YouTube Videos in Politics
Filed under: Campaign Technology, local politics, News
This will be a quick one. I have one things to say. Yes, you as a political candidate should be using YouTube to post your videos. There is just one things I’ve been seeing lately that is frustrating the CRAP out of me.
STOP putting embedded YouTube videos on your landing pages for your Internet ads. It’s not smart. Why would you put a video that when most people click play that accidently double click it and end up leaving your website to view your YouTube page. It’s just not smart.
For every landing page you need to use a dedicated video player. It’s an absolute. It allows for higher quality video, no distractions and no external links. It’s more fluid and if you do it right, it streams much better with less buffering than you will get with YouTube. This is not to say you can’t upload the very same video to YouTube. In fact, I recommend you do. It is merely to say you need to NOT embed those YouTube videos on your advertising landing pages. You can embed them in your website. That’s not the issue here. We just want to make sure that when you USE VIDEOS FOR ADVERTISING and you want to offer a DISTINCT CALL TO ACTION you don’t let them get distracted by leaving your website and sending them to a social networkings site with a variety of other videos that could peak their interest.
Candidate Gets “Unfair” Campaign Advantage in SEO
Filed under: Campaign Technology, local politics, News
How would you define “fair” as it pertains to politics? The Des Moines Register reported our assistance with Kent Sorenson’s Campaign against the radical-liberal, Staci Appel (who’s husband just happens to be one of the three SC Justices that legislated gay marriage from the bench).
“The Register said, “Mitchell’s website, OperationRedState.com, describes his business as being able to teach Republicans how to get the ‘unfair campaign advantage’ over their opponents by running a better online campaign.”
What is this “unfair” campaign advantage we offer? Well, DUH! One of the key things to recognize, especially if you are running for a state wide race or are new to politics, is that name recognition is KEY. While Kent Sorenson probably already had a lot of name ID in his State House district, making an immediate push to run for State Senate required Kent to dominate online. From an SEO perspective, he did just that. At the beginning of his campaign he bought up a dozen or so domains that are connected with his and his opponents names.
“Mitchell said, ‘It can be certainly effective in the search engine world,’ Mitchell said in an interview. ‘Do I agree with the practice from heart and my gut? I would say that until somebody comes up with a rule that says otherwise, it’s first come first served.’”
Does leveraging technology really give you an “unfair” campaign advantage? Not really, it just makes your opponent’s campaign look utterly dysfunctional because they don’t have a clue and so they’ll have no other choice but to resort to personal attacks that are misconstrued and pathetic. Or in other words, Staci Appel’s campaign in a nut shell. (This of course being the opinion of the Author of this post and not necessarily OperationRedState.com or the Mitchell Group LLC) 
These tools are out there and they need to be used. Think of neglecting to use these tools as “politics as usual” because the 21st century candidate cannot think they will continue to win without them. Sure, they may get away with it this election cycle or the next. But as the Internet evolves so will successful campaign strategy. If your opponents campaign doesn’t think about buying up domains related to them, I wouldn’t even hesitate.
Leveraging SEO is key and it should be your priority to deploy an effective strategy to do so, especially if your opponent just doesn’t get it. It’s not like this isn’t common knowledge in the “web world.”
-
Social Media
