The Campaign Workshop Blog

Searching for answers on the web has become a fixture in our lives. Want to go to a movie? Search the time and showings. Buying a house? Search for listings. Interested in a candidate or a local issue? Ask Google.

For many campaigns, persuasion will be an important element of their field campaign. Following an ID program, you will want to dispatch your persuasion program. Launching this program is especially important as the election nears as voters become increasingly persuadable. Among the three primary types of field scripts (ID, persuasion, GOTV), GOTV scripts tend to be the longer because you attempt to engage your target in a conversation.

With door-to-door contact, especially on political campaigns and issue organizing, one good conversation can be enough to make a difference. Let’s discuss how a good door to door contact can make such a difference.

For the majority of campaigns, having a strong voter ID program will be vastly important. That’s because in many small and local elections, the election will really be won or lost by less than 1,000 votes. So making sure you are talking to exactly the right people is absolutely essential.

We talk a lot on our blog about the importance of GOTV. But what are some concrete, tried and true Get Out The Vote tactics that work? One is making GOTV calls to identified supporters.

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

As I wrote a couple of years ago, political mailers haven’t gone the way of the dinosaurs – they’re still a very effective method of communication for both persuasion and GOTV efforts. Political mailers may not be as sexy as the world of digital, but here are a few reasons to hang onto mail a while longer.

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?

How is PowerPoint working for you? Still have folks nodding off in the back of the room? Does the background on your slides look like the screensaver from your high school computer lab? For a long time PowerPoint and even Keynote slides were limited in their design capabilities. Well worry no more- try Canva. For those looking to beef up their slides to build better PowerPoint presentations, give Canva a try.

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.

A lot of people struggle to communicate with an artist to get the design they want for their project. Working with someone outside of your field can sometimes be frustrating for you and the person you’re working with. You may not feel confident in knowing what to ask for, or you may not realize everything that goes into designing something.

We started inbound marketing 3 years ago and now we advise other organizations and companies on how to do it in a fun and impactful way. My best tips for keeping nonprofit content marketing fresh is to get your team and customers involved. Blogging and other forms of content can get old fast if it is just one-person blogging (trust me!)

Anyone with a love of Washington D.C. who works in politics, has been here before: you are stuck in the never-ending vortex of finding political jobs in DC. This post is not going to be liked by everyone, but it lays out the experiences I’ve had through the job-hunting process. Also, if you don’t work in the political world, you may have a different experience in finding political jobs in DC.

Are you a college student interested in pursuing a career in politics? Do you have absolutely no experience in the field and not a clue where to get it? Fear not! I’m going to walk you through how to begin your journey into politics. The first step is getting a political internship.

Over the summer, I attended a Twitter for Politics event (#twitter4politics) hosted by Twitter for people working in politics in the digital space. In addition to the great breakfast buffet and top-notch swag (#TweetfeetPolkaDots), the speakers had a lot of great insights into the best ways to use Twitter to improve your public profile.

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.

We had such a great response to our first blog post about innovative political direct mail campaigns that we are back for more. We have found three more creative political direct mail campaigns to inspire your next campaign and get your gears moving. Enjoy!