Leverging Google Apps

Email seems to be the most common way to communicate, even for a political campaign. I know a lot of campaigns like to have their own email address with their own domain name (like john@smithforcongress.com). However, many campaigns either do not have email or have implemented costly and inefficient systems. I would like to suggest a very power and free solution: Google Apps.

I use Google Apps for many of my clients, political or otherwise. As long as you have fewer than 50 users the system is free. The domain (i.e. www.smithforcongress.com) is linked to a Google email server. The interface looks almost exactly like a gmail account. You have access to not only email, but docs, calendar, etc. The Google logo can even be switched out for your own. Furthermore, smart phone users can manage your emails right on your phone with Google's awesome phone application, Google Sync.

Moving from an existing system to Google Apps is really easy as well. I had one client that was using a Microsoft Exchange server for email. He was paying a monthly fee to run this service. He had been using Exchange for a long time and understandably was a little concerned about the transfer. His biggest concern was reaching email on his smart phone since it was Microsoft based. We eventually convinced him to switch and every thing transitioned quickly and smoothly. He has never looked back.

Google Apps is a great solution for any campaign. It is relatively quick to set up so if you have a simple site with a tight budget, you might as well tell your webmaster to go ahead and set it up. At the very least, having your domain name in your email address would be free advertising.

The next post will be March 16th.

The Sharing Network

Technology has change how we gather information. It used to be slow and cumbersome, but now it seems we can just type in a few search terms on Google and get an answer. As easy as that sounds, information gathering may be become even easier - by outsourcing that responsibility to your friends. A recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle caught my eye discussing how Facebook is becoming a larger referrer than Google. More site traffic is coming from links posted on Facebook, than searches in Google. In other words, sharing is becoming more popular than searching.

Let us take a look at what I mean by sharing a link. On Facebook, this could be a status update, message on someone's wall, or a post on a group/fan page. Yes, it is really that easy. Just by putting a link somewhere in a message you will create interest. Why will you create interest? Simple, by posting a link you are claiming it is interesting and relevant. Voters who are interested in your campaign will then interpret that message as something that needs read. If they like it then they will repost it making a claim to their friends that it is interesting and relevant. This chain reaction can go on to infinity.

This does not mean whatever you post will get read and shared. You must have something that is actually worthwhile. No one likes spam, especially on social networks. You do not annoy your friends offline with constant talk about yourself, so why would you do that online. However, posting your links to you website with your press releases or upcoming events is perfectly acceptable. Furthermore, sharing goes both ways. If one of your constituents shares an interesting link with you, you can go ahead and share it with all your online friends. In that case make sure you give credit.

With a lot of my sites (both political and non-political) this trend seems true. While I would still say Google tends to be the largest traffic generator, Facebook still counts for a high percentage. Facebook is also a lot easier to spread the word. I have noticed spikes in traffic from Facebook and other social media site shortly after a post. However, this spike only lasts a day or two until the message becomes "old". Understanding how sharing works on social networks is a must.

The next post will be March 1st.

Using AdWords to Raise Donations

I have recently become hooked on Google AdWords. For those of you who are not familiar with AdWords, it is Google's system for managing online ads. Do a quick search on Google and on the right side you will see ads. Those ads are managed by AdWords.

Before I continue, I want to point out that this is not a free service. AdWords is the main money maker for Google. It is a type of advertising called "pay-per-click" (PPC). Every time someone clicks on your ad you pay a small fee. The fee is determined by numerous factors and can range from a few cents to a few dollars. There are choices of PPC. For example, Yahoo! and Microsoft have their own PPC systems. However, Google is such a dominate player in search (60-70% in the U.S. market) that it is the most efficient place to start.

So why would a political campaign want to run a PPC campaign? The answer is to raise donations of course. There are a few campaigns out there using PPC campaigns to raise funding. For example, take a look at this ad:



Many organizations use PPC to drive traffic to their website. AdWords allows you to target on a very specific level. There are a lot of technical considerations that go into writing and managing a good ad. I apologize if any of the following is rather technical, but I want this post to be helpful while pointing out that AdWords is not something you pick up in a day. The point is there is a lot of customization that can go into developing an ad.

You can target your ads on many levels. Take Rand Paul's ad for an example. He is running for U.S. Senate in Kentucky. Individuals in Nevada, Maine, and Canada are probably not that interested in his campaign (at least not enough to justify paying for traffic). However, Kentuckians would be very interested in both his website and would be willing to donate. AdWords lets you pick locations that the ad runs, right down to latitude and longitude coordinates if you wish to be that specific. The reason I see it is because I currently live in the Cincinnati area, whose metropolitan area extends into Kentucky. There are also other targeting options for more advance campaigns (you can even pick what type of computer you want to see the ad).

However, you must be careful. AdWords is not for every campaign. Smaller campaigns probably do not have a large enough constituent base to have a big impact. The ad also should be crafted carefully to ensure a positive return on your investment. I highly recommend finding someone who has run an AdWords campaign before and who understands how to interpret AdWords' reports. Having a professional run your campaign will help you understand trends and discover new information. I have even been able to use data from an AdWords campaign to improve a site's ranking on Google.

When you set up your ad, you can choose the page that the ad is linked to. This is where you can drive traffic to your donation page. You may be able to get an extra donation at the cost of just a few cents. Even though this sounds really great I do want to point out that just because someone clicks on the ad (and you thus pay for it) does not guarantee that you will get the donation. It will take a bit of marketing effort to convince voters to contribute after clicking on the ad and landing on your website.

All aspects of AdWords cannot be described in a single post. However, I hope at the very least you have gained an interest and awareness in the technology. It will take thoughtful consideration on your campaign's part but the pay off could be big. Not only can you increase your donations, but you will also have greater awareness of your campaign.

The next post will be December 22nd.

Republicans and New Media

About a month ago the Ohio Erie County GOP Chairman Mathew Old asked be to put together a document with my ideas on how Republicans can leverage new media. My hope is that this document can help campaigns begin to think about new media and ask important questions. Below is the link to the document and the summary.

Republicans and New Media (pdf)

Many will argue that "traditional" media has evolved over time. In many ways, it has. From the written word, to the radio, to the television it seems the dynamic of media is on a continuous and steady march. However, in the past few years there has been a fundamental revolution in media. It is the advent of the Internet. Traditional media is all one way communication; the advertiser has all the power, controlling the information while the public is at the mercy of billboards and commercials. The majority of the public does not have the resources to broadcast their thoughts and opinions to millions of people. With the arrival of the Internet, individuals have just as much power as the advertiser. They can write a post on a blog that will reach just as many people, if not more, than a TV ad. They can tweet and Facebook their friends about their positive or negative opinions. Many organizations fail to understand the multidirectional nature of communication on the Internet. They are stuck in the traditional media mentality and end up annoying customers with spam and failing to address complaints that are instantly shared with millions of fellow users.

Corporations are just now realizing that the Internet has given their consumers more power than their own PR departments. For the most part, political campaigns are even farther behind. The 2008 election gave rise to one political organization that clearly understands and respects the complex and powerful nature of the Internet: the Obama team. Obama’s new media campaign demonstrated that these technologies are relevant but no single organization can control the discussion. To be successful, a candidate must participate in the discussion, not lead it. They must use the opportunity to listen, not shout. They must sincerely engage voters, not spam them. A candidate must genuinely understand the paradigm shift, rather than simply jumping on the band wagon without understanding where the band wagon is going.

Republicans and New Media (pdf)

The next post will be Oct 13th.

Be Seen with SEO

A common theme of this blog is "Have a website that is not just a website." In this post I am going to talk about something that is a little more behind the scenes then usual: SEO. SEO stands for search engine optimization which is techy jargon for having your website be favored by search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, or Bing. Each search engine has an algorithm that is applied to all the sites on the Internet to figure out which sites are relevant to which search terms. When you type in a search term, such as "political campaigns," the search engine will run the algorithm and display the results in the form of a list. The first link in the list is what the search engine considers to be the most relevant. As a website owner you always want your site to be listed first.

Several of the organizations I work with have recently become very interested in SEO and The Ohio State University even sent me for a week long conference and training seminar on the subject. SEO is a multimillion dollar industry. The big problem is that these algorithms are closely held secrets of Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft,
etc. Many organizations will just pick out a few key words to target in their SEO strategy and build those key words into the site. At this point you are probably wondering why such a technical issue should be the concern of campaign in general, after all is that not what you hire a tech guy to do? Well there are several answers to that question.

First, you need to be aware of this issue before you pick a web developer. This goes for smaller campaigns that do not have the funding to hire someone, but still have a website through volunteer work. In any case you need to insure that who ever is doing the site is up to date on SEO issues. Even if you do have a volunteer who may not know much about SEO, the least he or she can do is some research. There are plenty of forums out there where experts discuss SEO tactics.

Secondly, you need to understand certain aspects of SEO if you want the technical part of SEO to work. Your web developer may not be a marketer. At some point before the site is built, decisions have to be made about what type of search terms you think the site needs to be built around. Will it be just your name? Or perhaps your district name? Your intended office title? These are decisions that you, not the developer, need to make. Furthermore, one big factor in these algorithms is links to your site. We do not know how exactly the search engines calculate the weight of a link to your site but we do know it will have a noticeable affect. Again your developer cannot get you links. You will have to encourage other site owners, I recommend starting with bloggers, to include links on their site. This will take personal networking and communication skills, not technical ones.

Finally, it is just plain important even for small campaigns to rank well in search engines. Let me put it this way, if someone were to search for your name on Google would you rather have your site appear first on the list, or some blog post from an individual who is "not" affiliated with your opponent? You should not let your opponent control the debate by having his site or sites listed before yours. Voters will also be happier if they can find the content they are looking for quicker.

Hopefully the trick describe above will not happen to you (but I have worked on enough campaigns to see plenty of "creative" strategies come out of the Democratic machine). The actual technical aspect of coding websites for SEO will probably be left to professionals. However, SEO will not work without a basic understanding and support from the rest of your campaign staff.

The next post will be on July 7th

A Few Simple Tools By Google

A googol is the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. That is a big number. Moreover, it seems like the number of possibilities the company by the homophone Google will give you. I will be discussing just a couple of tools that every campaign, no matter how big or how small, should be looking into: Email, Docs, and Calendar. By no means are these all the relevant tools offered by Google, but they are some basic tools that are free and easy to use.

Email is something every campaign should have, and most do. At this point in time, I do not feel like a case needs to be made for having email. That part is understood. What needs a case is for using Google's email service. There are many email options out there. Some are free and some are not. Most email services out there let you pick your user name which is then followed by a "@mail.com" suffix. That suffix is the domain name that is home to the email address. So we see addresses like @hotmail.com, @aol.com, and @gmail.com. Gmail is Google's standard email service. However, Google allows you to take this a step further. If you have your own website, say "www.voteforme.com," then you can use your domain via Google to set up email accounts. To skip all the technical mumbo jumbo of how it works, this means you can have an email address of "canidate@voteforme.com" along with email for all of your staff (Google currently allows up to 100 accounts), all for free. I will admit, this is what my company, Web Pyro, did for its email. The nice part about this set up is that even though you have your own address, you still get to use Gmail's interface and tools. Google has made there email interface really easy to use. They also give you more storage space then you will ever need. This amount grows every day. At the time of writing this post Google was allocating 7299MB to me. I could probably write a whole post just on Google's email system, but the point I am trying to make right now is that it is a good system to use, especially since the next two tools require an email account with Google to use.

Google Docs is a tool that I feel is somewhat underrated and ignored. It is a simple collaboration tool. Rather then emailing a Word or Excel file as an attachment, you can have the file stored on Google's server and then share access with those who need to see the file. Let me explain this. First, there are two ways to get your file onto Google Docs. You may upload a the file as a document (.txt, .doc, .rtf, .odt, and .sxw file types are currently supported), as a presentation (.ppt and .pps), as a spreadsheet (.xls, .ods, and .csv), or as a PDF file. The other option is to create the file on Google (PDF not supported). You now have a collection of documents, spreadsheets, slideshows, etc. You can edit all of these documents through your web browser just as you would if you edited a document by opening up Microsoft Word. Then you can let other people have access to these files. You can restrict the individual to only seeing the file, or you can invite them to help contribute content. In addition, you do not have to worry about which computer has the file on it. Since it is stored on the web, all you need is a computer with Internet access if you need to look up something on a file.

Understandably, a collaboration tool such as Google Docs has many applications (my business uses it often to save such things as progress reports and minutes from meetings), I want to focus on the possibility for campaigns. First of all, yes, progress reports and meeting minutes may be something you want to consider having stored in a central location that you staff can access. However, there are a lot of campaign possibilities beyond that. You could have a brainstorming session with out meeting physically. Just have everyone jot down notes and ideas in the same document. You could have a spreadsheet of donors or maybe a presentation to help orientate new volunteer staff at your headquarters. Here the possibilities are endless. These files are also very secure and you should not worry about information being lost or stolen. You also have great control over the documents. You can pick which documents to share with which person. So if there is something only the Treasurer needs to see, no problem, and if there is something that everyone needs to see, you can do that too. I will admit, however, that I am not well versed in the legality of the use (here I am mostly concerned about specific voter information) in every state, county, and precinct in the country. Rules on such seem to change often and vary by location. It doesn't matter what the medium is, you should be mindful with what your doing with the information. Again, I would argue that Google Docs gives you more control and safety versus more traditional methods.

Next, we have Google Calendar. This is one of my favorite Internet tools. It has all of the basic calendar functions. You can put in events with times, locations, etc. You can set the event to repeat weekly, monthly, bi-weekly, etc. That is not the exciting part, all calendars can do that. What Google Calendar does is links people to your events. It does this in multiple ways. First you post your Google Calendar on your website. This is easily done with a little embed code that Google provides you with. Visitors to you site can then flip through your calendar to see when and where you are speaking, door-to-door times, and what ever else you see fit to display in your calendar. Having voters come to your website to see your calendar is great, but what is even better is allowing them to link their calendar with yours. If another user has a Google account, then they can click on a button at the bottom of your calendar to have all of your campaign events show up on the voters personal calendar. That way, every time you add a new even, the voter can see it posted automatically without having to visit your website. This is a great organization tool for the individual, to help him participate in your campaign. My personal Google Calendar is currently linked to organizations I am involved in and the office I work at The Ohio State University. It would have made my life a lot easier if the campaigns I had worked on over the summer used this tool. I would have been able to make more events if I did not have to relay on cross checking emails and voicemails with my calendar, not to mention be able to avert timing conflicts ahead of the event.

The one last tool I want to mention is actually a hybrid of Gmail and Google Calendar. Google allows you to send out invites through emails. The invite contains the date, time, location, and description of the event. If the recipient accepts the invitation, the information is automatically added to their personal Google Calendar. It also records who said they are coming, and who said they are not. This is a perfect tool to not only raise awareness of an event, but also to get a count of who is coming. So let say you are having a dinner event and need to have a list of people coming. That can be generated with the invite. It is quick, easy, and organized.

I will concede that this post is probably best directed towards smaller campaigns that are tight on resources. But even the larger campaigns could use some of the tools described above, especially Google Calendar. There is also an obstacle that lays with the fact that for some of the tools to be used in their full potential, others will have to have a Google account and be willing to engage in content sent over the Internet. I know while working on the Schuring for Congress campaign, there were voters who complained we did too much informing through the Internet and not enough by mail. Those who prefer the traditional way still exists and you should still pay attention to their preferences. What I am suggesting is supporting a strategy that includes the tools Google provides. It does not necessarily mean completely replacing the traditional approach. These are just some suggestions to make your campaign more productive, effective, and organized. Google will be taking more and more of the market share, so we might as well begin building strategies around it.

Next post will be March 17th

References:

Google -
http://www.google.com