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Document:LPCA Affiliate Support Handbook: Difference between revisions
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Document:LPCA Affiliate Support Handbook (view source)
Revision as of 04:12, 11 June 2023
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== Web Presence== | == Web Presence== | ||
===Importance=== | |||
A majority of Americans list social media as the primary component of their news consumption. Now that the internet has become so ubiquitous in American politics, many voters do not, and will not, spend the time to seek information on an organization or candidate offline. Since at least 2015, web presence has grown into the primary battlefront in American politics which means that joining the fray and establishing an internet following is critical to achieving political success, especially for a third party attempting to become a serious part of the conversation on any level. | |||
This section will delve into how to set up a successful web presence. While this is not intended to be a step-by-step guide for achieving world domination, it will introduce and familiarize you with the tools necessary to set up professional pages, gain an online following, and challenge the regime where it matters most. The internet was once a modern "wild west,” where rules were scarce and censorship was virtually nonexistent. Despite those days being behind us (for now), a strong web presence is the most important part of outreach and activism at your disposal. The sooner that your organization recognizes that fact, the sooner that liberty has a chance of flourishing in both the virtual and real worlds again. | |||
===Order of Operations=== | |||
In political activism, it’s helpful to think of the internet as existing in a “spoke and wheel” framework. While this section will acquaint you with a variety of tools and technologies, it’s important to first understand how they all tie together in order to make the best use of your web presence. There are three primary tools: social media platforms, websites, and email, each with its own section and whose orders convey the optimal user flow. | |||
====Social Media Platforms==== | |||
Social media platforms are your first point of contact with the general public. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have hundreds of millions of users, many of whom have never heard of the Party. Because social media is designed to recommend content to people | |||
that they might be interested in, your posts or events can be seen by a broader following than your organization actually has. Successful web presence operations use social media much like a billboard—getting their “elevator pitch” in front of as many eyes as possible. | |||
Unfortunately, when you operate on these platforms, you operate within their rules, make posts that conform to their structure, lose access to user flow tools, and give up most of your creative vision when it comes to branding. Additionally, static information is often hard to | |||
host as crucial details about your organization will be scattered across posts on your feed. As a result, while it’s clear that its recruiting power can’t be matched, it’s a poor place to host necessary information. For many, social media will be their first point of contact with your organization so it’s imperative to ensure that it isn’t their last. Instead, social media platforms should serve as nodes of outreach and marketing to feed interested parties into your website for a real look at your policies, events, etc. | |||
====Website==== | |||
Your website should be the center of your “wheel,” and your central hub for information. While it is advisable to have many social media “spokes” poking out from the center to reach the public best, your website is where you want to feed interested people looking to learn | |||
more about your organization. A website can store static and easily accessible content, all while giving you complete control over the branding and layout. For journalists looking to write an article, activists looking to get involved, and members of the public interested in | |||
your organization, your website is the primary repository of the information, so its importance can’t be overstated. Websites have one main drawback however—they’re static. | |||
While the possibility for static information is one advantage a website has over a social media platform, you’ll often need to communicate non-marketing, meaningful, non-static information to your supporters. As a result, emails need to be utilized to communicate with the community that you have built through your outreach. | |||
====Email==== | |||
As previously mentioned, email should be your primary method of communicating with those in, or interested in your organization. Email strikes a middle ground between social media platforms and your website, given that you have total control over the customization | |||
of their layout and content, while their modularity allows interested parties to get alerted with updates. As vital as email is, it’s important to remember that its function lies within a much narrower range than social media platforms or websites. Emails should only contain information that would be meaningful to your target audience. Outside of a request for further action (e.g. donations), emails should not contain marketing. Your email list and newsletters should be reserved for those who are already sold on your message because when | |||
it comes to recruitment, no email chain, no matter how long, is going to beat a social media platform in terms of views. | |||
Web presence can sometimes be a daunting topic given the variety of different platforms and tools, but as long as you remember basic user flow, it’s easy to understand how the pieces fit together. To recap, or to use social media nomenclature—TL;DR (shorthand for "too long; didn't read”): | |||
* Social media platforms are for grabbing people and getting them interested in your organization. | |||
* Websites are for hosting static information. | |||
* Emails are for communicating with an already established group of members and supporters. | |||
Lastly, it is essential to remember that your web presence is often the first look that a member of | |||
the public will get at your organization, so taking shortcuts or neglecting it will appear unprofessional and likely turn people away. Just as you would make an in-person gathering for a hundred people presentable, putting thought into how you present your organization to thousands if not millions of people, is equally important. | |||
===Design & Branding=== | |||
When making social media posts, you may want to include graphically designed images such as infographics or posters. The easiest way to make these is to sign up for a free account on [https://www.canva.com/en_gb/ Canva], an in-browser graphic design software. The user interface is drag and drop, so it’s very intuitive and easy to use. An important consideration when making these designs is to be consistent with your branding. Using the same colors and fonts, and having the same style across your designs (as well as your website and emails) is an easy way to establish a coherent brand image, which in turn, will help tie your web presence together. Additionally, if you need stock photos for your designs, [https://www.pexels.com/ Pexels] is a website that provides royalty and attribution-free images for your use. | |||
Before looking at particular social media platforms, it is vital to understand a few basic concepts that will hold true for all of them. First, although each platform will allow for different configuration options, your branding should again, remain the same across all platforms. This means that your handle, profile picture, and banner picture should be consistent across all of your accounts, allowing users to easily identify and follow you across multiple platforms. Furthermore, when you make a graphical post, it is often helpful to remind users of all of the platforms you’re on, as well as your consistent handle. If you include these, many users will follow you on other platforms, allowing you to cross-promote your various accounts. Second, posts should be short and to the point (nobody wants to read through paragraphs of information). One or two sentences should suffice to convey your message in a “punchy” and memorable way. Third, because social media should be the outreach portion of your web presence system, it is critical to avoid “shitposting” or making posts just for your established members. Any actions you take should further your marketing goals. | |||
===Social Media Breakdown=== | |||
Even though all social media platforms have the same fundamental goal (i.e., connecting people), their implementation differs wildly. That’s why it’s important to know how to accomplish the basic steps needed to succeed on social media via different platforms, including: | |||
setting up an account, making posts, viewing metrics, and running ads. Part of this necessitates understanding how each platform works in order to best inform your outreach strategy. Not all platforms are created equal. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit are the most critical to set up and utilize, as they cover the most extensive range of markets, and are currently the most popular. | |||
====Facebook==== | |||
Facebook was the first real social media platform, and due to its early adoption by a wide range of users, it’s a varied medium with a diversity of interests. Almost anything, from Dungeons and Dragons to political philosophy, can be found on this site. Because of how | |||
long it's been around, its user base tends to skew older. While Meta (the company currently running Facebook), is known for leftist politics and censorship, the platform itself is relatively neutral as communities can be found on it for most belief systems. | |||
Facebook is comprised of three primary components: Users, Pages, and Groups. Your organization will not have its own account. Instead, your leadership will need to create a page that acts essentially like a User. Pages have a profile picture, banner image, handle, email, | |||
and URL. Additionally, pages have their own Facebook Messenger portal, which allows you to communicate with followers directly. Users can “like” your Page, and posts made to it will show up on their feed. That being said, Groups are more important for gathering a wide range | |||
of people. Groups are interest organizations set up on Facebook where Pages and Users can gather to post and discuss different topics. Any User or Page can create a Group which serves as a community forum. If you create one, you can moderate the forum, establish rules, | |||
appoint administrators, and run the organization. Groups are good for marketing and building a following because they reach out to a pre-established collection of Users, and allow you to speak to them directly. | |||
When your Page makes a post you’ll be able to see, right below the post, the number of people reached as well as engagements. You can also see, on the very left hand of your Page profile, a button labeled “Insights,” which will take you to an overview of your Page’s metrics. If you’d like to run ads, you can make selected posts appear in users’ general feeds (comprised of posts from users they’re friends with, pages that they follow, and groups that they’re a part of). While costs are contingent on a wide variety of factors, it generally costs | |||
about $1 per click, and $7.20 per one thousand views. | |||
====Twitter==== | |||
Twitter is the social media platform most associated with politics online. Initially, Twitter got its start when it became a platform for politicians and journalists to discuss the news and share information about current events. Despite it having evolved into a varied platform with everything from politics, to memes, to sports, it retains a more serious and current-event focused feel than most social media platforms. The age range of Twitter users skews young adult to middle-aged, with the biggest demographics being 25-34, and 35-49 years of age. | |||
Twitter’s model is very basic. Anyone, including your organization, can start an account and send tweets immediately. Your account can be configured with a handle, a location, a URL, a profile image, a banner, and a brief description. Unlike other social media platforms, there | |||
are no Groups or Pages; instead, accounts can follow other accounts, and get one big feed of everyone that they follow (including some posts that accounts they follow “liked” or replied to). As a result, there is no place with a pre-created audience to immediately start posting and reach a wide range of people. All you can do is post tweets (which must include text and/or a graphic and be under 270 characters), and reply to other tweets so that people take notice and follow you (the latter is crucial). Because Twitter’s model is so follower-based, it does not have as much of the benefit as a marketing board (unlike most other social media platforms). | |||
There is one feature however that makes it invaluable for reaching out to the public: retweets. Any account can retweet another public tweet, thus sharing it to their feed, allowing people who do not follow the original account to see it. Twitter has also introduced a “Lists” function where you can add accounts to a “list” which users can follow to create a more group-like experience, this however, is nowhere near the primary method of communication on this platform. Lastly, you can create “Spaces:” audio rooms where people can listen and | |||
join in discussions. It’s important to note though that because “Spaces” only appear to people who follow you and cannot be retweeted, their impact for marketing purposes is limited. | |||
When you make a tweet, a button on the bottom will appear that reads, “View Tweet Analytics.” If you click on this button, you will be able to see the number of impressions (i.e., views), engagements (i.e., “likes” and “retweets”), profile visits, and detail expands of | |||
said tweet. Additionally, if you visit [http://analytics.twitter.com/ analytics.twitter.com] (while logged into your account), you can see a dashboard of all of your tweets, and the metrics for your entire account. If you wish to advertise on this platform, you can do so by promoting tweets (i.e., putting them into the “feeds” of people who don’t follow you). While costs are contingent on a wide variety of factors, it generally costs about $0.40 per click, and $6.30 per one thousand views. | |||
====Instagram==== | |||
Instagram is a social media platform most associated with Millennial and Gen-Z users. It was created by Meta (the same company that owns Facebook), with the express purpose of reaching out to a younger demographic. As a result, 18-24 and 25-34 are the most common age groups on this platform. While there are a range of interests, it primarily consists of non-substantive pictures of influencers, as well as their food or vacations. That being said, there are niches of political and meme pages that exist on this platform. | |||
To start on Instagram, your organization can create a page with a profile picture, and a brief description. Like Twitter, there are no “groups,” but rather “feeds,” which are individualized and based on follows, so it’s essential to just start posting and commenting to build up a following. Every post must be accompanied by a 1:1 photo, which is the focus of the post (as opposed to the text). Instagram also has “stories,” which are just images that your followers can see, that disappear after two days. You can save these “stories” on your profile by making them a “moment.” | |||
Under the “options” menu on a post, one of the options is “insights,” which allows you to see the same basic insights as the rest of the social media platforms. There is no central dashboard. If you wish to advertise on this platform, you can do so by promoting posts (i.e., | |||
putting them into the feeds of people who don’t follow you). While costs are contingent on a wide variety of factors, it generally costs about $3.60 per click, and $7.90 per one thousand views. | |||
====Reddit==== | |||
Though it does not focus primarily on politics, Reddit is the most meme and discussion focused social media platform. It has the reputation of being a free-speech paradise with little moderation. That being said, administrators have been cracking down on that in recent years. | |||
This platform contains political groups from all sides of the political spectrum, including extremists, so some parts of the platform can feel like “4Chan-lite.” Users tend to skew young-adult, as the most common age ranges are 20-29 and 30-39. | |||
Your organization should create an account with a profile picture, banner, and short description to start on Reddit. Instead of following other accounts, users on Reddit join “Subreddits,” (i.e., community discussion boards) which tend to operate very similar to | |||
Facebook Groups. Users do not post to their own profile, instead they post to “Subreddits." Unlike all other social media platforms, posts are not “liked,” but rather “upvoted” and “downvoted,” allowing community members to downrank content that they don’t like. | |||
Under each post that you make, the analytics metrics will be available, but there is no central dashboard. Unlike most social media sites, advertising means creating a special post that will be interjected into users’ feeds, as opposed to promoting a normal post. While costs are | |||
contingent on a wide variety of factors, it generally costs about $2.00 per click, and $0.20 per thousand views. | |||
====Discord==== | |||
Discord is more of an enhanced messaging application than a social media platform, but due to its millions of users, it is a critical part of social media in the modern landscape. It started as a staple in the gaming community, which is why the average user is around 20 years old. Even though you can’t post or advertise on it, Discord provides an accessible chatroom for established members of your organization to communicate, while allowing new members to find out more about it and engage in back and forth discussion. When it comes to your | |||
messaging and community organizing needs, Discord has no equal. While the platform was originally created to serve as a host for gaming groups online, today it’s home to many different communities such as political groups, major companies, and fan clubs. | |||
Each community on Discord is centered in a server. There is no organizational account, rather, individual users sign up and one user creates a server. When you create a server, you’ll be greeted by a few default channels. These channels have three important aspects: type, | |||
category, and settings. Each channel will either be a text channel (as indicated by a hashtag) or a voice channel (as indicated by a speaker icon). Text channels work just like a text thread, and voice channels are essentially a video call (you can turn the video on/off, share your screen, etc.). These channels also have settings. If you’re able to edit the settings of a channel, you can hover over its name and click on the gear icon. From there you can change the name, description, and permissions (remember this for later). One level up, channels are grouped into categories, which can contain both voice and text channels and have the same setting types as channels (access this by right-clicking on the name and selecting “edit”). Settings on categories affect all channels inside of it. You can create as many channels and categories as you’d like, and configure them all differently. Finally, the server has settings as well. You can select the image, name, description, etc. Most importantly though, you can create “roles,” or “tags” that can be assigned to users, which can have different permissions on the server, category, and channel level. | |||
====Websites==== | |||
Both a blessing and a curse of the website medium, is that everything is in your control. In other words—you can completely customize the site, and display whatever you wish. As a result of this unique feature, there is no “one-stop-shop” for creating a website; instead, there | |||
are general (recommended) paths that you can take. | |||
The first possibility, is to build your own website from scratch. It’s possible to program a webserver, design the whole website in HTML, CSS, or JS, and host it yourself. This is only advisable if there is someone in your organization who has expertise in this area given how | |||
complex a field it is to learn, and not exactly a skill you can simply acquire to help the cause. Furthermore, even if there is someone in your organization who can create and maintain a custom website, it’s critical to consider whether someone else would be able or willing to | |||
continue running it should the original designer ever be unable or unwilling to themselves. Transitioning your whole website over to a new medium is incredibly difficult to do, so should you wish to go down this path, establish a contingency plan. If it is however in your | |||
capacity to design and run a custom website, this is the best option since it’s often cheaper than paying for a website design service, and offers greater levels of customization. | |||
If you’re unable or unwilling to create a website yourself, you can use [https://nationbuilder.com/ Nationbuilder], a software designed specifically for political organizations. You can add pages in an easy-to-use interface, and visually edit their content. All of the “heavy lifting" is taken care of by the software. It provides a wide array of valuable tools that no other website management software provides. For instance, Nationbuilder not only allows text posts, but press releases, scheduling, contact forms, integrated donations, and much more. Most importantly, it allows you to build a roster of visitors to the site, allowing them to login, while simultaneously allowing managers to keep track of a league of volunteers and donors, all the while providing comprehensive coverage of everyone on your team and those supporting your organization. | |||
The only real downside to Nationbuilder is that it’s a bit expensive (starting at $29 a month) a price that quickly jumps up as more members sign up for your website. If Nationbuilder is out of your price range: [https://wordpress.com/ WordPress], [https://www.wix.com/html5bing/hiker-create-wix Wix], [https://mailchimp.com/en-gb/ Mailchimp], and [https://sites.google.com/new Google Sites] are all viable options. None of them have any of the essential features Nationbuilder has (i.e., scheduling, integrated donations, supporter profiles, etc.), but they can all hold text and images in a clean way, which can work for local and smaller organizations. Each of them, (aside from Google Sites), have paid versions that unlock more features, and all of them have a free plan. | |||
Aside from paying for the website builder, the other significant cost in running a website is buying the domain name. Prices generally range from $12-20 a year, depending on the complexity of the domain name and the ending used (e.g., .com, .org, .us, etc). You can also spend money to advertise your website. [https://ads.google.com/home/#!/ Google Ads] drives more traffic to your website by targeting people already on the internet. Ads run on Google’s search engine and other websites, and you can tailor the ads entirely to your needs (e.g., setting the range, the goals, the places it will be advertised in, the target audience’s demographics, etc.). You can create as much of an advertising budget as you would like, and you can pay per click or action taken (e.g., visiting your website). Google Ads works in an auction system where your ads and bids are compared against other ads and bids, meaning that different demographics, areas, days, and types of advertisements will differ in cost, but generally remain within the $1-2 per click range. | |||
Regardless of the web provider you use, there are some critical elements that must be on your website. First, your home page should provide an overview of your organization, in addition to essential links and forms. Second, you need to make it easy for users to get involved and | |||
give you their contact information. Third, a donation portal is essential to highlight because by just making it possible to donate, many site users will likely chip in. Fourth, a list of events is necessary since it helps to translate online curiosity into real-life action. Finally, any action your organization is taking (petitions or candidacies for instance), should be visible in order for people to get involved. If there’s another website for that cause or candidate, redirecting visitors so that they can sign up there can likewise prove helpful. While this is certainly not everything that goes into a website, it’s a good start and checklist to ensure that the basics are covered. | |||
It’s important that you populate your website with bios/pics of your Executive Committee, Bylaws, Meeting Minutes, newsletter archive, events, activities, get togethers and Libertarian candidates for upcoming local and state elections. Furthermore, you should consider | |||
providing links to good libertarian podcasters, think-tanks, institutes, and personalities. | |||
====Emails==== | |||
Emails are again, an essential means of communication, and are vital to ensure that your organization is open to whoever is interested in contacting you. Custom emails are not completely necessary, but are good to maintain professionalism and give an air of credibility to the campaign or organization. The best way to obtain them is [https://workspace.google.com/ Google Workspaces], where you can purchase them alongside the website domain. Email names will look like “name@website.ending” (e.g., jdoe@lpca.com) and will function as regular Gmail accounts. | |||
For large email lists (e.g., emailing all donors or volunteers), Mailchimp is the best software in the business. It allows for easy management of all email accounts, seamless integration with Nationbuilder, and building impressive-looking HTML, CSS, or JS emails without any coding. | |||
==Affiliate Index (Organized)== | ==Affiliate Index (Organized)== | ||
==Affiliate Index (In-Progress)== | ==Affiliate Index (In-Progress)== | ||