UK Labour media master Alastair Campbell has an excellent post on his blog today about how the Tories consistently fail on strategy, even if they excel on tactics. He basically makes the point that even though the media is on their side, and they are able to get their line in the paper each day, their argument that Labour is to blame for the recession (rather than responsible for the recovery out of the global financial crisis).

Because Alastair’s blog is rather eccentric and doesn’t have a permalink to his articles (and it’s not currently in the Archive), I’ve reproduced the article below.

For the nth time, I will point out the difference between strategy and tactics and suggest that David Cameron and George Osborne are rather better at the latter than the former.

Watching Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling and Peter Mandelson take apart the Tories’ National Insurance deception – glad to see they were calling a spade a spade – was a reminder of that esssential Tory weakness.

They assume that if they get a good media hit out of something, they have won the day. And they think if they win enough days in the media war, they will win with the public.

Yet even with the media heavily loaded in their favour, and even with the hit they enjoyed with their NICs rabbit the other day, and the roll-out of business support, it does not appear to have had the desired efffect. And it is interesting that is they who want to move the debate away from this particular issue, and Labour and the Lib Dems who want to keep a focus upon it.

I had all but forgotten about the James Report until GB mentioned it this morning. It brought back awful memories of the last campaign in 2005 when this heavy tome was unleashed upon us, identifying all sorts of areas where government could save money and so fund the promises being made by the Tories.

It took a while, but bit by bit we pulled it apart until its credibility was gone. The same is now happening to the four page memo on which DC and GO appear to be basing their entire economic ‘strategy.’

By happy coincidence, this morning’s press conference took place against the backdrop of an OECD report suggesting the UK was better placed than other countries to emerge from the recession strongly.

That sense of recovery, and the government’s role in it, is without doubt one of the reasons why the Tories are failing to pull away in the way they had hoped to by this stage of the campaign. But the inexperience and judgement of DC and GO are also factors, as is the sense many people have of their elitism and their lack of connection with most people’s lives.

One of the most efffective parts of this morning’s event was when Alistair Darling reminded people of the serial misjudgements Osborne and Cameron made at the time the global economic crisis struck. This latest misjudgement – a promise of a tax cut without real explanation as to its funding days after saying the deficit was priority number 1 – stands in a long line.

As GB mentioned a few times in PMQs exchanges in the last year or so, the Tories were wrong on the recession and wrong on the recovery. Tactics will only take you so far if your strategic response to the single most important event of the last Parliament, and the single most important issue for the next one, is wrong.

Now, without over-emphasising the similarity, in my view the Liberals have made exactly the same mistake. They are focusing on debt and interest rates, and slamming the Stimulus Package that saved Australia from the recession that the UK and the rest of the OECD is experiencing.

This is a strategic error for the same reasons that it’s an error for the Tories to focus on National Insurance. Australia has the best economy in the developed world with amazingly low levels of unemployment, and most Australians recognise this fact.

Abbott (and Turnbull and Nelson) has picked the wrong side of this economic argument.

Related posts:

1. How the Tories lost the unlosable election
2. Engaging the progressive grass-roots in the UK
3. Britain’s first internet election?

Most political candidates are on Twitter and Facebook – using these social media tools to reach out to younger voters, and instantly communicate with supporters, the public and the media.

I’ve written previously about how political candidates can use social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook, Google Apps and how campaigns have made use of mobile technology like SMS and iphone apps.

Lisa Johnston, Democrat candidate for Kansas Senator has put her Foursquare profile on her web page.

Now, iphone-enabled Democratic candidate Patrick Kennedy is using new social media tool Foursquare to let voters know his location.

Foursquare is a free iphone app (available on Android phones also) that lets you update your friends about your location. It’s designed to help friends meet up if they are nearby, such as at a cafe or bar. It can link into Twitter as well.

It is a little “weird” that people can follow a candidate’s every move, Kennedy admits. But he said it makes him stay active. “If I say I am going to be out there representing people this holds me to account. I can’t hide with this tool.” Kennedy said he was recently contacted by someone who saw he had checked in down the road and wanted to know why the candidate did not stop by his group. A visit was quickly arranged.

This example shows the potential usefulness of Foursquare, as it focuses in on one of the applications of Twitter for candidates: letting local constituents and media know about your attendance at community events. Candidates could easily use Foursquare like Kennedy has: to link in with locals, and promote their activities. Opportunities to get local media also arise, as local journalists can link in to the candidate’s activities (sometimes the sheer fact that the candidate is using social media is newsworthy).

Key to this social media tool is the smart phone – an iphone, android phone or Blackberry. Political candidates and their key campaign staff should all have smart phones of some kind that can easily update a variety of social media sites – Twitter, Facebook and others like Foursquare. There should also be the ability to take photos and videos.

Related posts:

1. Communicate, don’t sell
2. Going local – social networking for politicians
3. Britain’s first internet election?

The #NoCleanFeed movement is not an organised campaign, but rather a loose connection of disparate groups including ISPs and civil liberties organisations.

For a while, I’ve been arguing that the #NoCleanFeed campaign should drop the focus on censorship:

I suggest avoiding commenting on the refused classification – most Australians aren’t going to be sympathetic to an argument that wants to allow free access to Jihadist propaganda, fetish images or advice on euthanasia. The civil liberties line sounds a lot like “geeks are complaining about not being able to download freaky p-rn as fast”.

Instead they should talk about how the filter won’t actually catch, stop or prevent a single pedophile:

Real cyber safety: The filter won’t stop or catch a single pedophile, whereas the $44 million spent on the filter could hire up to 300 new Federal Police who will actively hunt down and stop child s-x offenders.

Today, in what I hope is not an April Fools Day joke, I read that Internode is now going on with the “real cyber safety” line.

But Mark Newton, an engineer with ISP internode, said: “Censorship will not catch a single pedophile, will not cause a single image to disappear from the internet, will not protect a single child.”

(My emphasis.)

This is a good step forward for the #NoCleanFeed campaign, and although they’ve used the “censorship” line, they’re pointing out the inherent flaw in the justification of the filter.

Related posts:

1. Some key message ideas for #NoCleanFeed
2. No Clean Feed campaign needs to drop their "censorship" obsession
3. The #Nocleanfeed campaign, DoS and political nous

The #Nocleanfeed (aka, #OpenInternet) movement won’t succeed in blocking the Australian Government’s filter because its leadership are captured by the dead-end Democrats and fringe libertarians with little political campaigning experience. This capture means that unfortunately the movement is receiving ill-informed political counsel from serial Democrat losers like elitist apparent drug-taker Kathryn Crosby (links to screenshots now that Twitter is password protected) and Geordie Guy.

(Disclosure: I have had public disagreements with both Kathryn and Geordie over the campaign direction. Further disclosure: I am a member of the ALP. Final disclosure: I oppose the internet filter proposed by the Federal Government, and have written about it here.)

Why do I think the #Nocleanfeed campaign won’t succeed? Because they are obsessed with issues that actively marginalise them from the broard-based messaging and campaigning needed to succeed.

I think “comms_consult” summarised the problem quite well here:

From those on the side trying to stop the filter, you basically represent some territory educated net savvy twitter users. You’e lost parents worried about the amount of time their kids proficiently spend on the net. Conservative religious lobbies are making huge gains whipping up fear, online. You said the filter would slow down the net, but their trial said it wouldn’t. You went on telly and said it would be bad for free speech. If free speech means paedophilia, the government said, well we don’t want it. They’ve got this campaign by the balls. Besides, they’re giving you an NBN, which they think you’re ungrateful for.

The campaign against has largely focused internally, and hasn’t done much of anything to win over their opponents or expand the base. The Opposition and the Greens have publicly supported the against position, and yet there is nothing either can do -  and it polls terribly.

Talking to yourself is not how you win campaigns.

The government’s argument is that the internet is a dangerous, unregulated place. It’s arguing that it is not unreasonable to regulate dangerous content online, as it is in every other medium. It is arguing holds that it is doing something to keep people safe on the internet, which otherwise would be at risk.

Their opponents state that the filter will slow down the net, that the filter will stifle free speech and that it will push deviants further underground. They’re arguing that people will simply circumvent the filter.

The other problems is that the #Nocleanfeed campaign is focusing on Internet exceptionalism.

There is no doubt that the classification system in Australian is deeply flawed. It is outdated. The Refused Classification system is ludicrous and wrong-headed.

But that doesn’t mean, and ordinary Australians don’t believe, that the Internet should be exempt from the laws that govern TV, books, DVDs, radios and every other publication or broadcast in Australia.

Alex Schlotzer from the ACTU and Greens Party has a similar concern about the campaign.

To effectively respond it requires a coordinated, concerted and sustained approach; with a plan for real political action. I don’t mean more protests and demonstrations. And I don’t mean sending more protest messages to Kevin Rudd’s Twitter account.

The other problem facing the #Nocleanfeed campaign is that their obsession with censorship has activated an extreme fringe of Internet “hacktivists”. These “Anonymous” cyber-activists have conducted Denial Of Service attacks against Federal Government websites. Their public statements are profoundly disturbing and often misogynistic. Some of the comments of the group are reported by Alex Dickinson at The Punch.

(It should be clearly noted that the Anonymous group are not affiliated with the #Nocleanfeed campaign, and I understand that the #Nocleanfeed campaign has condemned the DoS attacks.)

Recent polling indicates that most Australians, even if they were concerned about the filter, don’t consider filtering pornography and other RC material to be a vote-changing issue.

Comms_consult has some useful advice (which largely accords with my Key Messaging Advice here):

So what needs to be done? Well, there needs to be a strategic view taken of where this battle needs to be fought. And it needs to be on the terms that the opponents are strongest is on – the technical impacts, and through its flow on economic and cultural impacts.

What needs to be said is:

“Something needs to be done to protect vulnerable people on the internet. However this filter is false hope. Families are being misled that this will provide the protection they clearly want online, and this project is an expensive and misleading exercise in futility. Essentially, this filter is not what it seems. It will not protect anyone because it will make the important job of policing the internet harder.”

This is not campaigning with branded avatars and attacks on the Minister’s character. There needs to be a debate about protecting children online and there needs to be options – including education, or whatever but it needs to talk to the public on positions they would be willing to accept.

I hope the #Nocleanfeed campaign starts taking better advice.

Related posts:

1. #NoCleanFeed campaign starts to focus messaging
2. Some key message ideas for #NoCleanFeed
3. No Clean Feed campaign needs to drop their "censorship" obsession

In my line of work, I hear a lot of opinion expressed as fact. A common one is that “union members don’t want our communications to look too corporate”, or “our members want a lot of detail, not a short summary”, or “our slogan should be ‘screw the boss’ or something like that”. You get the idea.

Union organisers often have years of experience in talking with members, motivating them to action, getting them to listen. But they are not communications professionals.

Most of these experiences are based on “anecdotal” evidence. Useful, but sometimes misleading. For example, union activists and delegates are a very different audience to an inactive member. While many union members are progressive, and support or vote for Labor (or Democrat, or Lib Dems, or Greens, or Socialist Alliance), many are also “centrist”, a-political or even conservative. In the 2004 Australian general election, research revealed that around 40% of union members voted for John Howard! (This number was improved in 2007, where some unions’ research revealed a Labor vote of 60% or greater amongst their members.)

Nevertheless, my point is that unions often make communications decisions based on “gut feeling” or anecdotal, untested assumptions.

There has been some research into what union members, and workers generally, want from communications from their union. The research includes polling and focus groups, of members and non-members. I’ve seen some of these (unfortunately confidential) reports, produced by several unions, including my own and the ACTU. (I should also note that I have worked as an organiser at one of Australia’s largest unions, and in my view, union communications should support and compliment a union’s organising strategy.)

Without revealing all of the details, a clear motif appears from the results. Generally, across the board, union members and workers generally, want communications that are:

• Positive, proactive, forward looking, friendly
• Authentic – no cliches
• Not adversarial or victimising (they don’t want to be made into victims or to have to fight their employer)
• People focused (centred around members, colleagues, peers, the community they serve)
• Professional and of a high standard

Positive, proactive, forward looking, friendly

Most union members are not attracted by communications (leaflets, posters, emails, phone calls) that are negative, reactive or backwards looking. They don’t like constantly having to “fight against” their employer or the government. They want their union to build, not tear down, and they prefer messages that represent a struggle restore rights as improving, not “clawing back” their working conditions.

Authentic – no cliches

Union members respond – like most people – negatively to cliches. The union movement has a large supply of labour-related cliches, most of which are not well-received by union members. Many non-members also respond poorly to the “militant” slogans used by many unions. This is not to say “you shouldn’t use slogans” – you should. Rather, your union’s slogans should summarise a positive, people-focused campaign goal.

What members and non-members want instead is communications that show that the union is made up of real people. They don’t like faceless bureaucrats, or “generic” images/text.

Not adversarial or victimising

Most workers like their jobs and want to feel proud of their work. They want to feel like they achieve something positive during their working day. While they can come into conflict with their employer from time to time, they don’t like to be constantly fighting. Unions that present a message that pits a group of workers in a (never-ending) fight against their boss will not be maximising their communications with a significant section of workers – especially non-members.

Similarly, workers don’t like to feel like victims. Victims are powerless, and connote emotions such as shame. Unions should be empowering members, and lifting them up. Presenting workers as victims goes counter to this.

People focused

Put your members at the centre of communications. Campaigns and communications need to about about them, not you. Whether it was Work Choices or the Employee Free Choice Act, unions need to emphasise improvements for workers, not threats to their unions.

Professional and of a high standard

Workers live in a world of high-standard communications, whether on television, the Internet or in print. There is an assumption that the communications (letters, leaflets, posters, ads) are well written, professionally designed and easy to understand and use. Unions have long been laggards in adopting modern design standards – this needs to end. (This goal is one of the reasons why I co-founded Creative Unions.) Unions can’t get away with having sub-standard, amateurish design for their communications. Many organisers I have dealt with say “members don’t like slick, corporate design”, or “members don’t want us spending heaps of money on design”.

Unfortunately, the evidence from research shows the opposite. Members do want good design. They want to know that their dues are going to a union that is professional in everything it does – industrial advice, campaigns, and – yes – design.

Unions need to be authentic – slick, corporate designs are probably not appropriate. But good design doesn’t need to be corporate. This is something that the environment movement has learned – you can have excellent design that is useable and intuitive, without it looking like a Coke advert (the World Wildlife Fund is a great example).

Related posts:

1. Six effective print communications tips for union campaigns
2. Key messaging advice for unions
3. Guest post over at Stronger Unions

Facebook is a tremendous communications tool for unions – especially white-collar unions – and with only a small amount of technical know-how, it can also be super-charged for organising and campaigning.

If you haven’t already, check my earlier articles about unions using Facebook: Best practice use of Facebook for unions and Using Facebook as an organising tool.

Many unions now sporting a Facebook Group, Profile or Page. What few unions know however is that Facebook allows you to add HTML into a Page to embed mailing list applications.

Build your union’s email list with Facebook

There is no doubt that Facebook is an essential place for unions to be present. With over 100 million monthly users in the USA alone, there is little point for unions to try to recreate their own social networking site (although unions should of course be aware that different demographics use different sites). Many union members and potential members are already regular users of Facebook.

Similarly, email is the most cost-effective means to reach large numbers of people – whether they are members, supporters, non-members and the general community.

The screenshot above is from the Creative Unions Facebook page. With only around an hours worth of fiddling, we were able to add a sign up form from our MailChimp account, with a nifty little graphic. This means that anyone who fills out the form will be automatically added to our MailChimp database.

By no means are we the first to do this. The SEIU Facebook page has a splash sign up form – presumably attached to whatever email service provider they use.

Facebook fans can be passionate fans of their union. Facebook allows fans to easily interact with your union – through the “like” feature or comments. By cultivating these fans, you can build a group of passionate online advocates. By keeping a regular stream of content, events and activities for your fans, you can keep them engaged, and build relationships with them. Facebook users are far more likely to use the “like” function than leave a comment – so it’s a good idea to treat comments like you would an email.

By adding an online email sign up form to your Facebook page, you can start to turn your Facebook fans into real campaign assets. While many unions will already have email addresses for members, the Facebook page can attract supporters and non-members as well. These are crucial groups to have contact information for.

Facebook pages are also easy to promote online. Once a person becomes a fan, it is far easier to encourage them to sign up for emails than if they had no other contact with your union.

Tutorials

There are two great tutorials on how to set up an email sign up form on your Facebook page. The MailChimp one is obviously focused on how to add a MailChimp form, but the theory is the same.

Note: this only works for Facebook pages. It does not work (yet) for groups or profiles. If your union does not yet have a Facebook page, I suggest you set one up as soon as possible.

MailChimp: Adding a Newsletter Subscribe Form to Your Facebook Fan Page

Return on Subscriber: Add a Newsletter Opt-In Box to your Facebook Page

Related posts:

1. Best practice use of Facebook for unions
2. Using Facebook as an organising tool
3. Four harsh truths about union websites

The Massachusetts election has blown open the mainstream media’s infatuation with social networking tools, with headlines like “the iphone app that killed Coakley“. On the techblogs, there is also detailed examination of new tools that aided the winning Mass. Senate candidate Scott Brown. I am hardly immune to the temptation of writing about the exiting new online tools and their applicability for union campaigns.

The fact remains however that email is the “killer app” for online campaigning, and will remain so for a long time.

Campaign Monitor, a well-respected SAS provider that allows companies to create email campaigns, has crunched the numbers in a very interesting article:

Unlike Twitter and Facebook, email’s capacity to drive traffic has a long tail. Whereas the traffic from Twitter and Facebook comes in bursts lasting as long as it takes for the message to fall off the bottom of the feed (2-3 days), email continues to collect clicks and opens for days (if not weeks) to come.

Campaign Monitor points out that email not only provides the bulk of website visits, but that visitors via email are more likely to visit the site days or even months after the original email was sent. This compares to Twitter and Facebook (and anecdotally Digg) which sees a spike in traffic over a day or two, without any “long tail”.

I recommend you read the entire post here.

Thomas Gensemer, managing partner of Blue State Digital, who was intimately involved in Obama’s campaign, is a big proponent of email as a campaign-winning tool. He makes the point that building a large email list was key to the victory in 2008. Of course, building the email list took hard work using “old” methods – campaign rallies, street stalls, and so on.

While social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter allow for two-way communication, most people are familiar with email as a means to have a conversation. This is certainly borne out by an article from ShareThis, a large provider of “link sharing” apps that people can add to their websites. ShareThis tools allow readers to share links with friends using a range of social networking tools, like Twitter, Facebook and by email. ShareThis found that:

Despite reports of its demise, e-mail is still the most popular method of sharing, and despite its meteoric rise of late, Twitter is still not a very popular sharing channel. In our research, we found that 46 percent of shares came via e-mail, 33 percent from Facebook, 14 percent from other channels such as Digg, del.icio.us, LinkedIn, etc., and just 6 percent from Twitter.

I recommend you read the entire ShareThis article, as it also suggests that while most people share content using email, the click-through rate for Twitter is much higher.

Email also allows you to have a simple, direct call to action. You can engage the reader, then ask them to do something. Having that call to action – join, donate, buy, protest – is essential to effective email campaigns. You can see the success of the email in whether the people who open it do what you ask. An email without a strong call to action is wasted.

Using analytics tools made available by services like Campaign Monitor (and Mail Chimp, which is what we use for the NTEU and Creative Unions) allows you to better use email. You can track things like open rates and clicks; and when used with Google Analytics, you can get a good idea of how people use your website. For unions wanting people to join online or take some kind of online campaign action, this can be invaluable.

Read my post on “the art of writing better union emails“, which also goes into the value of analytics for email.

Related posts:

1. Seven online campaigning activities you should already be doing
2. Collaborative online tools for political campaigning
3. Use your union’s Facebook page to build your email list

Every union communication challenge is unique – the circumstances, membership, employer, and so on are different every time. Having a framework to assist in messaging for diverse campaigns can make each campaign easier, and can help union communications anticipate what the employer (or opponent) may say. (George Lakoff called this “framing”.)

The messaging quadrant

The essence of effective union key messaging is based around four key ideas:

1. Your key message: a narrative for your campaign, explaining what you are doing, why you are doing it, and why your members (and workers in general) should support the campaign.
2. Your message about them: Your union needs to frame the employer and anything they say – this is your “counter-punch”, supporting your key message.
3. Their spin on your message: The employer will try to re-butt your key message. You should inoculate your members against criticisms of the union by the employer or opponent.
4. Their message: An employer in a dispute will have their own message in a dispute or campaign. Your union message needs to re-state what they are saying in your own words, and expose hypocrisy and double standards.

A good union campaign messaging will continually push the union’s key messaging, and rely on the other three pillars to respond to whatever the employer says.It is very easy to respond to attacks from an employer if you’ve already thought about what they will say and how you will react. If you’ve already pigeon-holed the employer, then you’re forcing them into a space that is good for you and bad for them.

An essential part of this is consistency. Once your campaign team has chosen your key message, be very careful about changing it. Switching messages can expose you to ridicule by the employer as a “flip flopper”. The members and others listening can get confused as to what the union is doing and saying.

Don’t be afraid of going negative. The employer does. They attack the union, they attack union members, they attack the rights workers have to take industrial action. They key is to turn their negativity against them, and to turn your attacks into positives. Your negative message is your “counter-punch” – finding their hypocrisy and exposing it to ridicule.

Framing your key messages

1. Speak the truth: Whatever your key message, it should be true. And true in the strongest sense. Don’t try to get away with half-truths, grey areas or white-lies. Don’t fudge things or tell lies by omission. This will be found out by the employer, and used to attack and undermine your union.
2. Take the high moral ground: You should make sure that you communicate your union’s integrity on the campaign issue. The union (and its campaign) should be selfless – it is “doing the right thing”.
3. Offence, not defence: The union’s communications should be pro-active, rather than waiting for the employer to do or say something. Pre-empt their attacks, and be prepared to respond to an attack by the employer.
4. Appeal to people’s better nature: Your main key message needs to be positive and optimistic. Link your message into the values of your members or the target audience. Look beyond union cliches (like “solidarity”, talk about “responsibility”).

Related posts:

1. What union members want from their union's communications
2. Why unions should embrace social media
3. Five effective political lobbying tools for unions

A lot of people are starting to talk about microblogging – a short form of blogging. The most successful and well-known microblogging platform is, of course, Twitter. However, there are several others, such as Tumblr, Pownce and Posterous. Microblogging is a kind of social networking, as it focuses on sharing, networking and communities.

Eric Lee of LabourStart has written about the utility of microblogging for unions, recommending the service Posterous. I have differing views about the utility of this approach, which I will go into later. Despite Lee’s strong advocacy for unions to utilise Posterous as a campaign tool, I’m not aware of any unions that do (LabourStart does, but please leave a comment if you do know of one).

Microblogging is, as the name describes, is small-scale blogging, typically 200 words or less. Twitter takes this to extreme, only allowing 140 characters. Other microblogging services like Posterous or Tumblr (the two most used microblogging services after Twitter) don’t have a word limit; however, they are mostly used for photos, videos or other multimedia content. Most text articles on microblogging sites are short.

Both Tumblr and Posterous can aggregate content from other sources (such as Twitter, Flickr and so on) and publish it, or broadcast material published to other services (e.g. publish a post from Tumblr to Twitter). As Eric Lee explains in his article, they can be updated via email, and will automatically publish emails sent to the nominated account email.

Update: A useful explanation of Posterous:

The big differentiator between Posterous and a traditional blog platform like WordPress is that all content is published via email. Sending text to Posterous creates a text post. Including a photo or video attachment results in those being shown on the post. If multiple photos are attached, a gallery is created. Posterous’ other notable feature is that it can then notify other social networks of your content. Photos can be sent to Flickr or Facebook. Links to the Posterous post can be published to Twitter or a Facebook news feed. Videos can be sent to YouTube, Vimeo, or the like.

Is microblogging useful for unions?

Eric Lee’s LabourStart article contends that Posterous (or similar services) are “the cheapest, easiest and fastest way to create an online presence” for your union’s campaign. Especially since it links into your campaign’s email list. (Incidental to this is Lee’s assumptions on using email for campaigns – something I generally strongly agree with.)

And it’s true – setting up a Posterous site is very easy. It simply requires an email be sent, and your Posterous account is automatically created (typically making a unique web page for you, such as “yourname.posterous.com”). You don’t even need to create an account first. Posterous does automatically handle embedding images, videos and other file types. It also easily links to other social networking tools.You can also customise what unique web page your entries appear on.

But is that useful?

Posterous and other microblogging sites (including Twitter) are not silver bullets to unions’ online campaigning. The essence of social networking, and microblogging, is to build relationships – with members, non-members, supporters and the general community.

What Eric Lee proposes is to use Posterous as an activity feed. A stream of events with no context or personality.

I’ve written elsewhere that social networking should be about conversations. I’ve also pointed out that social networking services should be carefully chosen. Creating a Posterous site for your union campaign should be weighed up and considered as part of the campaign’s overall strategy and plan.

Your online campaign activity should compliment your campaigns other activities, especially organising. Using social networking tools like Twitter or microblogging services like Posterous, as de facto public archives will guarantee only that no one reads or engages with your online activity.

Now, if you’ve decided that you want a public archive of your campaign’s email broadcasts, then by all means, Posterous and other similar services are well suited. However, be aware that you will not engage many members, supporters or non-members with this approach. People can tell when something is automated.

Automated content is not what people are interested in engaging with online. They want genuine interaction – afterall social media is just that: social.

Keeping it in-house

Adding to the case against using microblogging in the way that Eric Lee suggests is that most unions like to keep things “in house”. That is, to use the union’s main website as the host for all online campaign activities, archives, resources and so on.

Over at Creative Unions, I looked at how most unions don’t have separate campaign sites. The union, having invested the time and resources into establishing its website, understandably doesn’t want to send members away to another site.

This is especially the case when the other site is an external, for-profit microblogging company. Even blogging sites like Google’s Blogger.com or Automatic’s WordPress.com have this problem. If you use Posterous (or similar), all your information, your campaign’s archives and other related material (photos, videos, etc) are hosted by a third-party.

Of course, a union may not possess the knowledge, expertise of capability to run a detailed campaign archive on its own website. You will therefore need to weight the costs and benefits for using Posterous or a similar service.

How can you better use microblogging?

At the moment, Posterous and other microblogging sites are not very useful for union campaigns. While they are very simple to use, requiring little or no technical know-how, they are also a straight jacket. They are difficult to customise, and designed for short messages and multi-media. They are designed to be personal.

This is how unions should use Posterous or other microblogging services. To be personal and to tell a story. A microblog could be useful for a union that doesn’t have time to maintain a fully fledged blog and a host of other social media tools. Microblogging can therefore be a social media bridge between blogging and Twitter.

Posterous can thus be used for short updates on the union’s activities (or on a specific campaign’s activities). This shouldn’t be simply an automated list of media releases and emails. Rather, it should be made up of similar content that you would put on Twitter, Facebook or a blog: Quotes from members, photos from rallies or members meetings, short videos of speeches, or copies of campaign material (such as posters or leaflets).

So long as the microblog follows the Four Pillars of Social Networking, it can act as a replacement for maintaining separate Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Posterous has a useful service that allows you to use your own custom domains with Posterous’ microblogging service. This means that you can keep the Posterous activity “in house”, rather than have it appear on a third-party’s website.

As an example, I’ve created a Posterous “sub domain” for this site. Now, http://posterous.alexwhite.org has all my Posterous articles on it. A union, if it wanted to keep traffic coming to its own website, could thus create a sub domain on their website for their Posterous campaign.

And don’t forget: all social networking takes time and effort. There’s no silver bullet.

Useful Resources:

• Read Write Web: 10 Micro-blogging Tools Compared
• Ma.tt (WordPress founder): Micro-blogging vs Mega-blogging
• Amuta 2.0: Microblogging with Twitter for your non-profit
• Digital Web Magazine: Integrating Social Media into a Web Content Strategy

Related posts:

1. Four pillars of social networking
2. Email is the “killer app” for online campaigning
3. Why unions should embrace social media

The big difference between the current Liberal Party leadership tensions, and previous ones, is the role that social media such as Twitter and blogs, and “live updates” from SMS, are playing.

Journalists in the Canberra press gallery are getting updates from Liberal MPs from inside party room meetings. The updates are “live” – that is, sent moments after the event. The journalsists are then passing those unfiltered rumours straight on to social networking tools such as Twitter. Their Twitter followers then “re-tweet” those rumours, spreading them like wild fire.

The second element playing into this leadership crisis is the activities of Liberal staffers, members and supporters in placing pressure on Liberal MPs. Many Liberal MPs reported that they received hundreds, even thousands, of emails opposing the (amended) Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. This seems to have been orchestrated by conservative, CPRS-opposing staffers in Canberra, with a Twitter, Facebook, email and phone call campaign.

Whereas earlier leadership crises in both Labor and Liberal have happened over days and months, with splitters, leakers and the media carefully controlling the messages going out to the public, this leadership spill has been “opened up”. The crisis certainly has been exacerbated by the openness.

This vulnerability to instant communication and the pressure that can be exerted through social networks, shows how brittle the Liberal Party (and traditional, “old politics”) is.

Traditional, old politics, relies on command and control and discipline. The fact that Liberal MPs are now tweeting, reading @replies and getting out their own message (rather than toeing the party line) through Facebook and Twitter is undermining the traditional Westminster-style Liberal party.

The Liberal Party has long been considered to rely on strong leadership to hold divergent and opposing ideological views together under the same roof. Now, with social networks rising to prominence, MPs that otherwise would fall in line with the party, can now pander to their ideological allies, and likewise, be pressured by those same allies.

Similarly, dissident MPs such as Abbott and Minchin can have their supporters and staff utilise these new technologies to get out their anti-leader media lines.

The instant, live, always-on nature of the media cycle also means that journalists can no longer check sources. When they get a rumour, they risk losing an exclusive by trying to verify it. As a result, they are captured by MPs pushing an agenda. This has created enormous confusion. A case in point is the “exclusive” from The Australian that Julie Bishop asked Turnbull to step down; both Turnbull and Bishop later denied the story.

Whoever wins on Tuesday at the Liberal party room meeting, it is clear that leadership politics has been changed forever.

Postscript: Tweets by MPs are not covered by Parliamentary Privilege.

Related posts:

1. Why unions should embrace social media
2. Going local – social networking for politicians
3. Four pillars of social networking