With the upcoming Philippine Presidential Elections (May 2010), some politicians and campaign managers are asking how internet marketing can be used. Here are some tips…
Step 1: Determine what you want people to do after you catch their attention online.
Examples of what you want people to do are:
a) If the visitor is not a supporter, convince that visitor to become a supporter of the candidate and vote for that candidate during the elections.
b) If the visitor is already a supporter, give that visitor tips on how to convince others to vote for the candidate.
c) If the visitor is already a supporter and wants to become more active, give the visitor tips on how to become a volunteer (i.e., sign up for a mailing list that will provide more information, news, and updates).
Step 2: Write the salesletters.
For each of the three types of visitors mentioned above, write a letter that will directly appeal to each personality.
First Letter
For example, write a letter that sells the merits of voting for and supporting a particular candidate. Feel free to use audio, video, text and images. Convert all of those into a webpage, and publish that special webpage on the candidate’s official site.
At the bottom of the letter, invite the reader to become a volunteer, and convince them to join the mailing list of volunteers.
Second Letter
In the case of the visitor who is already a supporter, compose a letter that provides tips on what to do (or not to do) in order to convince others to also become supporters:
- Teach them how to blog
- Teach them how to promote their blog
- Teach them the top 3 benefits Filipinos will get if the candidate wins the elections
- Teach them the main points of the candidate’s platform
Similar to the first letter, try to motivate these supporters to sign-up for the Volunteers mailing list.
Third Letter
Create a separate page which lists the benefits of signing up for the Volunteers mailing list:
- Access to the latest news and updates
- Faster dissemination of best practices
- Know what others are doing; learn from their ideas
In your mailing list sign-up form ask for the volunteer’s First Name, Surname, Phone Number, and Email Address.
Please take note that these three letters should be hosted in the candidate’s official website.
Once those three letters are online…
Step 3: Publish an internet marketing guide for your volunteer bloggers.
That guide will contain a list of the URLs (or webpage addresses) of your different letters.
The guide will also show examples of HTML code that bloggers can use to copy and paste at the bottom of each of their blog posts.
For example:
Who are you going to vote for in the coming Philippine Presidential Elections? I’m going to vote for [name of candidate] and here’s why [link to the first letter].
If you’re also going to vote for my candidate, please help us spread the word to our fellow Filipinos [link to second letter].
And if you would like to do even more, please register as a volunteer [link to the third letter].
Step 4: Guide your volunteer bloggers and ask them to blog away.
Get them to post articles in the blogs that cover topics which is of interest to the voting public. Yes, any topic.
As long as it will appeal to the interest of Filipinos who are able to vote.
For example, they can blog about popular TV shows, or Philippine travel spots, or Philippine real estate, or Philippine shopping…
The Goal: Attract Filipino voters and get them to like you, the blogger.
How can you get people to like you online? Publish content that is:
- Relevant
- Entertaining
- Helpful – provides solutions to people’s problems
If the blogger helps the reader (through the power of words on a webpage), that reader may be inclined to click on one of the three links found at the bottom of each blog post.
In other words, if you have an army of 10,000 volunteer bloggers, and each of them posts 1 article a day, that’s 10,000 helpful or relevant articles daily.
I have seen some blog networks containing 1,000 pages and these tiny networks attract 3,000 to 4,000 people daily.
So if you assemble a group of 10,000 bloggers, that group has the potential to reach over 1,000,000 Filipinos each month via the internet.
What Not To Do
Please resist the urge to “invade” other blogs or online forums just to “politely” question the capabilities of other candidates. You won’t be seen as objective, and people might not believe you.
They’ll only think that you’re just saying what you’re saying, because you want your own candidate to win.
Also, resist the juicy urge to debate online. When people write, the lack of face-to-face interaction tends to make us snarkier, and we tend to write nasty or downright painful words.
Unlike a verbal argument where you say something hurtful and people eventually forget, a written sentence can get read, over and over again.
And each hurtful sentence, read repeatedly, magnifies the pain, anger and resentment felt by the reader.
Trust me, it is simply not worth it.
What To Do
Instead, focus on helping people online. Give them the useful or entertaining information that they need and want, then advertise the “Letter Pages” in the official website of your chosen candidate.
That way, you did not force anyone to form an opinion. They will be the ones to decide, on their own, if they will even take the time to read those letters (which you will advertise at the bottom of your helpful blog posts).
The Blogger’s Role
The job of the blogger is to attract people who are searching for solutions to their problems. After the solution is provided, the blogger will then, through a tasteful text-based advertisement at the bottom of their blog post, allow people to click on over and read any of the three letters of the candidate.
That’s it.
The blogger shouldn’t try so hard to convince readers to vote for a certain candidate. That is the job of the campaign managers of the candidate.
Afterall, it will be the campaign team that will compose those Three Letters. It will be up to them to use their copywriting skills to convince readers to vote for the chosen candidate.
Bloggers will mainly help people, and send traffic to those Three Letters.
The Internet Marketing Result
The web will have more relevant and useful articles, and more Filipino bloggers will have the chance to make money online, because their blog posts will attract many people.
When you are able to attract the attention of many people online, you’ll also attract the attention of advertisers, some of whom will help you earn online advertising income.
If the election campaign managers do a good copywriting job, they will attract more supporters, volunteers, and perhaps even more bloggers.
In the end, after the elections, you’ll still have a huge network of blogs and online articles which can also help improve the economic situation of Filipinos.
The only question that remains is: Are you going to do it? 🙂
