Winning Online in 2010: Tools, Time and Resources

From e.politics:

Online politics may look new, but most of what a campaign does over the internet is really just a reincarnation of some classic political act...

But compared with traditional political tools, the internet truly excels at maintaining relationships with many people at once...

Despite the difference in size between a national and a local race, most campaigns will still end up with the same three basic online elements:

A central hub, usually a website.

A way to stay in touch with supporters, usually through an email-based Constituent Relations Management System but potentially including Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and text messaging.

Online outreach, to influence the wider public discussion and recruit new supporters and donors...

When it comes to the conversion process, content is key

Completing the connection, every scattered piece of the campaign’s online content should refer back to the main website — people shouldn’t be able to encounter the campaign online without also finding a way to get involved. Online content is more than just a persuader, since it attracts visitors via Google and the sites such as YouTube and Facebook on which it’s hosted. Of course, even the best content is useless if it’s hard to find or consume, so a campaign website needs to have a straightforward navigation scheme, with information clearly labeled and broken into digestible chunks...

Why email? Despite the hype about Twitter and Facebook, it’s still the most effective tool to raise money, motivate volunteers and keep supporters engaged — for example, roughly two-thirds of the $500 million that Barack Obama raised online came directly from someone clicking on a “donate now” button in an email message. Email reaches many people who still haven’t joined the social web, and it’s also turned out in practice to have much higher response rates than other channels, often by a factor of ten or more. Email remains the “killer app” of online politics, despite constant predictions of its demise.

Not that we’re talking about spam! Campaigns should use mass email only to communicate with people who have “opted-in” to their list by signing up online or at an in-person event. Except for targeted outreach messages to bloggers, journalists and activists, email messages should serve as a relationship-management tool, not as a recruiting tool (though every respectable CRM can include “tell-a-friend” links to help messages spread from person to person).

As for staying in touch with supporters via cell phone text messaging, it’s been the “next big thing” in online politics for several years now — and it still is. Most CRMs can collect cell numbers, but so far relatively few campaigns in this country have been able to put them to use, in part because of constraints built into the U.S. telecom system. Text messaging will no doubt be a good fit for certain campaigns in 2010, but it’s likely to remain more of a niche application for now...

Nowadays, many state- and local-level campaigns still piece together an online presence, perhaps combining inexpensive tools from a company like ElectionMall with a website built by their media consultants or a local firm. But candidates can also choose from an array of tailored professional offerings, particularly on the Democratic side, where vendors now offer integrated website/CRM/fundraising packages for just about every campaign budget, often accompanied by consulting on effective online strategy and tactics. Several hundred state-level Democratic campaigns used DLCCWeb (integrated with fundraising site ActBlue) in the 2008 cycle, for example, while others moved up the cost/hand-holding scale to systems from NGP Software or Blue State Digital...

Rather than thinking of “online” as its own separate world, smaller campaigns should follow Obama’s example and integrate the internet more broadly into their operations. For instance, traditional media relations and blogger relations require most of the same skills and employ many of the same tactics, so even if resources aren’t available for a standalone blog team, the press folks could include bloggers and Twitterers in their outreach portfolio. On other fronts, campaign’s media consultant can produce online video clips, though they’ll have to adapt to a very different world than that of campaign commercials, and field organizers can embrace Facebook and other social networks.

In some ways, more important than the resources devoted to online outreach is when they’re employed. List-building and much of the rest of online outreach are incremental and reward an early start. For instance, even before a campaign has a CRM is in place, they should collect names and email addresses whenever possible, since the candidate can always bring a laptop and a staffer or volunteer to real-world events.

Unless it’s flying under the radar for some reason, a campaign should generally establish a presence in prominent online spaces as soon as possible, beginning the process of feeding the website and CRM via a Facebook profile, YouTube channel, MySpace page and perhaps a Twitter feed. They should also reach out to prominent online voices early, building relationships with relevant bloggers and Twitterers just as they would with local officeholders, party activists and journalists...

Even buying Google Ads can be relatively straightforword! Since an active campaign should be creating a constant stream of content in the form of announcements, press releases, videos, photos, position papers, etc., the main time commitment (beyond direct outreach to online influentials) is usually keeping the various channels fed, egos massaged and incoming messages answered.

A rule of thumb? If you’re a small campaign with a single staffer, try to spend 4-8 hours planning and executing your online-specific strategy per week, at least at the beginning, remembering that those early hours can be far more valuable than time spent a week out from the election. One critical consideration: keeping up with a campaign’s internet presence needs to be someone’s defined responsibility, since otherwise it tends to fall through the inevitable cracks. Obviously, as we move up the scale campaigns should devote more resources to online outreach, particularly to the process of turning passive followers into active donors and volunteers. Regardless of their size, campaigns will constantly be buffeted by outside events, but they should take care to keep the steady process of building a supporter base on track even as day-to-day events scream for attention...