Want to communicate to Iowa State Ron Paul kids? Let's run a newspaper ad!

[parocks]

This is really awesome stuff!

+rep to you.

Let me give some feedback for what I think we need to accomplish with the page.

The current registration page has the necessities that we can build on. I believe location of the registrant needs to be defined during registration, otherwise those field may never get filled. I'd rather remove links to news stories and to forums from the registration page, if you don't mind, to prevent people from wandering off. Instead, we need to have a greeting message, saying something like "Hello and welcome to the grassroots initiative for Ron Paul 2012. Please fill in the information below, so that we could get in touch with you about local meet-up events for Ron Paul, as well as provide you with free campaign items that would help you in promoting Ron Paul in Iowa."

Here's what the final registration page should have on it, in my opinion:

Name*:
Address (optional):
City (optional):
State*: (pull-down menu for IA, NH, and SC - just in case to we have portability to expanding future efforts to NH and SC)
County*: (pull-down menu, determined by which state they enter; we want to be able to sort/search for people by county)
Zipcode*:

Email*:
Password*:
Verify Password*:
Phone (optional):

If you could implement the above, we would actually be SET TO GO!!!

I agree that some sort of geolocation might be made mandatory during registration.

I'm not so sure about specifics of county drop down, etc.

I'm not clear exactly what should be done with this various info

 

[D.A.S.]

I'm not clear exactly what should be done with this various info

Well the county data is important so that

(1) We can gauge how the newspaper outreach to a certain county is working
(2) We can figure out how many volunteers we have in any given county if we want to task them or provide them with the nearest meet-up group locations

I mean, if county is a big deal for you and you don't want to make those drop-downs, then we must require a zipcode (specifically to say, "zipcode where you are registered to vote") from each registrant and just run with that.

 

[parocks]

we can have a blank box for county
we can have a blank box for zip code

we can make either of those fields mandatory.

making a drop down box with around 200 counties seems time consuming.

 

[parocks]

we wont need meetup groups this has groups functionality. try it. public groups, private groups, and secret groups. and anyone can just set one up, and invite people to it.

If we see that there are 10 people in an area, and there's no meetup group for that area, we can just set up a group, and invite those 10 people to that group.

 

[D.A.S.]

we can have a blank box for county
we can have a blank box for zip code

we can make either of those fields mandatory.

making a drop down box with around 200 counties seems time consuming.

I can help - if you post a code sample for listing the counties within a drop-down menu with about 2-3 counties listed as an example, I will fill in the list with all the counties - I already have them in excel for Iowa, there are less than 100 counties in IA. And only a handful in NH.

 

[69360]

I like the newspaper idea. However, I think you are targeting the wrong audience. Kids get news online. We should put ads in newspapers older people read. They are the biggest block of primary voters, they still read print and we need to reach them badly.

 

[D.A.S.]

I like the newspaper idea. However, I think you are targeting the wrong audience. Kids get news online. We should put ads in newspapers older people read. They are the biggest block of primary voters, they still read print and we need to reach them badly.

Actually, a lot of kids read school newspapers, so I wouldn't discount that demographic. I am proposing a run in Iowa State Daily (paper of Iowa State) and The Daily Iowan (paper of University of Iowa in Iowa City). They have an online component to them as well.

I spoke to the Daily Iowan, and they will include the online version of the ad for free with the purchase of their print ad. The Iowa State Daily will charge extra for an online version. But those are serious newspapers - they aren't just your college flyer. Their reach is pretty good, and print newspapers have some staying power. So I am convinced that spending $472 on 15-day run in Iowa State Daily and $340 on 5-day run in The Daily Iowan (plus free online ad included with the latter) isn't a bad investment at all for reaching out to the students, AS WELL AS staff and faculty at the schools.

The Daily Iowan also reaches to the surrounding area, with circulation of around 78,000 in Iowa City. The Iowa State probably has some elder readers in it as well from campus surroundings.

I believe that reaching out to students at those schools is KEY! Both print and online in this case.

 

[Bruno]

Actually, a lot of kids read school newspapers, so I wouldn't discount that demographic. I am proposing a run in Iowa State Daily (paper of Iowa State) and The Daily Iowan (paper of University of Iowa in Iowa City). They have an online component to them as well.

I spoke to the Daily Iowan, and they will include the online version of the ad for free with the purchase of their print ad. The Iowa State Daily will charge extra for an online version. But those are serious newspapers - they aren't just your college flyer. Their reach is pretty good, and print newspapers have some staying power. So I am convinced that spending $472 on 15-day run in Iowa State Daily and $340 on 5-day run in The Daily Iowan (plus free online ad included with the latter) isn't a bad investment at all for reaching out to the students, AS WELL AS staff and faculty at the schools.

The Daily Iowan also reaches to the surrounding area, with circulation of around 78,000 in Iowa City. The Iowa State probably has some elder readers in it as well from campus surroundings.

I believe that reaching out to students at those schools is KEY! Both print and online in this case.

+ rep

This is money very well spent. I also believe the ads should either be separate towards conservatives and liberals, or jointly focusing on how Ron Paul reaches across to Republicans, Democrats, and Independents more than any other candidate. We need to reach the Blue Republican crowd with these ads, and encourage them to caucus for Ron Paul even if they may eventually vote for Obama.

 

[parocks]

I switched to the jomsocial registration, and set it up to require some geographical data.

 

[SchleckBros]

I like the newspaper idea. However, I think you are targeting the wrong audience. Kids get news online. We should put ads in newspapers older people read. They are the biggest block of primary voters, they still read print and we need to reach them badly.

I'm in college right now and everyone I know reads the school newspaper. You'd actually be surpised at the number of students who read it.

 

[parocks]

I can help - if you post a code sample for listing the counties within a drop-down menu with about 2-3 counties listed as an example, I will fill in the list with all the counties - I already have them in excel for Iowa, there are less than 100 counties in IA. And only a handful in NH.

I really don't want to think about it. I don't want to dig into that at this point.

City and state are mandatory, i switched the registration system to jomsocial from default joomla.

Works now

 

[parocks]

added zipcode and county made mandatory

 

[Tod]

I don't think kids read the newspaper.

Dittoes.....a marketing friend of mine notes the same thing: kids that age don't read newspapers (except the online variety).

 

[parocks]

added dropdown box for state

 

[speciallyblend]

yes , i would donate 10.00 for this! seems we should be focusing on all voters not just young but gotta target iowans.

 

[D.A.S.]

added dropdown box for state

Sweet! Thank you for doing this.

And if you feel like going the extra step for counties - maybe not today but another time - I'll be happy to either fill in the code for you and send it back, or I can send you a list of counties for IA, NH, and SC in an Excel format.

 

[D.A.S.]

Dittoes.....a marketing friend of mine notes the same thing: kids that age don't read newspapers (except the online variety).

As someone who has gone through the college system, I can say that's just NOT true at all. And I think the college newspapers are particularly read by kids who are active, and those are the people we need on the ground to organize efforts for Ron Paul there.

BUT, like I said, we will also have an online component to these ads for Iowa State and University of Iowa, so we'll hit them from both angles. I think this is a very worthwhile project because it targets the audience we need to turnout in droves, so we gotta get them onboard while the school is in session.

Seniors we will also target but a little bit later. College crowd is critical.

 

[parocks]

Sweet! Thank you for doing this.

And if you feel like going the extra step for counties - maybe not today but another time - I'll be happy to either fill in the code for you and send it back, or I can send you a list of counties for IA, NH, and SC in an Excel format.

I've seen situations where one dropdown box goes to another drop down box, depending on what the first drop down box says.

I don't think that's how it works here.

if the site was only Iowa, or only NH or only SC, those counties could be the choices.

But this isn't just iowa, so, which counties?

 

[D.A.S.]

Ok, so now that things are becoming more focused, let me summarize the prices and exactly what we're doing.

In order to mobilize the college kids in Iowa for the Iowa Caucuses and for the help with campaigning, I have proposed to run a "Call To Action" ad campaign at the Iowa State University (~18,000 Iowa residents in student body), and after suggestions from parocks, I've decided to expand that to the University of Iowa in Iowa City (~15,000 Iowa residents in student body).

This "Call To Action" is not meant as an educational campaign or to convince people to vote for Ron Paul - young people are internet-savvy and can figure it out, we are already strong with that group. What we DO need is for that group to get out the vote, to know the Caucus date, to register to vote, and to turn up for Caucuses!

To organize this effort and have some tangible benefit, a sign up webpage is being developed by parocks, where the registrants will enter their emails and geographical locations such as zipcode/county. The ads will have a link to the sign-up website, and people will be encouraged to register there to be informed about meet-up groups for Ron Paul and to be able to receive free campaigning materials for Ron Paul.

(1) Iowa State in Ames, Iowa

Iowa State will be targeted via Iowa State Daily (daily printed circulation ~12,500).

• A black-and-white PRINT ad, which is roughly 3" X 3", costs approximately $480 for 15 consecutive days (newspaper is printed monday - friday).
• The online ad package includes two versions of the same ad: one medium rectangle (a 300 pixel x 250 pixel) ad and a half page ad (300 pixel x 600 pixel). We are allowed 500 hits per day on these ads, and they are rotated through the entire newspaper website (iowastatedaily.com). This costs $70 per week for a maximum of 2 weeks, or $300 for the entire month.

The website for Iowa State Daily apparently gets a lot of hits, and the person from ad sales just wrote this to me:

I will tell you that our website has been getting a lot of traffic from Ron Paul supporters. We had a columnist [he's talking about Snell, who is releasing a series of excellent Ron Paul articles on Iowa State Daily] who was invited to interview Dr. Paul at an event in the neighboring town. The time crunch bumped the columnist's interview, so Dr. Paul offered to let the columnist ride with him to the Des Moines airport, about 45 minutes away. He has a series of columns running about his encounter and they've been well shared on the internet and trafficked. His second one posted today and I believe he has five more that will post each Wednesday. Our ads are all run of site, meaning they rotate through the entire site. So, one of the spots your might appear is on that page with that column. I can't make any guarantees of how often it would appear beside that ad, but I can tell you we are getting a lot of visits from people in favor of Dr. Paul.

(2) University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa

The University of Iowa will be targeted via The Daily Iowan (daily printed circulation ~14,500).

• A black-and-white PRINT ad, which is roughly 3" X 3", costs approximately $340 for 5 consecutive days (newspaper is printed monday - friday).
• Every day the ad appears in the print edition, it will also appear on their website at no extra charge. However, the ad can be linked directly to our voter sign-up webpage for an additional $5 per day.

For the lazy who don't want to read any of the above,

• Iowa State Daily (Ames, Iowa): $480 on paper for 15 days + $70/week online edition
• University of Iowa (Iowa City, Iowa): $340 on paper for 5 days + $5/day online edition (when ad is also in print)

 

[D.A.S.]

I've seen situations where one dropdown box goes to another drop down box, depending on what the first drop down box says.

I don't think that's how it works here.

if the site was only Iowa, or only NH or only SC, those counties could be the choices.

But this isn't just iowa, so, which counties?

The easy way out would be listing "State - County" format in the drop-down for counties:

"Iowa - Adair County"
"Iowa - Adams County"

"South Carolina - Abbeville County"
"South Carolina - Aiken County"

Ah, hell... we can just ask for zipcode and call it a day The only thing is, translating zip codes into counties later if we ever need that for whatever reason will be extra time. I'll leave that up to you, I think. I don't want to be a pest here.