchow reviews the history and science behind using social pressure as a tactic in GOTV, as well as current best practices. 

GOTV Calls or Digital ads? If you are running a political campaign, you may have heard of folks replacing their GOTV calls with digital GOTV ads. As someone who sells and loves digital ads, I will tell you that I am not sure that choosing between one or the other is a great idea.

ID-ing your supporters is an important part of any field campaign especially for GOTV. There are a variety of ways for Voter ID to help Get Out The Vote. One common method of voter ID using a 1-6 scale to measure each individual’s support score, with 1 being a solid supporter, 3 undecided, 5 firmly opposed, and a 6 not home.

Looking for accurate presidential election predictions? As Election Day approaches, it seems like every news channel will reference the latest polls or how many points ahead Trump or Clinton are in the race for the White House. But as scientific and data-centric as polls can be, there are a few unconventional ways to predict the presidential election, and most are eerily correct.

Social media campaign strategy has taken a more prominent role this campaign cycle than ever before.  Everyone knows that trump tweets,  but as Election Day gets closer and closer it’s time to take a look at what Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are doing on social media websites. To help analyze each campaign’s social strategy, it’s helpful to start with the social networks they list on their websites.

Get Out The Vote and a good Get Out The Vote plan (GOTV Plan) is something we as a firm, spend hours talking about. There is lots of  lore, superstition, mythology, and bad ideas around get out the vote

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.

Election Day is rapidly approaching, and while many campaigns and advocacy organizations are already implementing election-driven digital campaign strategies, day-of digital campaign techniques require a much different approach.

As Election Day approaches, I thought it would be a good idea to share some best practices for your GOTV Plan- Get Out The Vote Plan. These are tried and true GOTV tactics —we know they work.