7 Reasons Why Your Political Campaign Needs A Google Account

If you are running for local office, consider creating a Google account for your political campaign. You may already have your own Gmail account, but creating a new Google account for your campaign will help separate your personal activities. Many candidates create a campaign Gmail account long before they start election activities, so they don’t end up accidentally sharing their personal life with the public.

What does a Google account give you access to?

When you create a Gmail account, it allows you to create a Google account at the same time. A campaign Google account provides you with access to a number of tools, including:

• Gmail: Gmail is a free email account with a large storage capacity. You can manage your emails by classifying them under different labels (groups), and you can search within your mailbox. Your Gmail account ties into other Google services seamlessly. Having a central email account keeps communications in a central location.
• Google Analytics: Understanding visitor behavior is the key to a strong campaign website. Google Analytics shows you how visitors are interacting with your site in a variety of ways. With Analytics, you can learn more about your online donations, volunteers, and what drives your site’s traffic. This user information can help your political SEO efforts.
• Google Adwords: As your campaign gets going, you can use Adwords to promote your campaign and specifically target voters by location and by searches. Display advertising helps you put your message in front of voters who are interested in you. Online advertising helps build awareness and can help with your GOTV efforts.
• Google Calendar: Use this organizing tool to share your schedule with your campaign staff and contacts. You can integrate your calendar with Gmail and view your schedule from within your mailbox.
• YouTube: YouTube is the world’s largest video portal, and it’s free to upload your campaign videos, and then embed those videos right into your campaign website.
• Google Docs: With this  free platform, you can create your own documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and forms that accept user input. You can share these documents with others. It is easier and more secure to work on documents from a central location, rather than relying on email.

Additional tools can also be of use to your campaign, such as Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools), Drive, and more.

You’ll need an account to advertise on Google

Google Ads is an advertising platform that enables users to make bids to display ads on Google’s search results page and on other websites. Political candidates and organizations can advertise on Google, but there are severe restrictions in targeting and reach. Restricted targeting is limited to age, geographic location, and limited targeting options for placements, topics and keywords.

For example, Google uses their “Ads Transparency Report” to help protect people from election interference and reduce the flow of misinformation. They also ask that all ads related to a particular election include a “paid for by” disclosure and provide budget information.https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/6014595?hl=en

To do this, your campaign needs to be verified before you can run any ads on Google. (A similar authorization process exists for Facebook advertising.)

You can create your own Google account at https://accounts.google.com/.

For more help on building your online campaign, check out our book, Running for Office as an Online Candidate – or get all our ebooks in our Combo Package.