Our email and mobile Inbox are full of political messages. With 100 million young voters, 50 million internet users and 350 million mobile connections, campaign managers in India are getting tech savvy and think to have found a great way to get their message out, but they just have no idea what they are doing. The Internet touches not just for voting and fund-raising but also all other facets of campaigns, including rally organizing and integrating campaign communications with organization staff, donors, party workers and potential voters in a constituency.

Successful campaigning require full integration and service of an online team of strategists, but only a very few in India can work for political candidates! Do not assume that any web, advertising or PR firm can do it! As an aside, we keep reading about how some parties and candidates to have hired online campaign agencies. We would like to note that our team have over 5 years of experience in online marketing and are open to new consulting offers for online political ad campaigns. Contact us with your target and full profile to learn more.

Of course, you can do-it-yourself or hire some other internet market agency or company, remember some tips to run successful Online Political Campaigning:

Do not ever spam. If you spam, there can be a huge backlash that will negate any gains from your unwanted emails. In India, there is no official legal framework to manage online spammers, but the world wide web has its own rules, and in the online world, spamming is no less than a criminal offense.

Content and Blogs: You can email quality bloggers individually. Target bloggers who share your region or specific ideology. Most bloggers will be excited to attend and will write about it, bloggers feel special when they are treated like conventional media. Do not email to ask for money, ask for their involvement both on their site and on yours as guest writers.

Remember, content is king. Talk about your goals and policy positions, no sound bites. The internet is the place for candidates to expand, in detail, on their positions. Your web presence should reflect that. Post policy papers. Share statistics. Highlight accomplishments. Avoid gimmicks, your opponents can record your mischief even if you put up misleading information and then erase.

Write about progress and inside details of your campaign, people will come back time and time again and you will gain an audience for the rest of your pitch. Putting your website URL on brochures is not effective online marketing, promote it, advertise it, read and comment on other blogs.

Constantly update your political website. At the very least, keep an up-to-date schedule of campaign dates online. Use online event or calender features. We found a Google Ad called Arun Jaitley on “Why BJP” – Friends of BJP, Delhi Invites you FICCI Auditorium, 6pm, March 26th. The funny part is, we can see this ad on 12th April for an event ended on March 26th. It means they do not have much to share, as a voter I wonder, keep updating your blog or website. Ask your online campaign managers to be accountable and proactive. Encourage supporters to participate through email lists, newsletters, forums, comments, etc. Of course, everything the public says cannot be positive, but it may be instructive.

Do not send email attachments like word and pdf docs. Either post a link in your email to HTML version of the information OR just put the text directly in the email itself. Do not communicate too often. The more email you send me, the more likely I will ignore it. And do not think you can justify the frequency by saying that you are not seeing an increase in your unsubscribe rates. Most people do not unsubscribe anymore. They either block your email or just delete it without reading it.

The Obama Lesson: In recent US elections, the Obama campaign spent about $4 million to run infomercials on CBS, NBC, Fox and Univision while nearly $8 million in October 2008 for ads within Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and other general sites. In India, you cannot spend in such a way, but you can learn about the process and start small.

The Facebook Way: Facebook alone connects hundreds of millions people and social media is more than just hype – businesses and politicians needs to know how to use this social platform. Social Media Campaign tend to experience a Snowball effect once you get a critical mass of supporters. For serious political and business campaigns, create the fan and supporter pages under a business account. Pick the Right Team – experts with web programming & marketing skills. Pick a Good Title for the Page – The most important thing when you open a page is the name you give it! The name of the page influences search results, and people will search for the politician, so you better be on top of search results or they will miss you!

Creative + Business Touch: Design Creative Banners and some great graphics in the page. Use social ads configuration to connect your ads with your facebook page. Many marketing managers are not aware of this powerful engagement tool which can influence other people’s decisions. Monitor fan pages for hate messages and other, troll-like comments. Delete hate messages and make sure that you have a clear strategy that is publicly stated to handle comments. Some comments may not look good for you but other users will answer them. In this way you encourage a conversation among supporters.

Final Words: Find and optimize media channels to reach-out. Learn lessons from other online marketers and people that make sites and email programs which are successful. Online political marketing is not so different than online marketing in general. There are a lot of very worthwhile conferences and vendors that can help online political marketers as much as online retailers. Use them. Hire online marketers to try new things, and sometimes it is going to work, sometimes it is not, but that is the cost and risk of experimenting, quite similar to coalition politics.