Online politics regularly provides voters with campaign gaffes, mistakes, and embarrassing moments. There are many opportunities for political campaigns and candidates to make online blunders.
Here are five of the most common and avoidable problems that we see every election season.
Writing website content in the first person
Many candidates use their site’s home page to write an open letter to voters. Too many ‘I’, ‘me’ and ‘my’ words can hurt your campaign website’s ranking in the search engines. If you want your site to rank well for searches of your name, then your name must be included in your site content.
If you use first person copy, try using ‘pull boxes’ that include your name. Combined with a good page title, page description, and image tags, you can overcome the limitations of first person copy.
Related: Why Your About Page Ranks Higher Than Your Home Page
Failing to take advantage of online fundraising opportunities
It doesn’t matter how small your campaign may be. Once you open a campaign bank account and have a website, you can accept online donations. A number of fundraising services that cater to political campaigns. These services provide online donation forms, social media tools, and the ability to easily process and deposit donations directly into your bank account.
Services designed specifically for political campaigns will handle disclosure and tracking requirements for you. (This is helpful for state or FEC reporting, so your treasurer will thank you!) Some services also allow you to collect recurring donations through Election Day. This will allow you to raise money throughout the season.
Don’t wait to start online fundraising or you will be caught short in your get out the vote efforts.
Letting your campaign social media accounts languish
If you start a social media account, you owe it to your followers to provide regular updates. If you start an account and abandon it, followers will be left hanging. Potential followers will see a lack of activity and might even think that you have abandoned your campaign. It’s better to start at a manageable level and grow your social media efforts over time.
Most successful political campaigns use Facebook and Twitter. Maybe Instagram, if they are ambitious. If you start building a following, keep posting updates through Election Day. If you plan to shut down or hibernate your accounts, follow up with a few posts to let them know your final status.
We see a lot of campaigns that simply stop posting and never update their websites after election day. You have to wonder what happened. Did they lose? If so, why not acknowledge the fact and thank their supporters? If they’ve won, perhaps they should let constituents know how to reach them in their newly-elected position.
Posting from the wrong social media account
These days, most candidates and campaign staff manage both personal and campaign social media accounts. If you have multiple accounts, make sure you are logged into the proper account before you post. A personal opinion posted to a campaign account could appear to be an ‘official’ campaign position and lead to an embarrassing situation. This mistake is more common than you may think, especially in the business world.
Always post, tweet and like from the right social media accounts. (Don’t do what this woman just did.)
Sometimes it’s a staff member who makes an erroneous tweet. Sometimes it’s the candidate. Either way, you can be sure that somehow a technical issue or some outside ‘hacker’ will get the blame.
Assuming you have any privacy at all, anywhere or anytime
Anything you ever say or share online (and offline) should pass the ‘New York Times Test’. That means that if you wouldn’t be comfortable with what you’ve said or done appearing on the cover of the New York Times, then don’t do it. That includes personal social media posts, email correspondence, and especially video meetings.
This rule also applies in real life. Almost everyone carries a mobile device these days. Any time you are in a public or even private setting, assume you are being recorded. Campaigns often send ‘plants’ to an opponent’s campaign events to record the candidate and try to catch a ‘gotcha’ moment.
Do or say something wrong, and it’s being recorded or livestreamed, it can be uploaded to social media almost immediately.
Don’t feel too bad if you make one or more of these mistakes. Even presidential candidates have made their own share of digital gaffes.
Avoiding these common mistakes is just one step toward managing a successful political campaign. For more ideas and strategies for online campaigning, subscribe to our email list.
Don’t wait any longer to launch your digital campaign! Every day counts when it comes to reaching voters and spreading your message. With Online Candidate’s quick and easy website services, you can have your site up and running in no time.
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