As a digital strategist and political consultant, I see political campaigns all the time that launch with critical pieces missing in their strategy. Then they get bad press, or no press. They fail to capitalize on the moment, to raise enough money and supporters to kick start the campaign. It's a hard enough road for progressive political candidates, since we rarely have the deep pockets of the other side. We need to get the basics right at the beginning, and the momentum can carry us through to be in a good position later.
At PowerThru, we've helped a lot of candidates get launched in the last few months. For first time candidates or folks who have been out of office for awhile and are not used to online tools, we find ourselves telling them the same things.
How do you get started when you're running for office? Here's our list to help guide candidates and would-be candidates during the crucial phase between "thinking about running" and launching. What you do now can give you the boost you need for a successful launch, and get you on track to win. If you're thinking about running, please read this carefully. And if you know somebody who's running, please pass this along!
1. Your list is the heart muscle of your campaign. So strengthen and build it as much as you can before you launch.
I'm talking about your list of donors, prospects, volunteers and supporters.
Even if you're starting from scratch, you have a list: your friends, family, coworkers, etc. Now is the time to be combing through stacks of business cards and inputting the info, getting your personal email address book, work email address book, and your cellphone contacts all synched. You'll wind up using this list for your announcement email, and also for your initial fundraising call time sessions.
If you're not on LinkedIn, get on there and start building your professional network. It's a great way to get current contact info from people you may have worked with years ago but lost touch with. (And, pssst, you can download your contacts' email addresses via LinkedIn, which you cannot really do with Twitter or Facebook. Note that you can download name/email/company via LinkedIn but you cannot mass download phone #s and addresses - you'll need to spend some time on LinkedIn copying that info down by hand, just like with Facebook.)
Also reach out to people who support you, who may have access to lists. If you're running for an office held by a Republican, try to get the supporter list of the last Democrat who ran for that seat. Other previous campaigns for city, county or congressional office can be cobbled together to cover a larger district (especially the parts that have strong Democratic preference). And of course the state party may be able to help you if there's no primary (if there is, it's even more important to make friends with other local Democrats who have run and won elections in your district - ask for their endorsement and their list). Take advantage of this by reaching out before you launch to see what resources are available.
Now is also the time to get on Twitter and Facebook, if you are not yet already, and get active to build out your social media contacts. If you're all in, it's possible to convert a personal Facebook profile into a page. This will give you a jumpstart in fans and also erase any past (potentially embarrassing) content. If you choose to maintain a separate personal account for friends and family, a page will still give you another way besides email to reach out to your circle.
2. Claim your name online. Buy your domain names now. If you wait till rumors are out there that you're running for office, squatters could grab your domain and refuse to give it back unless you pay expensive prices. Or your opponent could buy it, which is worse. So buy them now.
What domains should you get? Every combination of your first and last name, including nicknames (jim, jimmy, james, etc.) might be useful, and be sure to purchase the trifecta of common URLs: .com/net/org. Domains are cheap but not buying a domain can be costly. The last thing you want is to save $10 by not buying a jimmy.com, because you go by James, only to have your opponent put up an attack-site a few weeks later at "jimmy.com" that spreads all kinds of lies and falsehoods about your past, which now you have to spend thousands of earned media dollars to rebut.
Defense aside, what domain should the campaign use? I highly recommend making sure your full name is in your domain, because this will help with search engines. Read more from our search engine optimization guide for political campaigns and non-profits. Hopefully your name is easy to spell. If it isn't, be sure to buy misspellings. And perhaps use a simplified URL when you're giving speeches.
In terms of social media and naming, while it may be possible to make a one-time change of your URL or page title on Facebook and unlimited changes of your Twitter username -- don't assume you can do this. The internet is littered with one-time-use campaign social media profiles. If you're under 90 years old (or heck, even if you are 90), choose a Facebook page title and URL (aka username) that won't tie you down to running for a specific office in a specific year -- we all know that politics is about the long game. And some of the most successful politicians in history had to run more than once before they got elected to office. So use your name, your full name, this will help with search engine work in a few days and it might help your career in public service for years to come.
For the rest of our tips -- and what to do on launch day -- read the rest of our (long) guide to launching your political campaign online successfully.