Election Coverage Ideas Part 1: Tools

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past few months, we probably don’t need to tell you it’s a presidential election year. Whether you’re gearing up to tackle the presidential election or you’re staying focused on state or local elections, SNO has several tools available to help you beef up your election coverage this fall. Check out some of our suggestions below!

Basic Tools 

  • SNO Poll: This one’s pretty simple. Publish a poll gauging your readers’ opinions on something and display that poll either on your homepage or within a story.

  • SNO Story Collection: Connect all of your election coverage together using our newest SNO Story Element, the SNO Story Collection. For those of you who’ve been around a while, this tool is very similar to our old Grid template and allows you to easily (and stylistically) display related stories together.

  • SNO Countdown: Count down to the big day! You can place a countdown within a story using the SNO Story Element button or on your site’s homepage via a widget.

  • SNO Infobox: Publish an infobox with multiple segments (sections) and add it to a story. Use these to highlight candidates, share voting information, explain ballot measures, etc.

  • SNO Long-Form Format: Build larger, more in-depth election coverage story packages using the long-form format.

Site Booster Tools

For those of you who subscribe to our Site Booster bundle, you’ve got some additional tools to add a little extra “oomph” to your election coverage.

  • SNO Infographics: The infographic builder includes several types of infographics, but you may want to check out the USA Chart options for election coverage. Choose either qualitative (word-based data) or quantitative (number-based data) – perfect for tracking Electoral College votes, counting number of voters per state and more.

  • Live Coverage: Our newest story publishing tool, Live Coverage enable you to publish a story and add live updates to it as they unfold. We envision many staffs using this to track progress on election night.

  • SNO Tests: Gauge your readers’ knowledge about a specific topic (answers are either right or wrong). Test your audience’s knowledge about a variety of topics related to the election – how or where to vote, who the candidates are, what the ballot measures are about, etc.

(P.S. If any of these tools interest you but you don’t have the Site Booster yet, you can order it here.)

We’re guessing you already have some ideas up your sleeve, but just in case, we’ll be sharing a few in our next SNO Report. Have any you’d like to share? Let us know here, and you just might see them featured!