Get and Stay Informed
You will need to become a voracious consumer of news and information coming out of your community. Be sure that you read/listen/watch both daily and community press, including constituency-based media that may cover issues of critical importance to communities in the base you are building that do not make it to the nightly news. Get to know the local reporters and bloggers, and what issues and areas they cover.
Learn to use social media tools to "listen" to constituents as well, by setting up Google Alerts that will email you when certain phrases are mentioned online, an RSS feed reader to compile all the latest posts on local blogs, and search twitter and facebook regularly for mentions of community issues, as well as your name, and to gauge your reputation. For more information on using social media in a campaign, click here.