Ed Martin for Congress is website for a political campaign. The client had a wide variety of potential needs for their website as the campaign unfolds. The challenge was to develop a site that was highly flexible and extensible to adapt to new online opportunities.
The site is the hub of a larger online effort that includes a comprehensive social media strategy including Facebook, YouTube, Email, Blogging and Twitter. Goals include voter and constituent outreach, name recognition and communicating the candidate’s policy positions. I have been monitoring activity and both suggesting and making adjustments to the frequency and timing of communication efforts.
There is steady, organic growth in Twitter followers, Facebook fans and unique visitors to the site, surpassing in many cases incumbent and challenger statistics. Running in a district historically held by the opposing party, these efforts have been recognized as an early indicator of the competitiveness of the candidate.
Key Features
Featured Content Navigation – From the home page users are presented with a dynamic slide show & navigation tool that features content on which the campaign wants to focus.
Online Video – The candidate posts video of himself as well as interesting videos from other sources that serve top make points of benefit to the campaign message.
Social Media – The campaign makes very effective use of social media tools, including email, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to drive traffic to the website and increase the width of the net being cast for the campaign message. It is further used to accept feedback and questions to engage constituents.
Content Managed – The site is running on a content management system that allows the quick posting of routine updates as well as the safe deployment of new features.
RSS SEO – I have deployed Real Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds to the site to provide state and local news relevant to the campaign. The added benefit is that search crawlers find a large volume of relevant keywords that update regularly.