Last couple of month I am got updated regularly about the development activities of  Singra Upazilla of  Natore , Rajshahi. Know how?  Yes one of our state minister has been sharing all of the development activities of Bangladesh government over their using Facebook live and twitter.  It is really a smart way to connect with his followers with his community activities using technology and sway the connected people. It also refer as the most modern media to campaign and promotion not only for business or social network but also a modern approach for political campaign. Any one can use it and maximize the opportunity of technology in political campaign in a minimum effort and expense.

A political campaign is an organized effort which seeks to influence the decision making process within a specific group. In democracies, political campaigns often refer to electoral campaigns, by which representatives are chosen or referendums are decided.

Campaigns are a very important part of  ones  work as a political activist. Campaigns are often the main way that you interact with the public and get your organisation's message out to people. You can use campaigns to mobilise and involve people in your work. Common campaigning techniques include the following: Campaign advertising (e.g. using posters, radio and TV announcements) Attracting media attention (e.g. with press conferences and stunts) Demonstrations, rallies, marches and other forms of mass meetings. Political advertising is a form of campaigning used by political candidates to reach and influence voters. It can include several different mediums and span several months over the course of a political campaign.

The introduction of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) into the electoral process is generating both interest and concern among voters, as well as practitioners across the globe specially for campaign and casting vote.

Most electoral management authorities use new technologies—ranging from basic office automation to more sophisticated data processing tools—with the aim of improving the electoral process. Every year, new technologies and tools are introduced to the market.

Why "Elections and Technology"?

In many countries, technology is present in activities related to the electoral process, and in some cases it is essential to the conduct of elections. Technology is used, for example, to compile voter lists, to draw electoral boundaries, to manage and train staff, to print ballots, to conduct voter education campaigns, to record cast votes, to count and consolidate vote results and to publish election results. The appropriate application of technology to elections can increase administrative efficiency, reduce long-term costs and enhance political transparency.

Technologies used for elections can include familiar and older ones like printing presses, ball point pens, manual typewriters, electronic calculators and radios, or newer technologies like computers, optical scanners, digital mapping and the Internet. The logistics of modern large-scale elections can be a considerable challenge for countries without access to technology.

The complexity level of technology used for the administration of elections around the world varies enormously. The rate of technological change is so high that election management bodies (EMBs) must regularly re-evaluate their use of technology to determine whether they should adopt new or updated technology to improve their performance.

This Elections and Technology (ET) topic area aims to assist EMBs in this task by:

  • describing technologies that are currently being used for electoral processes

  • presenting guidelines for the evaluation, choice and implementation of new technologies

  • providing examples of so-called best practices in the use of technology as well as examples where technology has not lived up to expectations

  • examining some of the emerging technologies and trends to identify those that may apply to elections in the near future

The use of technology in elections is not an end in itself, but assists in the various aspects of electoral administration. For example, electronic database management systems can be used in several components of the election process, such as voter lists, material inventories, personnel management, payroll, election results dissemination and statistics. Moreover using it in candidates election campaign.

Technology & political Campaign

The substantial growth of mobile technology and mobile devices have brought empowerment to people, and social media is now being used as a critical tool in an election campaign. This newer medium needs to be better understood, however, in the context of mobilisation and how it changes the relationship between the electorate and the politicians. Radio and television have traditionally played substantial roles during an election period because of their ability to communicate messages to the masses. The advent of mobile technology, however, has changed this paradigm of communication. Now citizens are more connected to one another and to the events in their country and thus closer to government. Social media is the real paradigm shift as it allows citizens and government to communicate back and forth. This has many consequences, both positive and negative for candidates and how they manage their election campaigns.

So how exactly has  Technology changed political campaigns?

Campaigns are investing more in digital. It costs much less than traditional advertising and has other benefits. Here are some principal ways in which Technology advertising has changed politics:

 

  1. Social Media  & Digital Identity

At the most basic level, campaigns need a digital presence. So a well-designed website , informative and updated facebook page is required  that allows for digital  presence . it will help to get connected with the people , volunteer and email list signup, and acts as a place as social media.

Campaigners on social media can get their message across to many readers quickly and easily, and allow two-way communication to happen. In this way the potential voters feel heard and can raise their concerns during the election process.
Social media has created greater accountability. Voters can hold the candidates accountable for everything they say online. This creates greater transparency, which is often sadly lacking in election campaigning. Social media drives action—at the click of a button, money can be donated, polls completed, petitions signed, and RSVP’s sent.

Technology can be used to support winning election campaigns—mass-scale information gives political candidates an understanding of what exactly drives public opinion at any given moment. State-of-the-art platforms can be developed to refine messaging, deploy effective direct marketing campaigns and engage voters in new and innovative ways—creating a competitive and winning edge.  Social media play the vital role to :.

  • Community Management: Community management is another place where campaigns do a lot of work that can benefit from tech & digital skills. Firstly around capturing volunteers in a digital format - at most basic signups on a website. This also blends with social community management, where skills focused on amazing all social audiences - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat followers - for use in volunteer efforts.

  • Embed Social Media Commentary in News Coverage. White House Director of Digital Strategy Macon Phillips argues that social media create a new model of civic engagement that blends traditional with social media. Increasingly, he points out, reporters are following Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, and incorporating the voices of ordinary people in news reporting. This enhances democratic conversation and gives citizens more of a voice in national debates. It makes news coverage more authentic because it is based on what people say and it weakens the power of the D.C.-based punditrocracy.

  • Social Media for Direct Persuasion. The Pew Internet & American Life project survey found at the time of the 2010 election that 23 percent of Americans “had tried to convince someone to vote for a specific candidate” and 10 percent “had attended a political rally”. With the help of social media, ordinary citizens can become agents of persuasion and leverage their personal network for whatever values, issue positions, or ideological stances that they cherish. There is no reason why 2012 should not be an engaging election. With the issues we face in the areas of budget deficits, taxes, health care, education, energy, and foreign policy, we should use digital technology to involve people in the campaign.

  • Improve the Diversity of Information Dissemination and Exposure Through Social Media.  No longer does politics have to be an echo chamber where people of like-mindedness listen to one another, but digital technology enriches political conversation and engagement.  People are exposed to more views than in the past, according to Mindy Finn. This enriches national dialogues and allows people to get the kind of information that helps them evaluate candidates and policy ideas.

 

 2.To notify voters about campaign agendas:

You could place a beacon near a bus stop and attach campaigns relevant to your plans to improve the public transport system. It is contextually relevant and might therefore resonate better among the people, than if you simply sent a flyer to their homes.

These small changes can really make a difference to your campaign.

3. Send SMS text links to drive donations and sign ups:

A great deal of potential donations can be missed out on if the process is not easy. People are rarely going to go out of the way to donate. Beacon campaigns can have call-to-action buttons, that allow interested voters to donate instantly.

4. Invite and navigate supporters to a political event or rally

Beacons can be very effective tools to attract crowds towards your events and rallies. By broadcasting campaigns in the area about an event happening nearby, you can gather large crowds.

5. Drive app downloads

Have a really great app for your campaign, but finding it challenging to get downloads? What better platform to promote the application than the user’s smartphone?

. It provides a great deal of insightful information into beacon applications in elections, and why they serve as perfect tools for election campaigning.

6.  Using  SEO

Besides these general mention above we can use SEO effectively for election campaign in following way

a: Reputation Management

Develop the right online networking profiles for your political crusade

A major slip-up numerous political crusades make is to enrol social profiles at handfuls or several locales and point connections to however many as could be allowed, trusting that some will assume control over those top rankings.

The general destinations  can incorporate:

  • Facebook

  • Twitter

  • LinkedIn

  • YouTube

  • Instagram

All things considered, another enormous error is assuming that simply enlisting a profile is sufficient to be compelling.

Like everything else in life nothing worth having comes simple. Put resources into your social profiles and they'll reward you with controllable front-page land in hunt rankings. In any case, don't forsake your profiles. Try not to give the presence of lack of engagement, absence of assets, or having poor time administration aptitudes.

b: Real Time Content

Further accepts the significance of online networking

In the principal portion of 2015, tweets began to be noticeable in Google's query items when they're posted, composes Bloomberg's Sarah Frier on Feb. 4, 2015.

Googles query items are improved by access to constant tweets and a much more extensive measure of substance. What does this mean for your battle?

  • Make Vanity URLs Match

  • Grow Real Time Mindset

  • Use #Hashtags

  • Make Original Content

  • Upgrade Regularly

  • Screen Influences

Ongoing substance ought to be grasped by any political crusade hoping to build up and augment its Web vicinity.

c: Classic SEO

Ensure the competitors perspectives can be found

SEO is basic to changing over online searchers into imminent voters and supporters.

At the point when imminent voters are searching for data on your crusade, they will begin with exploring on web crawlers. In the event that you need to catch that movement, advancing your crusades online vicinity is crucial. Rank for issues… on the off chance that you can.

In their 2015 study "The Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME) and its Possible Impact on the Outcomes of Elections," Epstein and Robertson discovered web crawler results can influence voter inclinations by 20 percent or more. With subjects investing the most energy in page one.

What pages ought to a political crusade site incorporate?

  • Supports

  • Issues

  • Competitor bios

  • Crusade blog

  • Volunteer

  • Occasions

  • Contribute

d: Competitive Research

if you have your own websites and so does your  competitors then Watch your political adversaries online . It's useful for your crusade to do somewhat aggressive exploration on what rival applicants are producing for hunt movement and social engagement. The following are a couple spy devices to influence!

  • Alexa – indicates movement patterns for contending sites.

  • SpyFu – indicates terms that contenders are purchasing or positioning for in the natural query items.

  • http://Compete.com – aggressive examination instrument demonstrating catchphrases that send contending locales the most activity.

  • Lofty SEO – join grapple record that permits you to download the connection profile for any webpage.

  • Google Traffic Estimator – gauges the quantity of Google AdWords advertisement snaps and offer costs for the top promotion position.

  • Followerwonk – offers you some assistance with exploring and develop your social diagram.

These are free and paid apparatuses which will offer you some assistance with determining how vast a political contender's movement stream is, and which seek terms are sending them the most activity.

7.Data & Analytics as Smarter campaigns:

Lastly, data and analytics . you can analytics the  range from understanding how visitors to the candidate’s website are working or not working, to measuring how various messages described above are performing, or not performing, in the various organic and paid channels they’re being deployed into. This is a key differentiator from “old school” campaigning, where setting a television ad or direct mail loose into the wild didn’t provide for granular performance data to then be analyzed, and pivoted on. Candidates always relied on polls to give them insights on where they stand with the public and what they should change about their campaigns. With the rise of big data and analytics, candidates can now understand much more deeply what’s working and what’s not in their campaigns. With this information, campaigns become more effective and can be tailored to garner the votes, funds or public opinion needed from a particular region or constituency.

8.Threat of virality

During an election, candidates are always under the microscope, but new technology allows the media to watch them more closely. Social media runs in real time and with the variety of channels, from Twitter to YouTube, candidates' words are replayed, dissected and played again. Once something hits the web, it stays there forever.

Candidates now need to live under the assumption there is always someone with a smartphone, camera, microphone or other recording device capturing their actions to share with the world. While this constant monitoring of candidate activity has brought more transparency to elections, it has also brought more sensationalism and often reduced political coverage to paparazzi-style reporting.

Nothing is off limits. Candidates’ family members are targeted on social media, and their words and actions are turned into memes to live on in infamy.

Conclusion

Technology itself brings new issues to the debate floor that candidates must know about, speak about and take a position on. Topics such as net neutrality and cybersecurity are important to constituents, and candidates need to be informed.

In addition, candidates need to keep up to date with technology, otherwise they will be viewed as outdated and irrelevant. Candidates who don’t use Twitter, for example, won’t be taken seriously.

The more in touch candidates are with technology, the more people they will reach. Understanding new technologies and trends is now a key part of connecting with voters and running a successful campaign.


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