Not so long ago, elections were won and lost based on a candidate’s level of engagement in their community. Candidates didn’t need to get the addresses of all their constituents to know who they were because they already knew them. Canvassing the community meant meeting with your neighbors, sitting at their kitchen table listening and discussing ideas and issues. Town hall meetings were real community meetings where candidates and constituents came together to discuss and resolve the issues of the day. It wasn’t a studio audience brought together based on questionnaires and hosted by a news anchor. A candidate’s platform was crafted based on their vision as well as real feedback from their community. The point is the community was there first.

Fast forward to the wired world of today.  The most successful people are the ones who have built and are actively participating in their communities through all of the various channels available to them – both online and offline. Chris Brogan, author of Trust Agents, speaks about this in his most recent installment of his video series – overnight success. The premise of this series is that success doesn’t happen overnight but through lots of hard work, commitment and through community. Take a minute, and watch the video.

At Politics4All, we believe the most successful politicians, advocates and citizens are the ones who are actively participating in their communities today. We believe that the community comes first, and we think we’re building a place that makes it easy to connect and build communities online and offline. Our community is a place where you can listen, connect, build support and even hold Town Hall meetings. Over the next several weeks, we’re going to share with you all of our best tips on how to leverage our offerings to assist you in building your community, crafting your platform and building support. Whether you’re planning a campaign, or trying to gain community support, an active community organizer, or someone trying to get the attention of the policymakers in your community, this blog series is one you’ll want to follow.

Now you know where we stand.  We think community comes first. What do you think?

Technorati Tags: campaign management, candidates, community

If you ask any politician or advocacy group what the critical success factor for creating and executing a winning campaign is, they will tell you it’s strategy. And winning strategies cannot be crafted without the right data. Data is the key to creating targeted messages that rouse a constituent to take action. At Politics4All, we know how important data is and we’re excited to announce that you can now purchase USPS Zip+4 Congressional District data for all 50 states from us, http://data.politics4all.com.

Also, at Politics4All we know that you’re busy and that you may not have data experts to extract and match the data to your lists or segment for your strategies. So, we’re ready, willing, and able to do the custom data work for you. Our team is ready to carefully and cost effectively execute your custom requests so that you can stay focused on your strategy.

Our new data services ensure you can:

• Determine where and how to focus your efforts to target the right segments
• Eliminate costly errors by ensuring your direct mail pieces meet USPS requirements and will be delivered
• Plan more strategic campaign appearances to reach constituents on their own turf
• Create and execute successful growth strategies

We provide data in CSV format which can be opened with MS Excel, MS Access, and most other spreadsheet and database applications. Other formats include XML and dBase IV, so just let us know what you need.

To find out more about our custom data services visit http://data.politics4all.com/data-services.html.

Technorati Tags: campaign management, candidates, data, political groups