How to Promote your site
Introduction
Some of the most successful online petitions achieve over 1 million signatures. There's no doubt that petitions are powerful stuff. But online petitions aren't just about the final wad of pages? It's also about
awareness:
Imagine you set up a petiton to a clothing company to stop using child labour and it gets 20,000 signatures. Thats'
20,000 people who will now
stop and
think twice before purchasing clothes from that particular company! It's people power, driven by a petition and achieved through awareness.
Investing the time to promote your petition will have a significant affect on the success of your campaign.
There are over 1,400,000,000 Internet users worldwide, including everyone you know, everyone they know, everyone in your office, in your social club, your street and your town. Use every opportunity to reach out to these poeple.
(1) Design
A well designed, professionally worded petition is the foundation for success. A good link will get people to visit your petition, but the wording in your petition can win or lose the signature. Some of our poorly designed petitions had over 1000 people visit but only 1 in 5 people signed it. Here's some advice:
- Petition Title: Short but empowering.
- Petition Summary: Split it into 3 clear concise statements:
Describe the current situation, suggest what can be changed and explain why this is important. Avoid being offensive, and target the role or organisation, not the individual. Try to keep it to just one paragraph
- Photos and Images A photo speaks a thousand words.
Petitions with a good photo collect significantly more signatures
(2) A shop on every corner:
Do you know why Starbucks is well known? It's because they are everywhere.
You need to do the same with your petition. SendMyVote ensures your petition is on the popular search engines, but thats not how people find you. Over 80% of our petition signatories come from direct or referred links. In other words: Facebook newsfeeds, message boards, links on emails, mentions in blogs etc.
Take a few minutes to think of all the websites you use on a regular basis: Can you ask the websites to provide a link to your petition? Have you added a direct link to your petition on your MySpace, Facebook or home page? Edit your email signatures, such that your petition is advertised on every work and personal email you send.
(3) Awareness:
Before the 'viral-marketing' power of the Web can take effect, you need to kickstart an
awareness campaign. You can start with friends, family, work colleagues, club members; a simple email to each of them, and then pick up the phone and remind them. In particular target those people who you know to be users of the web, especially those with Facebook, Myspace and other web profiles. Your 2nd circle should be media advertising; ideally approaching your local newspapers, radio stations etc. If your campaign relates to a subject frequently covered in magazines, then also write to them. In your 3rd circle, search the web for sites/newsgroups/blogs that might share your views. If a blog author decides to mention your petition, you can guarantee a lot of interest. Finally: remember the power of
non-web petitioning. If the petition subject is relevant to a particular town; then go petition on the streets. SendMyVote is the only site that enables you to print offline petition forms.
(4) Momentum
Finally, the momentum. SendMyVote allows every signatory to '
spread the word' using up to 14 different links. Throughout the life of your petition, continue to look for opportunities to promote your cause.
If you would like some assistance, then please do contact us at campaign_support@sendmyvote.com
