voteusa.org
voteusa.org
Content plan: Engaging the unengaged voter
Ron Parsons, Andrew Katkin, Patrice Roe
voteusa.org
Mission statement
Elections – and informed voters – are
cornerstones of our democracy.
As journalists, one of our primary missions is to
cultivate an aware citizenry fully equipped to
participate in the selection of their leaders.
Traditional media has turned off, lost or never
reached the unengaged voter.
Voteusa.org, a non-partisan, non-profit site
created outside the traditional media framework,
is targeted towards reaching, engaging and
empowering these voters.
voteusa.org
Process
• Our team quickly agreed on the
importance of reaching the uninformed
electorate and the need to do so outside
of existing media properties.
• Our content plan flowed naturally from
several key assumptions we made about
the needs of our audience, specifically:
voteusa.org
– Content had to be delivered in as many ways
as possible so that each user could become
informed on their own terms.
– Content had to go very deep but also had to
be extremely accessible and assume a low or
non-existent background knowledge.
– Live chats and user generated/participatory
media would be used as much as possible to
allow this unengaged audience to feel
connected, relevant and listened to.
– Multimedia will play an important role in
reaching an audience that is not used to
consuming large amounts of text.
voteusa.org
Target audience
• Who is an “unengaged” voter?
– Many ages and education levels
– Feel alienated or disenfranchised
– Don’t think their vote matters
– Disconnected from daily news; don’t read
newspapers, access online news or watch
television news
– Not apathetic or unintelligent; simply need to
be engaged on their own terms
voteusa.org
voteusa.org
Unengaged voter profile #1
• 26-year-old single
woman, no kids, middle
income.
• Doesn’t think politics or
current events have
any relevance to her
life.
• Most likely to be
engaged by viral videos
sent by friends.
voteusa.org
Unengaged voter profile #2
• 19-year-old college student.
• Doesn’t know how to
register to vote.
• Never discussed politics at
home but becoming exposed
to political issues at college.
• Wants to appear engaged
but doesn’t know where to
go to learn more.
• Most likely to be reached via
guerrilla marketing
campaign on campus.
voteusa.org
Unengaged voter profile #3
• 30-year-old single mother of
four young children.
• Doesn’t think she has time to
become engaged.
• Hasn’t voted in last 2 election
cycles and is increasingly
disconnected from current
events and the political
process.
• Most likely to be engaged via
ads inside Second Life where
she maintains a robust social
network.
voteusa.org
Breaking news plan
• News feed will handle the majority of
updates during the election cycle.
• Alternate homepage templates will be built
to accommodate major breaking news.
voteusa.org
Long-term content plan
• The core components of voteusa.org will be
evergreen and will remain largely unchanged
through election night.
• Regularly updated content will include:
– Breaking news feed
– Weekly chats with the candidates
– Videos, transcripts and cliff notes of all major
speeches & debates
– Updated voting and fund-raising records
– Database of all candidate, issue group and political
party commercials accompanied by optional “fact
check” essays on each spot
voteusa.org
Feature set
• Detailed yet accessible information on the major candidates including:
– Candidate profiles (emphasis on the candidate as a person, not as a representative of a
political party or ideology)
– Issue positions
– Interest group ratings
– Links to candidate sites, voting records and campaign finance records
• Multimedia
– Interactive candidate selector that matches the voter’s priorities and interests to a candidate
and/or party
– Weekly live video chat with candidates
– Videos, transcripts and cliff notes of all major speeches & debates
– 2 live web debates with questions submitted by users of the site in either text, audio or
video format
– Interactive electoral college map
– Candidate profile videos
– Candidates ’08 – Hot or Not?
– Database of all campaign commercials accompanied by “fact-check” essays and linked to
separate threads on a message board used to discuss each ad
voteusa.org
Feature set (continued…)
• User Generated Content
– Discussion boards
• Why didn’t you vote
• If I were president…
• I’m confused by elections
– Go Team Blogs
• One for each main candidate/party to provide
people a place to express their enthusiasm once
they have decided who they want to vote for.
• One for undecided voters still trying to make up
their mind.
voteusa.org
Feature set (continued…)
• Explainers:
– Summaries of the major issues. Why should I care about _______
– Does my vote matter
– What does this poll really mean
– What does the Democratic Party stand for
– What does the Republican Party stand for
– How does the electoral college work
• Calendars
– Key dates
– Candidate travel and appearance calendars
• Tools
– Voter registration information
– Polling places: Google maps mash-up
– How to vote absentee
– Email reminders (e.g. last day to register to vote, election day, debate nights, etc…)
voteusa.org
Challenges
• Trying to reach an audience that is
notoriously difficult to connect with.
• This has been tried before with little or no
tangible result.
voteusa.org
voteusa.org
voteusa.org
Our site
voteusa.org
Why we will succeed
(where others have failed)
• Attitude
– Easily accessible content
– Lots of photos,
multimedia and
opportunities to interact
directly with candidates
– Taking our mission
seriously without taking
ourselves seriously.
• Funding
– Nonprofit
– No ads
voteusa.org
Marketing
• Commercials likely to reach the unengaged electorate
(i.e. in video games, on buses and prime-time TV, not
on news shows or even news-related shows such as The
Colbert Report or The Daily Show)
• Guerrilla marketing on college campuses
– Roving “reporters” will interview students on their campuses and
post their questions directly to the candidates.
– Give-aways including t-shirts, jump drives, pens, etc…
• Humorous viral videos posted on YouTube, Google Video
• Viral election related photos posted to Flickr
• Myspace.com/voteusa
• Create avatars inside virtual space such as Second Life
voteusa.org
Content distribution
• Podcasts of key content (analysis, ad fact
checks and other regularly updated
content areas)
• All video clips posted to YouTube, Google
Video and other UGC video sites
• RSS feeds for all updated content feeds
• Printed version of site available to
distribute to people without web access
voteusa.org
Technical specs/issues
• Staffing
– Writers with experience in developing content
for youth or other alternative media outlets
– Volunteer engineers
• Platforms/programs
– Use open-source as much as possible (Drupal,
Moveable Type)
– License software where needed (Flash)
• Hosting
– Donated hosting space or servers