Candidates let their websites do the talking
It wasn’t long after Rich Merlino registered to run as a candidate in the October municipal election that people started asking where his website was.
Maybe that’s not surprising; this is 2018. The surprising thing might be that nearly half of the 33 candidates running for city council do not have a website. Three don’t even offer an email address.
“Websites and Facebook are equally as important,” said Merlino, who finished 11th among 33 candidates in the 2014 Niagara Falls council race and is challenging for a seat again Oct. 22.
“Early in the campaign, I had many people reach out to me on Facebook and ask when my website would be up and running.”
Early on, he posted a short video introducing himself as a candidate. It got 50,000 hits.
“Having your campaign with no website is like having a hamburger without a patty — that’s where the beef is,” said Jeff Bolichowski, a media and policy analyst with St. Catharines based Armstrong Strategy Group.
“That’s where you can have all your policies organized in one place.”
Contact information for all the candidates, including links to their websites, is posted on the city’s website NiagaraFalls.ca, under the ‘City Hall’ heading.
Some websites look better than others. But they all offer a peek at how the candidate wants to be perceived, allowing them to share information on their platforms with personal details and photos.
With 33 people running for eight seats citywide — not divided by wards, as in some municipalities — there are few other opportunities to stand out among the crowd.
“I couldn’t imagine running a campaign without a website,” said Margie Manker, a first-time candidate for city council.
She said it cost less than $100 to register her domain and have her website hosted for a year. She has some IT experience and designed the site herself, but said with all the tools available online pretty much anyone could put together their own website.
“I’m not the only candidate who has made a conscious environmental decision to not generate lawn signs … the alternative for us is we have to use alternative media to reach voters,” Manker said.
She designed her site to be professional and welcoming “and I want the information to be easy to find and easy to read.”
“If I’m looking for more information on a candidate, I’m going to right away weed out the ones who don’t have a website, because how am I going to get information about them?” she said.
Bolichowski said most people get their information online now, and a website is accessible to every voter.
“The nice thing about a website is it’s a way to organize all the information about who you are, what you stand for and what you will do on council.”
There’s only so much candidates can say about themselves while knocking on doors or during crowded meet-and-greet sessions. A good website is a real “competitive advantage,” he said.
“It makes you look more credible and it puts the information out there, it assures voters that you stand for something … you can tell by their website what issues they are passionate about.”
It’s not enough anymore to stake signs in the ground, canvass neighbourhoods and buy some newspaper or radio ads, he said.
Merlino said he contacted a few social media experts when he was preparing his website, “they said with this election the key is, you want to get people to your website and then you want to divert them to social media.
“That provides the opportunity to engage” with voters through messaging and commenting on posts.
Manker said, “I think the website is essential in this day and age, but because we are human beings I don’t think the in-person experience can be replaced by anything online …
“It is exhausting going out in the neighbourhoods door to door, but you have to do it.”