Considering a run for office? Read this immediately.

Easy peasy tech tips.

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Ragtag notes

3 min readMay 1, 2018

Buy web domains with your name. Ragtag’s go-to for searching for domain names is Namecheap.com. Put your name in the big search box, and see what comes up. If you can get yourname.com, yourname.org, oryournameforyouroffice.com or .org for under about $15 you should just do it. Domain hoarding is ok.
If it is more than about $15 it might be worth checking for a better deal on other domain name registration sites, like www.domains.google.com or www.gandi.net.
Why is this so important? Two reasons. One, you want your potential supporters to be able to find information about you in the easiest way possible. Owning yourname.com is the best way to do that. The second reason is so that your opponent doesn’t buy your domain. If your opponent buys yourname.com and puts smear ads on it, there’s nothing you can really do about it. So prevention is key here.
The same goes for Twitter. Go to twitter.com and create a Twitter account with your name and/or the office you’re running for. Don’t let anyone else own that!

Set up an email address for your work with your campaign. It is very important for you to keep your personal emails separate from your campaign emails. Same goes for Google Docs accounts.
You can get an email address for free from Gmail or Outlook if you like, by making an email account called yournameforoffice@gmail.com.
An even better approach is to pay for professional email from Google or Microsoft. Both are accessible entirely online, and cost about $5 per email address per month. BONUS if you use Google’s G Suite, you get all the Google apps you know and love, but with more centralized access control, so you know YOU are the one who owns and controls ALL the Google Docs.
Remember: Don’t mix personal and campaign accounts. Just don’t.

Make yourself a basic website. If someone hears a mention of your name, you want to make sure they can jump on Google, and find out more about you.
Make sure it includes your name, the office you’re running for, a way to donate, and a way for people to sign up for your list. Might want to include the date of the election, too. Basics.
If you need some help, check out Ragtag’s Web Squads program. Ragtag volunteers can help you get a campaign website up.
Squarespace is an excellent place to set up a professional-looking “cover page” with buttons linking to donations and a built in sign-up form. And it can be a pretty great platform for building out a more complete website, and you can even integrate with your G Suite account!
There are several other easy website builders available. Just make sure that your final site doesn’t have obvious branding on it other than your own campaign’s.

You can connect with a lot of potential voters on Facebook. Make sure to also connect your Facebook account with your website to build up your overall web presence.

In addition to a campaign email account, you’re going to need a mailing list tool. Mailing list tools allow you to email more people at once than a regular email account will. This ensures that your emails will actually get to your supporters and donors, and won’t be bounced back. This also lets you email all your donors at once, while keeping their email addresses private.
For really excellent, well-designed, and inexpensive bulk emails, you can use Mailchimp. Constant Contact is another popular choice. If you just want simple, straightforward, and super cheap emails, you should also take a close look at Google Groups.