Strategic Plan: Where to start

You should start by analyzing the campaign. Since you all will be turning in your one-page draft of the objectives for your Internet strategic plan by next Tuesday's class, I thought you might be interested in a question Shadow asked elsewhere on the blog:

What do you do if your assigned politician's website is, like, the best site you've ever seen?

I'm assuming you're asking how you can propose to improve this campaign's web operations in your strategic plan. If so, I would encourage you to learn more about the campaign and think about what it needs to do to win.

• Ask whether the candidate's message or outreach to specific constituencies could be improved in any way.
  
  Look at the way the campaign is reaching out to all voters, and to the key voters this candidate needs in order to win. Figure out what the key issues are in this campaign and see how the candidate is handling them.
  
  What are the opponent's weaknesses? How are these being handled on your candidate's site? What are your candidate's weaknesses? How are they being handled on the site? Go to the opponent's website. If the opponent is hammering your candidate on an issue, is your candidate responding effectively? If your candidate is simply ignoring the opponent's attack, is there a good strategic reason for keeping silent, or is your candidate acting like a deer caught in the headlights?
• Sign up for newsletters and updates from the campaign. Do you get them right away? Are they effective? I often learn a lot about a campaign by signing up to volunteer or making a small donation (even a dollar or two). You don't have to do that, but it's one way professionals — or anyone else, for that matter — can find out how well a campaign is being managed.
  
  If you do this, you can state honestly that you are a student and are filling out their volunteer form in order to learn more about the way they respond to volunteers. You can use an email address at Yahoo or Hotmail to protect your privacy.
  
  A well-run Internet campaign will get back to you promptly and suggest specific volunteer opportunities. A badly-run operation will not respond, or respond only with an auto-generated email that doesn't make you feel part of the campaign.
  
  If you donate $2 or so using PayPal or a credit card, theoretically they can send you fundraising requests in the future, but in my own experience, if I donate only a few dollars, I don't get follow-up fundraising requests.
  
  If you donate, take notes during the process. Was it secure? Was it easy and user-friendly, or confusing and irritating? Did the form require you to provide more information than what was necessary (that is, beyond what is required by the FEC and the credit card processors)? Were you given a way to opt out of future contacts?
  
  Did you get a warm confirmation email afterward? Were you invited to volunteer or become further involved in the campaign? How did the donation process make you feel about the campaign? Did you feel appreciated as a campaign supporter, or as if the transaction were only about taking your money?
• Find the contact info for the campaign. Write them an email, asking a polite question. Do they get back to you immediately? Trying phoning them. Are you able to reach anyone by phone, or at least leave a message and get a prompt callback?
• Keep studying the site over time. Go back every day and take notes on what you see and your reactions. Is fresh news posted daily? Is the new material each day engaging and inspiring, or does it seem like press releases written by robots?
  
  Is the website interesting or boring? Clock yourself. Each day, note how many minutes (or seconds) you are on the site before you start to feel bored.
• Does the website give you opportunities to connect with the candidate? For instance, does the candidate respond on the website to questions from voters? Does the site provide information about local events where you can meet the candidate in person? Does it have speeches and commentary in the candidate's own words, or merely cookie-cutter press releases and position papers written by the campaign staff? Does the site post photos from the candidate's appearances at public events, so that online visitors can get a sense of what is happening on the campaign trail?
• Does the website give you a sense of the candidate as a human being? Does he or she seem likeable and approachable? Or does the website seem more like a slick (or perhaps cheesey) marketing brochure produced by paid consultants for a blow-dried, well-scripted machine politician? When you spend time on the website, do you feel you are getting to know the candidate better as a person? Or does the website feel as though it's produced by a committee, making the candidate seem remote and impersonal?

I have never seen an Internet campaign that could not be improved. This applies to even the very best Internet campaigns.

Keep in mind that it's only a small minority of campaigns that have good websites and email operations, and too often even these campaigns suffer from a disconnect between online and off-line efforts. A campaign without off-line/online synergy is like a relay race in which the runners don't pass the baton.

The questions I raised here are just to get you started. For a more systematic discussion of how to analyze an Internet campaign, refer to the assigned chapters in the Winning Campaigns Online book, and then think about the additional new media techniques we are covering each week. For example, blogging and text messaging.

By now, I hope you are starting to see how you can systematically analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your assigned campaign's Internet operations. If you still have questions, you can post a comment or bring it up in class.