Intro
Once your custom Motivote dashboard is live, it's time to roll it out to your community and encourage engagement. This guide features best practices and creative strategies for promoting your Motivote portal — and your civic initiative more broadly — through digital platforms, social media, and in-person events.
Top Tips
Websites
Feature your Motivote portal with a banner, pop-up or menu link.
Add the embeddable widget for Check Registration Status to your organization's main website so visitors can easily look up elections and see if they're registered.
Build a simple landing page featuring our widget, alongside program-specific information.
Social media
Make your Motivote URL easy to access on your social platforms by pinning it to your profile or adding it to your link site in bio.
Campus media
Place ads in the campus newspaper with your Motivote URL/QR code and info about prizes or competitions. 70% of college students say they read their campus news sources at least once a week, and 47% say this or their official campus communication platform is the primary way they learn about important events.
Digital Promotion
With the goal of reaching voters where they are, digital promotion strategies should be a core part of your Motivote implementation. Think about building Motivote into existing digital platforms and communication channels. The more touchpoints, the better!
Strategy: Embed Motivote into digital platforms
1. Embeddable Widget
Use your built-in Embeddable Widget to feature Motivote on your own website. Visitors can look up their next election with their address or check their registration status, right on your website. Then, we direct them to your Motivote portal with all their information and progress saved. This is as simple as embedding a YouTube video!
☝️ Tip: Stagger your rollout to get a first wave of members, such as leadership, on board first and complete their first couple actions. This way, when you roll out more broadly, new users will see familiar names and faces when they sign in. This helps build trust and drive engagement.
2. Website Features
On your own website, share your Motivote portal through a pop-up, banner, or other featured element. Your IT team can help you set this up — be ready to provide them with your Motivote URL and accompanying text content.
3. Digital Integrations
Motivote can integrate directly into some common campus tech. Learn more →
☝️ Tip: If featuring your Motivote portal on multiple platforms, consider using referral codes or unique invite links to track where sign-up's come from. This data can help you understand the effectiveness of different channels.
Strategy: Send Community Emails
Sending emails shouldn't be your only rollout channel because they're passive and become part of the noise. Still, it's smart to include email in your strategy because it provides an "anchor" for community members to return to for a refresher on your initiative or the portal link. It also ensures everyone has access to the same information.
Looking for email inspiration? Check out our guidelines and tips →
You'll want to pair emails with some sort of live, active announcement or promotion so that people know to be on the lookout for the email that goes along with it.
In-Person Promotion
You can promote Motivote sign-up's and voter engagement more broadly at in-person events and by "tabling" in high-traffic areas. See below for a few key suggestions, and for more on this topic, view tips for hosting a voter registration drive →
Say 'thanks' for stopping by
If you include voter registration prompts at your in-person promotion, remember that per US legal code you cannot incentivize registration with something "of value." This law has been interpreted to include food freebies and event entries.
We highly recommend having freebies like food, coupons or swag to encourage people to stop by — just make sure they're available to EVERYONE and are not provided in exchange for registering to vote (or voting itself).
🖥️ On Motivote: It's 100% legal to reward people for engaging with your Motivote portal — like activating their account, looking up their next election, or making a voting plan. Just don't reward registering to vote or voting itself. To confirm their engagement, have them show you completed actions on their phone or you can directly check this data from the Admin Portal, which updates in real-time.
Leave something behind
Create business cards, laptop stickers, branded swag or other physical items with a QR code, shortlink or text code that leads to your voting initiative website and/or Motivote portal. This provides visitors with something tangible to take away if they want to use the resource on their own time. It also increases the impact of your tabling by getting in front of a broader group of people who weren't at the event.