In the world of digital politics, local campaigns can easily get distracted by shiny new toys and often overlook some of the most basic tech infrastructure needs. I’m not discounting the importance of setting-up some of these outposts, but when resources and staffing are limited, you want to take advantage of every resource available that can maximize your campaign’s efficiency. One such resource is Google Apps.

Among its many features, Google Apps allows you to create custom email addresses such as isaac@localpolitechs.com that are tied to email accounts using the Gmail platform. You can also use Google’s other products such as Calendar, Chat and Docs with each account. The free version of Google Apps allows for up to 10 free user accounts with these core features. Google used to offer 50 free user accounts per domain until it wised up (There are 47 ___@isaacsalazar.com email accounts with your name on it.) For most small campaigns, 10 user accounts will go a long way in getting a team started. Larger campaigns can  upgrade to Google Apps for Business for $5/user/month and receive more features and unlimited user accounts. All you need is a domain but if you don’t have one, Google will help you find one.

So the next time you’ve got your Salsa or NGP email loaded and ready to go but your “From:” email address is my2012campaign@gmail.com and you really don’t want to get all of those reply emails, make sure you’ve set-up Google Apps for your campaign. Need help setting this up? Shoot me an email and I’ll get it in my Google Apps account. ; )

Last year was a busy one for me.  That means I didn’t get to write as much as I wanted too. That being said, this site received close to 5,000 visitors this site and more than 10,000 pageviews. I’m really excited about these numbers given how little I wrote last year. The vast majority of them came to read the following posts:

1. The Google Blast: How successful is it? – This post was an analysis of how well the Creigh Deeds campaign used Google blast in the last days of VA democratic gubernatorial primary in 2009. It’s worth reading again.

2. CIVICRM – An alternative in CRM for organization and campaigns – Fueled by the open-source movement and a need for originations and campaigns to cut cost , CIVICRM has emerged as leading CRM. That being said, there are some downsides to the going with CIVICRM. I wrote about them in another post that you can read here — that one was not as popular in 2011.

3. Worst Campaign websites of 2010 – Even in 2011, these were popular. There some pretty bad campaigns website out there. Enjoy! If you see worse ones ou there, please email them to me.

4. Foursquare for local campaigns – Many campaigns are trying to figure out how to leverage Foursquare. In this post, I shared some of my ideas on how to do that.

5. How can local candidates engage the busy, low information voter? - Mike Kondratick (D), Candidate for VA state delegate, discusses the use the technology in his 2011 campaign. His hurdle: reaching the busy, low information voter. This post also led to a great discussion on LinkedIn.  Feel free to join it.

Thank you to the many people who stopped by during 2011. I promise to write more in 2012. If you have a topic, you’d like to me to write about, simply shoot me an email.

Editor’s Note: The blog post below is by Mike Kondratick who ran  as  Democrat for Virginia state delegate from the 87^th district.

Running a campaign for a local office, for me, turned into a decidedly low-tech enterprise.  Though, that’s not how I had initially planned it.

I ran as a Democrat for Virginia state delegate from the 87^th district earlier this month.  The 87^th comprises most of eastern Loudoun County and the northern tier of Prince William.  The technology we employed was basic: our website, Facebook fan page, our campaign database, and, of course, the VAN.

Though this was my first time as a candidate, I had some well-developed ideas for how to communicate with voters and develop a base of supporters given my day job as the Director of Grassroots Advocacy for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF).  At JDRF, technology is essential to our ability to build a community of advocates around type 1 diabetes issues and to motivate that community to take action when necessary.  Our approach to using social media to foster engagement has become a critical part of communications strategy.  In early November, we completed a program that generated over 100,000 signatures on a petition to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), most of which were generated through Facebook and Twitter.

My eagerness to apply this experience to my campaign was quickly tempered, however, by the realties of local campaigning.  First among the harsh realities is the low turnout.  We were hoping for 30%.  We wound-up getting about 27% turnout, which equated to 11,000 voters.  The vast majority of those voters, of course, were solid, party line voters. The universe of ‘persuadables’ that we were targeting was no more than a few thousand.

Since we live in an era of highly targeted and well-maintained databases, Facebook ad units, etc.  I still felt like this narrowcasting exercise was primed for a technological solution.  This notion was met with the second, and in my opinion harshest, reality of local campaigning—the low information voter.  Voters in these local elections don’t pay attention for very long and make their decisions based on precious little information.

If voters were going to make their decisions on just a small amount of information, I wanted that to be a personal visit from me or someone else from our campaign.  So, I decided to base our narrowcasting efforts mostly on our database and our canvassing efforts and use those tactics to drive online activity.  I started knocking on doors in April 2011 and, by the fall, I had mapped out a clear picture of where our voters were and what issues they cared most about.  This complemented our polling and informed our mail and field strategies in the final six weeks.  To drive online activity, we focused on linking content through our email program and including QR codes on our mailers and door-knockers.

But, as well as our field and mail campaigns worked, I never noticed our online efforts bearing much fruit.  Traffic to our campaign website was relatively low, spiking in the last two weeks.  Our list of Facebook followers and our email universe were comprised of the group of dedicated Democratic activists and operatives that were either already voting for us or didn’t live in the district.  The QR codes on our mail pieces and door-knockers drove little additional online interest.

After losing by just 51 votes, I’ve asked myself why our offline efforts didn’t drive more online activity repeatedly.  The low information voter making a decision in the campaign’s waning days is certainly one part of the answer.  A second piece is that there is no constant media coverage of the campaign or the important issues.  In Loudoun, we only have two small weekly newspapers.  The political blogs are active but tend to cater to a very small number of people that are party stalwarts.  Going further, the 87^th district is a district of mostly young families and commuters, which is bad combination for drawing attention to local politics.

Ultimately, these factors conspired to prevent the validation of my candidacy from a persuadable voter’s friends or neighbors for which social media provides the perfect platform.   At JDRF, our volunteers are motivated to engage with us online because of a personal connection to diabetes.  The media environment surrounding statewide and national elections drive attention and conversation that social media can enhance and magnify.  With neither of these advantages in my campaign, I had a limited ability to drive conversation among neighbors through social media, even though I knew where I had supporters and what issues they were interested in.

Is there a technology solution that can help to engage the busy, low information voter in this extended conversation?

THUSRDAY

9:00 AM: Opening Keynote Conversation: Political Leadership in the Digital Era - The speakers on this panel have all been involved in local politics in various regions of the country. As candidates, they actively used technology to get elected and have continued use  technology to keep in touch with constituents after they got into office.

10:15 AM: Building your Campaign Technology Vision: Insights from the 2011 Innovator Award Winners -  This panel is stacked with wickedly smart folks.  They will help understand the bigger picture behind using technology during your campaign is key. You may also get some glimpse at what’s next.

12:45PM: Digital Advice from the Political Party Committees  – Party committees have a lot of resources to offer to local candidates but unfortunately many candidates don’t know about them till it’s too late. For example, did you you get great CRM tool from the DLCC at $39/month if you’re running for local office?  Attend this panel and ask about what other tools/training are out there.

2:00PM: Be the Next YouTube Candidate - Did you know Youtube is second biggest search engine after Google? Yet many local candidates don’t take advantage of video during their campaign.   Attend this panel and get some tips and tricks.

3:15PM: Finding Your Blogger Voice as a Political Candidate – Though blogs have been around for more than a decade, local candidates still fail to use it. Why? I’m not quite sure. A campaign blog can be a chance to make your policies more personal and connect with voters (and the media) on another level. Attend this panel and get some tips from former local candidates and consultants who used blogging affectively during campaigns

FRIDAY

9:00AM: Digital Kung-Fu: How to Handle Social Media Blunders as a Candidate – If you use social media, at some point you’re going to make a mistake — just ask the Scott Brown campaign.  Learn how to handle those blunders so you don’t shy away from social media during your campaign.

10:15AM: What to Expect as a Digital Candidate – This one is pretty self explanatory.

11:20AM: Mobilizing Voters and Volunteers – I’m moderating this panel. What other reason do you really need?

2:00PM: When to Reply: Responding to Facebook Conversations as a Candidate – As a campaign, Facebook is a must. However, most campaigns do not have any policies or response when things get ugly on Facebook. Attend this panel to get some ideas, learn the do’s and don’ts of dealing with supporters and detractors on Facebook.

That’s all I have for you folks. Enjoy the conference.  Did I miss any or are there others you would recommend?

With elections tomorrow, newspapers, counties, state political parties, and blogs have embedded the Voting Information Project’s Google gadget on their websites. Candidates should do the same! The process is simple.

1. Create a page landing page on your site with an easy to remember url (i.e. candindate.com/vote candidate.com/pollingplace)

2.  Customize and embed the gadget  on the landing page.  You can find instructions here.

3.  E-mail  your supporters and direct them to landing page.

4.  Voila!

The gadget is a great tool for that empower  your supporters with knowledge.  Also,  driving your supporters to your website, gives them last minute reminder of who to vote for.

Good luck to all the candidates tomorrow.

Hosted by Campaigns & Elections magazine,  the inaugural CampaignTech Conference, will be held on November 10 and 11 in Washington, DC.  Conference organizers promise that sessions are designed specifically for the practitioners in the political space and crafted for various roles in the political process.  The conference will have four tracks: candidates, campaign professionals, Technologists and Non-profit advocates and the agenda has a number of interesting panels  for each track.

I will be moderating the panel titled “Mobilizing Voters and Volunteer” on Friday at 11:30AM.  The session will look at web and mobile organization tactics that will be used in the 2012 election cycle, from text messaging to social integration to incentivizing the process.  I will joined on the by panel by Courtney Sieloff of  Revolution Messaging , Mindy Finn of Engage and Taryn Rosenkranz of  DCCC

If you’re interested in attending, check out the agenda and register online.

1. Redesigning the website to make it easier to navigate. The new site also needed to include event registrations and online fundrasing.
2. Moving email fuctionality to a more robust CRM.

We talked about many solutions but finally settled on using Salsa Labs Toolset.  Salsa decrisbes itself as a one-stop package that all kinds of organizations, campaigns, and companies use for online organizing, advocacy, fundraising, and communications – all tied together with a common database that gives organizers a bird’s eye view of the entire community.

We arrived at this solution for a couple of reasons.

1. Michael wanted to log-in into one place to maintain the site. This meant that hacking together a solution with various products was not an option.
2. Maryland Democratic Party established a partnership with Salsa Labs where county parties only have to pay $50/month to get access to the entire suite of tools
3. Salsa Labs has vibrant community and great support staff (I know having worked with them on may occasions) that Michael could turn to after I was no longer part of the project.  This was an incredily important point. While Michael understood that the using the internet was important part of his overall communication strategy, he is not a technical person. Having someone to turn to beside mysefl, provided an extra layer for confornt.  No one want to be stuck with technology they can’t use.

The result of our work is a simple, functional and elegant site.   Have a look below.

Before

After

The numbers are straightforward.

As of June 2011, there are roughly 160 million adults online, and in 2010, many of them took action online:

• 16% (~25 million people) sent email related to the campaign or the elections to friends, family members or others
• 12% (~19 million people) revealed online which candidate(s) they voted for
• 8% (~12 million people) signed up to receive updates about the campaign or elections
• 8% (~12 million people) of online adults shared photo, video or audio content related to the campaign
• 7% (~11 million people) used the internet to organize or get information about in-person meetings to discuss political issues
• 5% (~8 million people) used the internet to participate in volunteer activities related to the campaign, like getting lists of voters to call or getting people to the polls
• 4% (~6 million people) contributed money online to a candidate running for office

That’s a vast number of people, and it’s guaranteed to increase in 2012. But how much it increases for any specific campaign depends, in part, on how seriously it invests in educating, recruiting and activating people online.

Candidates and organizations invest massive resources in creating online communities and tools (Facebook pages, websites, apps, etc.) where users can interact, share, and become active surrogates. Without innovative and well targeted ads to drive awareness, education, and connection, the pipeline of people being driven to those hubs is a slow trickle, and the volume of action is minimal.

Some argue that the power of online organizing is that a campaign doesn’t have to spend money to organize and drive action online. That’s true in select cases. But for most efforts, a high volume of actions will never be achieved without investing in ads.

When high volume online is the goal (high volume of emails, petition signatures, likes, re-tweets, etc) display ads are the most effective way to fire up the engine. When major brands want to drive people to take action, they spend hand over fist in online advertising (rich media example) to drive education and awareness (which eventually leads to action). According to ComScore Ad Metrix, in the first quarter of 2011 alone, P&G ran 5.5 billion ad impressions, Walt Disney ran 4.7 billion, and Living Social ran 4 billion. The same is true of any major brand you can think of; and the political world should be no different.

*** Cross-posted on Resonate Blog ***

Last month, I had the pleasure of speaking to the web content mavens on the integration of social media and mobile websites and Apps. As I created the slides I tried to emphasize the following points:

• Mobile is a growing part of how people use social media
• Your organization should have a mobile strategy. 93% of mobile visitors think negatively of your brand when they have a bad mobile browsing experience on your site. Contextualize the social media experience for mobile users
• Know the difference between mobile website and mobile apps and make your decision to have one or both based on your mobile strategy and organizational goals.

My slides from the presentation are below.

If your organization needs help with its mobile strategy, don’t hesitate to shoot me a note at henrim@beekeepergroup.com