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 networks
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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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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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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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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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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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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Social media and the vulnerability of "old politics"

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, [...]

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Communicate, don’t sell

An interesting article from our friends across the ditch, about how to use social networking tools. Don’t act like a salesperson. Interact with your potential members/customers/voters in order to build a relationship with them. Andrea Mitchell writes: Obama’s campaign sure got it right through social media. As Obama adviser Scott Goodstein said: “Some people only [...]

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seiu-facebook

Best practice use of Facebook for unions

Many unions now have a presence on Facebook. However, I am aware of only a few unions that make full use of Facebook’s many tools. 1. Use Fan Pages, not groups When Facebook first got started, it didn’t have Pages. Instead, users created groups, which allowed people to join, and for administrators to “email” members. [...]

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Interesting use of Twitter in elections

Via Joe Trippi, the site Tech President reports that the New York City Democratic Primary made heavy and (in some cases) innovative uses of Twitter. Joe asked in his tweet whether Twitter will be used to predict the outcomes of elections and primaries. For example, the initial winner of the NYC primary, Bill DiBlasio, had [...]

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