I hope you enjoy this month's topics. This is your newsletter, so if you like or don't like something about it, please email us at newsletter@bullmoosemarketing.com and we will adapt. Like everything in politics and everything on the Web, we too at Bull Moose Marketing need to be flexible...

Thanks for reading,
Nick Ellinger
CEO, Bull Moose Marketing, LLC.


In this issue...

Best Practices: The IPDI's Recommendations for a Campaign Web Site

The Institute for Politics, Democracy, and the Internet, a group formed by the Graduate School for Political Management at George Washington University, recently published their Online Campaigning 2002 Primer. This guide (which is available at their site; see sidebar) has a good deal more than what we will discuss in the newsletter. We will focus on the IPDI's best practices, comment on them, and discuss technique for achieving these goals. Featured Site

The IPDI published the study that is the basis for what we discuss here. They have a number of tools and hints for new-to-the-Web political professionals along with the 2002 primer.


Best Practice #1: Make your Web site accessible to everyone.

We couldn't agree more. The IPDI does a good job of laying out the guidelines that sites should follow (the federal government's Section 508 regulations) to avoid hampering access to people with disabilities. We at Bull Moose Marketing will take it one step further and appeal to your blatant self-interest:
  • Strong moral reason: Flash sites are very difficult for the visually impaired, because the text in Flash is not readable by the devices used to translate text into Braille. Strong self-interest reason: It also is extremely difficult for search engines to read, so you should always have an HTML version of your site.
  • Strong moral reason: GIFs and JPEGs can't be read by those same machines, so if you use images for your navigation, you should put in ALT tags, which will show up if the image is missing and will show up on machines. Strong self-interest reason: Search engines read ALT tags, so if you use keywords in their tags, you will get more visitors to your site.
  • Strong moral reason: Many type faces can't be read by the elderly, so be sure to use a font that's 10 point or greater. Strong self-interest reason: As if the elderly isn't enough of a self-interest reason, over 20% of those under 55 can't read fonts smaller than 10 point on a Web site. We usually recommend 12 point to minimize eye strain.
Best Practice #2: Document your positions.

But what if we need to clarify or change your positions? Change the Web page. Your Web page should be changed on a regular basis any way. If you are trumpeting your environmental record in your speeches and ads, your Web site should provide the exact environmental program one could expect you to support. The IPDI recommends not scanning pages, but instead building HTML because it is easier to read. We agree and also mention that words in a scan don't show up in search engines and HTML pages do. Additionally, link to other Web sites that share or support your views. A detailed rant on this is in the next article.

Best Practice #3: Exhibit and extend your community ties.

The IPDI recommends linking to your candidate's memberships, endorsements, and so on. Again, more details in the next article.

Best Practice #4: Develop, post, and live by a privacy policy.

For market research, we subscribe to a lot of candidate newsletters. One of our pet peeves is when a campaign worker puts all of the addresses in the To field and sends out an email. What's wrong with that? You have now disclosed your entire email list to everyone on that list. If someone hits "Reply to all", they can -- intentionally or un- -- email your entire list. And your competition can now have access to your entire list. So not only is it a good idea to keep confidential information confidential for your users' sake; it's a good idea for your sake as well.

Best Practice #5: Explain the rules and show you comply.

Basically, the IPDI recommends you should have all of the legally required labeling available on your Web site, including "Paid for by...", campaign finance information, and required financial disclosures. We think this is important, but recommend for campaign finance information and required financial information that you simply link to sites that provide your information and not waste your time and money on recreating the wheel.

Best Practice #6: Make your case through contrasts.

We are so glad that other people are saying this. It doesn't make sense to use the Internet as a negative campaign tool, because it is a medium so easily turned off and so easily lampooned and dissected at any point. This is a medium that can be used to articulate your best arguments for your point of view and against your opponent, at both a micro and macro level (we recommend having a general overview similar to an executive summary, then links that people can click on to get more details on individual points).

Best Practice #7: Provide interactive and interpersonal opportunities.

At its most basic level, this is for the same reason that you have a person answering your phone instead of a voice mail system -- to personalize your campaign. However, the obvious selfish reason is that when you interact with people coming to your site, you are more likely to "upsell" the visitor (turning visitors into supporters, supporters into volunteers, volunteers into donors, donors into cult members, etc.).

We would add a best practice to this -- integrate the Web site into your campaign. Put it on your handouts. Refer to it on your ads. Put your ads, handouts, bumper stickers, and all of your campaign materials on your site. The more you integrate the site into other efforts, the more people will go to it and use it.

If you need help with your site, request a free consulting report from Bull Moose Marketing.

Do you have any hints for our readers? Any questions, comments, or death threats? Please send them to newsletter@bullmoosemarketing.com.


Bull Moose Rant: Don't Just Promote Your Own Site

In order to get the best placement for our clients' Web sites, our staff here at BMM are editors on several search engines (these human-edited directories like DMOZ - The Open Directory Project and Zeal feed into a number of other search engine sites. This means we get to see many of the political Web site submissions that are going on on the Web.

We saw a series of submissions the other day that made us want to rant (not because they were part of a bad idea, but because they were part of a great idea that no-one is doing). There were about thirty submissions from one person that were all news articles from various news sites from CNN.com to local newspapers. And they were all articles about something that Republicans had done wrong.

The submitter was obviously a Democrat hoping to make sure that these stories were seen by people seeking out news. The thing that struck us is how few people are doing this. Campaigns get so focused on their own site (and rightly so) that they forget that they also want Web users to visit the newspaper's endorsement of their candidate or the news story that blames the incumbent for dumping hazardous waste on nuns, orphans, and baby ducks. These stories can be a great boon to your campaign and even more so that they are not associated with your site--they have increased value because of their independence.

So what can you do to help promote other people's Web sites?
  • Put them in the directory sites. You can very easily get editing privileges on both DMOZ and Zeal. Then, fill the directory you edit with favorable stories to your cause/candidate. (Or, hire us to do it.)
  • Link to them and get your allies to link to them (you are already linked to your allies, right?). A big part of search engine listings is link popularity--how many times a site is linked to is a good indicator of how important a site is. You can boost their listings by increasing their popularity. This also has the effect of making these sites more accessible even if the user doesn't use a search engine.
  • Submit them to search engines. While this is not as certain and has to be done well in advance, using the basic submit tools on engines like Altavista, Lycos, Excite, MSN, and AOL can help these articles achieve strong placement.
Finally, if none of the other reasons appeal to you, remember the community-building best practice from the IPDI. Linking to local sites, local stories, and local people's sites creates a local environment in which people believe they are part of a greater movement. Seeing a news story (with no perceived influence from your campaign) about why your candidate is better in the local paper lends credibility to esteem to people who already support you the same way people look for ads for the car they just bought. People want to be validated and there are rewards aplenty in validating them.


While Bull Moose Marketing and its agents used their best efforts in collecting and preparing the information published herein, Bull Moose Marketing does not assume, and hereby disclaims, any liability for any loss or damage caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions resulted from negligence, accident or other causes.

© 2002 Bull Moose Marketing, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

You may freely distribute Bull Moose Marketing material, as long as it bears the following attribution:
Source: 2002 Bull Moose Marketing; www.bullmoosemarketing.com/politics