There was a time when political candidates had to rely on daily newspapers and magazines for staying current on the issues, but the Internet has made it easier than ever before to keep up with local news. I use a free tool called Google Alerts to have instant notifications sent to my email inbox anytime an issue that affects my district gets published online, and you can easily do the same.

Google Alerts takes only a moment to set up, and it’s an extremely useful online tool. To use it, simply go to the Google Alerts interface, then type the keyword phrase that you want to be updated on in the box labeled “search terms.”

One of the first terms that you will want to create a Google Alert for is your own name, since you’ll want to stay informed about any website that publishes information about you or your candidacy. Make sure that you enter your name surrounded by quotation marks–for instance, “Phil Van Treuren,”–so that you are only notified when your entire name is mentioned, and not just part of it.

Next, you have the option of specifying what kind of search results you want to be notified about–news, blogs videos, discussions–but I simply choose “everything” so that I don’t miss any online mentions. You can also choose how frequently you want to be notified of new results (every day if you want) and how many results you would like to see in every email.

The last step is simply to enter the email address where you want the results to be sent, and you’re all set. Every time your specified Google Alert keyword phrase shows up in the search engine’s index, you will be sent a link to the page in the Internet where it appears.

A couple of tips: first, if you have a common name, you want to make sure that you narrow down your search specifications so that you are only notified when it’s sure to be referring to you. A Google Alert for the term “Bob Jones” would probably return hundreds of irrelevant alerts every day. But if you were to set a more specific Google Alert for +”Bob Jones” +”City Council” +”Ohio”, then most of the alerts would probably refer to you personally (putting the “+” symbol in front of phrases means to only return results that include that phrase).

You can set as many Google Alerts as you want, and the service is very reliable. After setting an alert for your own name, you might also want to set alerts for your political opponent’s name; the name of your town or city; and plenty of other keyword phrases that you might want to stay educated on.

Of course, you should still keep an eye on the daily papers to make sure you aren’t missing anything, but Google Alerts makes it much easier for political campaign candidates to stay current on issues that might play a role in their local election.

Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle once said that there was “Nothing stronger than the heart of a volunteer” and while his words may be all but cliché, today they are as true as ever; particularly when running a political campaign.

Regardless if you are a political campaign veteran or a new comer to the arena, volunteers will play a crucial role for your campaign. What many inexperienced candidates (and experienced ones too) don’t realize is that volunteers can do more than simply knock on doors or answer phones. Volunteers can keep a candidate connected to the community, bring a bevy of innate abilities to the table, and become important leaders for your next run for office.

Cultivating and maintaining a good relationship with your volunteer staff can be challenging at times during a hectic and taxing political campaign schedule but the benefits far outweigh the cost.

Your campaign volunteers are likely a diverse group of people with their own agendas, schedules, and have their own reasons to support your campaign; their diversity is, in part, their most useful asset.

Volunteers are often active members of the local community and they have influence with their friends, family, and co-workers to whom they will willingly and passionately convey your campaign’s message to. Volunteers are passionate people and if they feel appreciated there is no end to the free publicity your campaign can garner thanks to the word-of-mouth. The campaigning that they will do for you at the dinner table, the local pub, or any other time they are with friends is invaluable.

As your volunteer staff discusses the issues amongst their own social networks they will likely be exposed to many different views on your campaign’s issues and other topics that you may have never even considered. As a candidate it is your responsibility to know what issues are affecting your constituency. You can learn a great deal about what concerns voters have by simply listening to what your volunteer staff has to say.

Just because a volunteer isn’t a professional political guru doesn’t mean that they can’t bring a lot to the table. One mistake that many campaigns make is not making full use of their volunteer’s talents. As a regular volunteer I can hardly relate how often I have shown up to a post and been routinely handed a phone or a stack of mailers and been hurriedly told to perform a repetitive task without any input in the matter. This kind of relationship between professional staff and volunteer’s not only makes for a lack luster performance on the volunteer’s part, as they feel unappreciated, but also hinders performance by placing people into roles that they are not comfortable with.

Most of your volunteers have careers and interests of their own that make use of skills that can be used for effective campaigning with a little creativity. Obviously people who work on phones all days such as police dispatchers or collections agents make for ideal phone bank workers but some talents are not quite as obvious; waiters are an excellent example.

Wait staff serve food and drinks, pretty simple, but they work on tips and often require a certain finesse when handling customers so these kind of people generally make excellent canvassers. Directing your professional staff to take a more active interest in the lives of your unpaid staff will create a better and more efficient campaign.

Running a political campaign is quite simply one of the most exhaustive and stressful endeavors one can engage in, and more often than not so much attention is focused on attaining this cycle’s victory that little thought is ever given to the next campaign. Training and cultivating your volunteer staff this election will make your campaign that much more effective the next go around.

Trained volunteers can and should become your go-to team on your next campaign. These experienced volunteers could play a crucial role in organizing your next crop of recruits or could even prove valuable as paid staff in the future. If you spend a little extra time cultivating capable volunteers their experience will help you next time around as they are much more likely to come back for your next campaign.

Staying in contact with your trained volunteers should also be a priority after your election, regardless of the outcome; win, lose, or draw stay in touch with them. Send an email out to your former volunteer staff every once in a while or invite them to fundraisers and benefits simply to stay connected with these valuable team members. Even if you decide to forgo any future runs at office your fellow colleagues will be very grateful if you are able to provide them with a few great volunteers.

Whenever embarking on a political campaign it is important to remember your volunteer staff is an invaluable resources as they bring you closer to the community, have their own unique talents, and can be important in future campaigns. Volunteers have always played a critical role in the political process and with a little attention to detail on your part; they can greatly enhance the effectiveness of your campaign.

Mark R. Seme studied political science in college, is a veteran of several campaigns, and is a life long student of politics. In 2011 Mark founded the website Saturday Night Politics, a political commentary site that takes the spin out of politics by focusing on pragmatism instead of partisanship.

Basically, a telephone town hall is like a live radio talk show with a host engaging in dialogue with select members of the audience.  By using a telephone town hall meeting, a candidate gets to interact like with the voters, answering questions and communicating their message.  Additionally, a campaign will gain increased website traffic, new campaign volunteers, donors and on-the-ground advocates.  This is a high-tech and high-touch way to reach voters.

Most telephone town halls should last about an hour.  Voters stay connected to the call for an average of one to nine minutes; others, much longer.  And, many people want to ask a question, so you never run out of people to talk to.

Telephone town halls should come with a free moderator that manages the complex details of the call.  This moderator is your “volunteer host” who keeps the call moving and is able to handle the technical side so the candidate can focus on staying on message and answering questions.  Also, you should have a call screener who weeds out the “crazies” and helps people keep their questions specific so the candidate can answer as many questions as possible.  With a telephone town hall, a campaign can also run live polls during the forum and connect the voter to a live person to accept a campaign contribution.

Telephone town halls provide a unique benefits that other touch-points don’t offer.

Your campaign dials out to tens of thousands of voting households, but a majority will not answer the phone and will instead receive a voice message.  In the voice message, you drive voters to your campaign website and any upcoming events, but you also drive them to the live forum – which they can call into via an 800 number and conference code.

The live answers and those households that dial back in manually after receiving a voice message are predominantly the most active voters – we call them “opinion makers.”  These are the voters whom less-engaged people turn to for advice about a candidate.  If you reach these voters, you’re connecting with grassroots activists, centers of influence and talkers.  But don’t worry about those who don’t answer; your telephone town hall will draw thousands of participants to your live meeting.

Your live audience will also consist of undecided voters who trend towards the middle of the aisle.  These are your swing voters.  A well done teletown hall draws easily their support, because they’re positively influenced by the kind of direct communications approach a telephone town hall provides.  Even if they only listen for a few minutes, the impression is the candidate took the time to contact with them in a meaningful way.

Telephone town halls are are a great political strategy.  Participants can press “0” to go to a screener who takes down a summary of their question, then puts them in a queue.  You can pick which questioners to take, already knowing what topic they’ll be addressing.  A good screener should be able to rank callers based on how friendly they are, how pithy they ask their question, how they sound, along with other criteria.  Should a caller sound too hostile or appear to be possibly disruptive, the screener can send that caller back to the main audience instead of into the potential questioner queue.  The campaign manager or communications director uses the live staff chat feature built into the web-based control panel to tell the co-host which questions to take, in what order.

Most teletown halls offer others thing like touch-tone polling feature to tag potential volunteers, donors or those interested in attending a campaign event; tagging listeners interested in receiving literature or even a campaign sign.  The is even more things one can do with a telephone town hall, but now you have a better understanding of what is it and how they work.

If a candidate sounds confident, has clear answers and appears authentic, there’s more to be gained with a telephone town hall than just voters

Basically, a telephone town hall is like a live radio talk show with a host engaging in dialogue with select members of the audience.  By using a telephone town hall meeting, a candidate gets to interact like with the voters, answering questions and communicating their message.  Additionally, a campaign will gain increased website traffic, new campaign volunteers, donors and on-the-ground advocates.  This is a high-tech and high-touch way to reach voters.

Most telephone town halls should last about an hour.  Voters stay connected to the call for an average of one to nine minutes; others, much longer.  And, many people want to ask a question, so you never run out of people to talk to.

Telephone town halls should come with a free moderator that manages the complex details of the call.  This moderator is your “volunteer host” who keeps the call moving and is able to handle the technical side so the candidate can focus on staying on message and answering questions.  Also, you should have a call screener who weeds out the “crazies” and helps people keep their questions specific so the candidate can answer as many questions as possible.  With a telephone town hall, a campaign can also run live polls during the forum and connect the voter to a live person to accept a campaign contribution.

Telephone town halls provide a unique benefits that other touch-points don’t offer.

Your campaign dials out to tens of thousands of voting households, but a majority will not answer the phone and will instead receive a voice message.  In the voice message, you drive voters to your campaign website and any upcoming events, but you also drive them to the live forum – which they can call into via an 800 number and conference code.

The live answers and those households that dial back in manually after receiving a voice message are predominantly the most active voters – we call them “opinion makers.”  These are the voters whom less-engaged people turn to for advice about a candidate.  If you reach these voters, you’re connecting with grassroots activists, centers of influence and talkers.  But don’t worry about those who don’t answer; your telephone town hall will draw thousands of participants to your live meeting.

Your live audience will also consist of undecided voters who trend towards the middle of the aisle.  These are your swing voters.  A well done teletown hall draws easily their support, because they’re positively influenced by the kind of direct communications approach a telephone town hall provides.  Even if they only listen for a few minutes, the impression is the candidate took the time to contact with them in a meaningful way.

Telephone town halls are are a great political strategy.  Participants can press “0” to go to a screener who takes down a summary of their question, then puts them in a queue.  You can pick which questioners to take, already knowing what topic they’ll be addressing.  A good screener should be able to rank callers based on how friendly they are, how pithy they ask their question, how they sound, along with other criteria.  Should a caller sound too hostile or appear to be possibly disruptive, the screener can send that caller back to the main audience instead of into the potential questioner queue.  The campaign manager or communications director uses the live staff chat feature built into the web-based control panel to tell the co-host which questions to take, in what order.

Most teletown halls offer others thing like touch-tone polling feature to tag potential volunteers, donors or those interested in attending a campaign event; tagging listeners interested in receiving literature or even a campaign sign.  The is even more things one can do with a telephone town hall, but now you have a better understanding of what is it and how they work.

If a candidate sounds confident, has clear answers and appears authentic, there’s more to be gained with a telephone town hall than just voters.

Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle once said that there was “Nothing stronger than the heart of a volunteer” and while his words may be all but cliché, today they are as true as ever; particularly when running a political campaign.

Regardless if you are a political campaign veteran or a new comer to the arena, volunteers will play a crucial role for your campaign. What many inexperienced candidates (and experienced ones too) don’t realize is that volunteers can do more than simply knock on doors or answer phones. Volunteers can keep a candidate connected to the community, bring a bevy of innate abilities to the table, and become important leaders for your next run for office.

Cultivating and maintaining a good relationship with your volunteer staff can be challenging at times during a hectic and taxing political campaign schedule but the benefits far outweigh the cost.

Your campaign volunteers are likely a diverse group of people with their own agendas, schedules, and have their own reasons to support your campaign; their diversity is, in part, their most useful asset.

Volunteers are often active members of the local community and they have influence with their friends, family, and co-workers to whom they will willingly and passionately convey your campaign’s message to. Volunteers are passionate people and if they feel appreciated there is no end to the free publicity your campaign can garner thanks to the word-of-mouth. The campaigning that they will do for you at the dinner table, the local pub, or any other time they are with friends is invaluable.

As your volunteer staff discusses the issues amongst their own social networks they will likely be exposed to many different views on your campaign’s issues and other topics that you may have never even considered. As a candidate it is your responsibility to know what issues are affecting your constituency. You can learn a great deal about what concerns voters have by simply listening to what your volunteer staff has to say.

Just because a volunteer isn’t a professional political guru doesn’t mean that they can’t bring a lot to the table. One mistake that many campaigns make is not making full use of their volunteer’s talents. As a regular volunteer I can hardly relate how often I have shown up to a post and been routinely handed a phone or a stack of mailers and been hurriedly told to perform a repetitive task without any input in the matter. This kind of relationship between professional staff and volunteer’s not only makes for a lack luster performance on the volunteer’s part, as they feel unappreciated, but also hinders performance by placing people into roles that they are not comfortable with.

Most of your volunteers have careers and interests of their own that make use of skills that can be used for effective campaigning with a little creativity. Obviously people who work on phones all days such as police dispatchers or collections agents make for ideal phone bank workers but some talents are not quite as obvious; waiters are an excellent example.

Wait staff serve food and drinks, pretty simple, but they work on tips and often require a certain finesse when handling customers so these kind of people generally make excellent canvassers. Directing your professional staff to take a more active interest in the lives of your unpaid staff will create a better and more efficient campaign.

Running a political campaign is quite simply one of the most exhaustive and stressful endeavors one can engage in, and more often than not so much attention is focused on attaining this cycle’s victory that little thought is ever given to the next campaign. Training and cultivating your volunteer staff this election will make your campaign that much more effective the next go around.

Trained volunteers can and should become your go-to team on your next campaign. These experienced volunteers could play a crucial role in organizing your next crop of recruits or could even prove valuable as paid staff in the future. If you spend a little extra time cultivating capable volunteers their experience will help you next time around as they are much more likely to come back for your next campaign.

Staying in contact with your trained volunteers should also be a priority after your election, regardless of the outcome; win, lose, or draw stay in touch with them. Send an email out to your former volunteer staff every once in a while or invite them to fundraisers and benefits simply to stay connected with these valuable team members. Even if you decide to forgo any future runs at office your fellow colleagues will be very grateful if you are able to provide them with a few great volunteers.

Whenever embarking on a political campaign it is important to remember your volunteer staff is an invaluable resources as they bring you closer to the community, have their own unique talents, and can be important in future campaigns. Volunteers have always played a critical role in the political process and with a little attention to detail on your part; they can greatly enhance the effectiveness of your campaign.

Mark R. Seme studied political science in college, is a veteran of several campaigns, and is a life long student of politics. In 2011 Mark founded the website Saturday Night Politics, a political commentary site that takes the spin out of politics by focusing on pragmatism instead of partisanship.

There was a time when political candidates had to rely on daily newspapers and magazines for staying current on the issues, but the Internet has made it easier than ever before to keep up with local news.  I use a free tool called Google Alerts to have instant notifications sent to my email inbox anytime an issue that affects my district gets published online, and you can easily do the same.

Google Alerts takes only a moment to set up, and it’s an extremely useful online tool.  To use it, simply go to the Google Alerts interface, then type the keyword phrase that you want to be updated on in the box labeled “search terms.”

One of the first terms that you will want to create a Google Alert for is your own name, since you’ll want to stay informed about any website that publishes information about you or your candidacy.  Make sure that you enter your name surrounded by quotation marks–for instance, “Phil Van Treuren,”–so that you are only notified when your entire name is mentioned, and not just part of it.

Next, you have the option of specifying what kind of search results you want to be notified about–news, blogs videos, discussions–but I simply choose “everything” so that I don’t miss any online mentions.  You can also choose how frequently you want to be notified of new results (every day if you want) and how many results you would like to see in every email.

The last step is simply to enter the email address where you want the results to be sent, and you’re all set.  Every time your specified Google Alert keyword phrase shows up in the search engine’s index, you will be sent a link to the page in the Internet where it appears.

A couple of tips: first, if you have a common name, you want to make sure that you narrow down your search specifications so that you are only notified when it’s sure to be referring to you.  A Google Alert for the term “Bob Jones” would probably return hundreds of irrelevant alerts every day.  But if you were to set a more specific Google Alert for +”Bob Jones” +”City Council” +”Ohio”, then most of the alerts would probably refer to you personally (putting the “+” symbol in front of phrases means to only return results that include that phrase).

You can set as many Google Alerts as you want, and the service is very reliable.  After setting an alert for your own name, you might also want to set alerts for your political opponent’s name; the name of your town or city; and plenty of other keyword phrases that you might want to stay educated on.

Of course, you should still keep an eye on the daily papers to make sure you aren’t missing anything, but Google Alerts makes it much easier for political campaign candidates to stay current on issues that might play a role in their local election.

One of the best free resources for building links back to your political campaign website is called Squidoo.  By simply registering for a free account, Squidoo allows you to create unique web pages–or “lenses”–about any topic you want.  These lenses also allow you to create links pointing to other external websites.

Squidoo lenses are very easy to set up and publish, but you should put plenty of thought into what the lens will be about and to make sure that it provides factual, useful information about the subject.  I suggest that you make your first lense about the city, county or district you are running in.

Take, for example, the Squidoo lens that I recently published about Amherst, Ohio, where I am a city councilman at-large.  I made sure that the lens was packed with lots of relevant, factual information about the City of Amherst and its demographics.  I also included other easy-to-add Squidoo modules like a guest book and an imported RSS feed of the latest blog posts from my candidate website.

But here’s the most important part of the Squidoo lens when it comes to SEO: the relevant external links.  I included several relevant links to Amherst-related websites that visitors might find useful–like the local library and police department–but I also made sure to link back to my political campaign website, as well.

This link back to my website will help it gain more authority in the search engines, and over time it will help my site rank higher for Amherst Ohio related keyword searches.

If you’ve recently launched a political campaign candidate website and want to get it ranking in the search engines for terms that have to do with your candidacy and district, then creating a Squidoo page should be the next thing on your agenda.

As a former political consultant and current elected official, I start analyzing my local election results as soon as they come in on election night.  Here are some of the elements that I look for: which precincts I performed the best in (and the worst); where my opponents got more votes (and where I got more than they did); which precincts had the highest turnout (and which had the lowest).

These are just a few of the things that you can include in your local election analysis–and don’t think that you need to analyze your results as soon as they come in like I do.  On election night, especially if it’s the first time you’ve run for office, your focus should be on one thing: whether you are winning or losing.

Once the excitement has died down, though–maybe even a few days or a few weeks after the election–take some time to look at the voting results and see how things played out precinct-by-precinct and ward-by-ward.  Did you end up getting a higher percentage of the vote in precincts where you spent more time campaigning?  Were there any precincts where you did better than you thought you would?  Overall, was turnout higher or lower than you anticipated?

Answering these questions and more will give you a lot of insight when it comes to your strategy for the next campaign–whether you are running for re-election or giving it another shot after coming in short the first time.

The data that you get from running for office the first time–whether you win or lose–is extremely valuable, and will allow you to run an even better local political campaign next time around.  Make sure that you don’t skip the local election analysis after all of the votes have been tallied, whether you do it on the same night or a few weeks later.