This is the website of Alex White, in Melbourne Australia, a campaigns and communications professional working in the trade union movement.

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Tag Archives: social networking
abbott

Tony Abbott on Facebook

A quick search of Facebook reveals that Tony Abbott has a massive presence on Facebook. Tens of thousands of people are fans. Unfortunately, most of those people aren’t fans of Tony’s, but of sanitary napkins or of leaving the country if he’s elected. The biggest fan page for Tony Abbott is “Friends don’t let friends [...]

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YesWeDid

Book Review: “Yes We Did” by Rahaf Harfoush

Yes We Did: An inside look at how social media built the Obama brand Over Xmas, I purchased and read “Yes We Did: An inside look at how social media built the Obama brand”, by Rahaf Harfoush, a volunteer new media campaigner on the Obama 2008 election campaign. This 185 page book promises to give [...]

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atanywhere

Adding Twitter’s @Anywhere

Twitter has launched a new feature, called @Anywhere, for websites to integrate elements of Twitter onto their websites. This allows you to use your Twitter login to join or log into their website, as well as add Twitter-style popups over names that are Twitter accounts (such as @alexanderwhite, @UKLabour, or @climateprogress). This means you can [...]

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erq3mi

Connected candidates: Beyond Twitter

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 [...]

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Unions and Twitter

The open, conversational nature of social networking offers the perfect elixir to turn this around. Check out my first Media140 blog post, discussing how union leaders can promote themselves, their unions and their activities socially using Twitter.

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social-media-and-young-adults

Young people don’t blog

For my Project 52 post, I thought I’d comment about a recent Pew report has come to my attention via DownloadSquad that says that young people are blogging less: Pew Internet released a report yesterday called Social Media and Young Adults that shows teen blogging down by 50% over the past four years, even as [...]

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Seven online campaigning activities you should already be doing

In Australia, most elections take place during the normal, general election period. The accepted wisdom is that local campaigns make up, at most, 3 percent of a candidate’s primary vote. The rest comes from the central campaign from party head office: television ads, the leader’s personal appeal, the party’s policies and so on. There are [...]

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We Are Social opens up their analytics

If you are a social networking junkie then you should make the time to read an enlightening post by We Are Social – a leading UK social media agency – which opens up their site metrics for 2009. Their article is a very insightful addendum to my post from the other day about email being [...]

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CUsplashpage

Use your union’s Facebook page to build your email list

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 [...]

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site_traffic_breakdown_exp

Email is the “killer app” for online campaigning

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 [...]

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Microblogging: Jumping on the bandwagon

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 [...]

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Innovating from Opposition

Innovating from Opposition

The British Conservatives are widely viewed as being on the cutting edge of online campaigning and “digital democracy”. It’s one of the benefits of being in opposition – you don’t have the infrastructure, institutions and culture that Governments have. Oppositions can think big, experiment and (this far out from an election) can afford minor failures. [...]

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Some key message ideas for #NoCleanFeed

Some key message ideas for #NoCleanFeed

The No Clean Feed campaign has exploded on Twitter, received extensive coverage on the tech blogs, several independent campaign sites, and has spawned its own “Glenn Beck” style domain registry controversy. Unfortunately, much of the commentary, especially from “Pirate Party” officials, is shrill and near-hysterical in its pitch. Simply put, the majority of Australians, even [...]

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socialmedia

Going local – social networking for politicians

While there’s a million and one articles on the internet about how Obama built his success on social networks. There are fewer articles about how local candidates’ campaigns used social networking to promote their candidacy. I’ve previously written about one instance of a local campaign – the governor race in Virginia – using text message [...]

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Four pillars of social networking

I often get asked by friends, colleagues and acquaintances about why x, y, or z social networking tool is useful. (The question is alternatively phrased to ask me to justify why social networking is not just a waste of time.) I think many people of a certain age (even Generation X) find it very difficult [...]

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