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Political web apps: UK Labour’s linking with Facebook and Twitter

admin — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 00:51:03 +0000

UK Labour is taking the General Election very seriously – and is steaming ahead with its online engagement. With the polls showing that around a third of the electorate is still undecided, this outreach is especially important.

The newest web offering from UK Labour is a web-app that allows Labour supporters to comment on the leaders’ debates directly from Labour’s web page.

This app not only lets you comment on the leaders debate (the last of which happened yesterday), but you can also interact with the campaign by changing your Twitter background or avatar, inviting friends on Facebook to vote Labour or changing your Facebook profile pic.

Pretty neat stuff.

Adding Twitter’s @Anywhere

admin — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 11:44:07 +0000

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 follow people directly from the website you are on.

This is a fairly simple feature to add, and I hope that it adds a bit of neat functionality. Let me know what you think. Worthwhile or annoying?

Unions and Twitter

admin — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 22:26:58 +0000

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.

Seven online campaigning activities you should already be doing

admin — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 21:33:24 +0000

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 some simple things that local campaigns can do however to maximise their vote and try to reach that 3 percent boost.

Many of these ideas are more widely applicable for running online campaigns in general, and for unions in particular.

1. Have a presence on the main social networking sites

Set up a profile or page on Facebook, and depending on your campaign’s demographics, on MySpace, and Twitter.With over 6 million Australians on Facebook, 2.3 million on MySpace and around 670,000 Australians on Twitter, these are social networking sites you cannot afford to ignore. If you already have a profile on Facebook, consider setting up an official Facebook page, so you can benefit from the many extra features that pages have over groups or profiles (see here for an example of the benefits).

Just because Facebook and Twitter are the flavour of the month, don’t neglect MySpace. MySpace is still used by a large number of young people (high-schoolers), and it can be a way for you to build a longer-term relationship with teens, especially if that is a big demographic in your electorate.

If someone on your campaign team has a video camera and some experience, set up a YouTube and Vimeo channel (check here for how to do this on YouTube, and go here to set up a YouTube politician’s channel). Recording and broadcasting short campaign messages is a good way to directly talk with your electors, and sites like YouTube can be easily shared by your supporters on Facebook and Twitter. Make sure you have a call to action, such as donating, volunteering or joining your campaign mailing list.

2. Have a blog on your website

Get a campaign website if you don’t already have one. In addition to your policies, biography and how to subscribe to your mailing list, you should also make sure you have a blog. There are many easy options to install a blog on your website, and most of them are free. Using WordPress, Moveable Type or Google’s Blogger are easy to set up, and most offer a way to install or embed the blog into your own website. I personally prefer WordPress, but depending on what content management system your website uses, you may have to use another blogging platform.

Blogs are very important for search engine optimisation reasons. Blogs help you draw traffic to your site through online search engines. When most people want to find out information about a candidate, they got to their search engine (e.g. Google, Yahoo or Bing). Most blogging software is optimised for search engines, which means that it pushes your website higher up the search page. Blogs also give you an opportunity to engage with your electors and supporters. Many voters will appreciate the transparency – and you can use it to promote your events and activities.

You don’t need to personally update your blog every day. Get someone on your campaign to add blog posts – but make sure they don’t pretend to post as you. Keep your posts and the posts of your staff distinct.

Don’t expect to be getting hundreds or thousands of page views or visitors, or scores of comments on your website straight away. Promote your blog and your website in all your other communications – emails to supporters, ads in the local paper, on flyers you hand out while door-knocking. You can also advertise online…

3. Build a campaign email list

Email is still the most effective online campaigning tool. Having a large list of supporters and electors means you can directly communicate with them, without the filter of the local news. Email is very effective at building engagement and directing people to your website.

There are lots of email service providers that allow you to create email campaigns, and get data about opens. I’ve got a post here (Email is the “killer app” for online campaigns) that goes into some detail about using email.

Early in your campaign, you should be aiming to build your campaign email list – have a sign up form at all of your campaign events (fundraisers, street-stalls, etc). The people on your campaign list will be useful as volunteers, donors and of course, eventually they should vote for you.

4. Advertise online with Facebook and Google

Online advertising is an increasingly effective way to get your message to your target audience. Most online advertising lets you micro-target your ads using key words. Google Adsense and Facebook Ads are probably the most effective online advertising vehicles, although there are others (e.g. MySpace and Yahoo). Most of them allow you to set a daily, weekly or campaign budget, so you can carefully manage your advertising spend. Even a small budget of a few hundred dollars can pay big dividends. Google has a page especially for political ads – so they’ve made it easy for you.

Facebook ads can let you target people in your electorate, and also target people who share your values. Your ad can direct potential supporters to your Facebook page, or to your website.

Each ad should have a specific purpose (“call to action”), such as building your campaign email list, getting people to donate, or volunteer, or vote for you on election day.

You can also use online ads to respond to attacks against you by your opponent. By putting your response online (such as on your blog or as a YouTube video), you can use key words search terms on Google to make sure that when an elector looks for more information about the attack, they will see a link to your response. Generally, there is no more than a 3 day window for this kind of response, so act quickly.

5. Use Google Analytics or other analytics programs

There are lots of analytics programs out there, some free, some paid. The bench-mark is Google Analytics, a free service. By setting up a Google Analytics account, you can get detailed information about who comes to your website and how they use it. Google Analytics can be integrated with most email service providers, as well as Google Adsense. Google also offers other free services for websites, such as Website Optimizer, that allow you to experiment in changes to your website to make it easier to use.

UPDATE:

I should also mention a few useful resources for website testing and optimisation that can be used by relative novices. A useful tool that I’ve used on the Creative Unions website is Usabilla, an excellent free website usability testing service. They allow free testing for up to 25 users. Jackob Nielsen, the father of web usability, suggests that you only need 5 test subjects to find around 90% of the problems with your website. Testing your campaign website has never been easier (or cheaper). Just make sure you act on the findings.

6. Monitor the media and social networks

There are many free tools that allow you to track news stories about your candidate, opponent or other important topics. Google Alerts can give you immediate email notification of news stories based on key words you choose.You can also get alerts for blogs, allowing you to respond to criticisms online, reply to questions or thank supporters.

Twitter has excellent tools to allow you to monitor key words in people’s updates. Twitter Search is basic, but there are other tools, such as Twendz, which gives you more information about what people are saying about a key word. This can be very useful to get up to the minute information about what is happening locally, or what people are saying about your, your opponent or the election generally.

7. Make it easy for supporters to donate, volunteer online

Wherever your campaign is online, you need to make it easy for supporters to get involved and help your campaign. There should be a clear way for a supporter to offer to volunteer to help your campaign. You should set up an online donation account. Your communications, online and offline, should emphasise how people can get involved.

Beware and be careful

Everything you do and say online can be accessed by anyone with an Internet connection. Once the campaigning starts, be aware that your opponents will be scrutinising your online activities as well as everything you do and say on the campaign trail.

Something will go wrong. Whether it is a misinterpreted comment on your blog, or a “tweet” taken out of context, it is highly likely that something will go wrong.

The best way to handle this mishaps is, like all crisis management, to be honest, acknowledge the mistake, explain how you are remedying the problem, and move on. Ensure your response is timely – within 24 hours is a good benchmark. If possible, break the story on your own terms rather than wait to be called by the local paper or news outlet.

Do not try to hide it. Don’t delete the comment or tweet and hope that no one will notice – there are several websites that scan web pages and cache them, allowing people to look at stored versions of your website days, weeks or even months after you have removed the content.

Google Alerts and similar services will allow you to monitor what is being said, so you can make further responses as time goes on. Internet advertising will also allow you to keep your message on the front page of searches.

Some good rules of thumb to help prepare you for a crisis are:

Brainstorm with your campaign team some worst-case scenarios: Sit down and think about the worst that could happen. Try to think of ten things that could go wrong – for example: accidentally “friending” a known criminal or other undesirable person; running foul of spam laws; running out of money or a problem with fundraising; accusations of hypocrisy in the campaign (such as having a policy of supporting local businesses, but getting material printed outside the electorate, or supporting strong environmental standards but using unrecyclable paper)
Make someone responsible for responding to a crisis: Whether it’s the campaign manager or someone else with media/PR/communications experience, make sure there is someone who’s job it is to get on top of a crisis if or when it arises. This will mean that if something does happen, you won’t waste time figuring out who should respond. This person should be responsible for having a plan to respond to campaign hiccups. They should know who to talk to about getting a response out as soon as possible, such as the campaign website maintainer, and the candidate to make a media comment.
Pre-prepare some online keywords: Think about what keywords people will use to search online for more information about the crisis. Use positive words as well as negative ones. Your press releases, blog posts and videos can be optimised for these search terms, and it will save you time when the crisis hits.
Have a design, mailer or other material ready: Ask your campaign designer and/or webmaster to have a template ready for you to respond online and offline to the crisis. Having half the work done will mean you can respond much more quickly.
Find allies: Finding a third party to stand up for you is essential to crisis management. For online mishaps, getting a blogger to comment positively on the crisis, and link to your online response is a good way of getting your message out. Having the third party gives your message increased credibility. Hopefully, through your online engagement, there will be several people you can rely on – even if they are not local constituents.

Remember, online campaigning is not a silver bullet

Just because you have set up a Facebook page or joined Twitter, don’t neglect all of the other important activities of campaigning. You still need to fundraise, door knock, make phone calls, hold street stalls, and engage your electors in the flesh.

Email is the “killer app” for online campaigning

admin — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 04:30:31 +0000

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.

Microblogging: Jumping on the bandwagon

admin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 05:55:53 +0000

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. Posterousâ€™ 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

http://posterous.alexwhite.org/

A Twitter hashtag worth following in 2010

admin — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 21:38:33 +0000

This year will see the UK General Election, where it is widely expected that the British Labour Party will be ousted by the Tories from No. 10 after thirteen years of Government.

The election bloodletting started a while ago, although now it is really getting nasty.

With that in mind, I suggest that you add to your saved Twitter searches the UK General Election 2010 hashtag. (Note: you can also follow it using this tag.)

Some key message ideas for #NoCleanFeed

admin — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 06:23:56 +0000

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 if they don’t support the filter, aren’t going to buy into the idea that Australia is becoming a fascist-state or going down the Iran/China/North Korea totalitarian route.

Furthermore, it’s my view that most Australians do not believe that slow Internet equates to censorship. The things on the “Refused Classification” list include movies that feature either real s-x acts, violent s-x acts or depict underage s-x (e.g. Baise Moi or Ken Park). They also include Jihadist literature, fetish p-rn, and books on euthanasia. None of these things are “family friendly”. (I’ve written about my views on the classification system in this post.)

In discussion with some friends, I’ve prepared some key message ideas that are alternatives to the ones getting air play at the moment.

My contention is that the No Clean Feed campaign needs to not just oppose the filter, but propose an alternative.

The Government has clearly laid the ground on which the media debate is being had. Every time they get questioned about the filter, they frame the debate as one about “cyber safety” for families. In that context, it is near impossible to defend open access to fetish material, jihadi literature or movies with violent s-x scenes. 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”.

The two areas that I think are strong arguments against the filter are:

Economics and productivity: The filter will destroy the productivity gains sought in the $43 billion National Broadband Network; and

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.

To this end, I’ve prepared some key messages based around these two key themes.

Download the key messages here (pdf).
Download 1 page fact sheet (pdf).

Going local – social networking for politicians

admin — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 05:20:37 +0000

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 campaigning in an innovative way. However, even that case is an instance of a well resourced campaign of near-national significance (one step below a presidential race).

Over at Mashable, one of the essential resources for new media and social networking, there’s some great examples of how politicians in the US are using tools like Facebook and Twitter to engage with voters and constituents.

Just like in the corporate world, social media has created a two-way conversation between politician and electorate. One of the biggest adopters on the state level has been Massachusetts (D) Governor Deval Patrick. Brad Blake is the Governorâ€™s Director of New Media and Online Strategy, and holds the reins when it comes to any news/social media efforts coming out of the Governorâ€™s office.

So when thereâ€™s an update to the Governorâ€™s Twitter feed, YouTube channel, Flickr stream, a new blog post, an update to the web site, or even a media package that goes out with a major press release, heâ€™s involved. He said that heâ€™s â€œconstantly learning and listening to our users and those in both government and web 2.0 to tweak what we do and do it better.â€

Here in Australia, there’s some examples of politicians using Twitter and Facebook to break out of the traditional news and media cycle, to speak directly to the public.

Mike Rann is up there with one of the most accomplished users of Twitter of any Australian politician.

Rann uses Twitter to announce policy, to engage in attacks (and defence) against the Opposition, and also occasionally responds to questions.

I’m told Rann became a fan of Twitter after meeting up with Lance Armstrong during the Tour Downunder. As you can see, Rann has quite a strong Twitter following. He also has a customised Twitter background, which is a must for any politician. Rann also links his Twitter account to the official Premier’s website.

What makes Rann’s Twitter different from other premiers’ – like Brumby – is the personal touch. He doesn’t just use it to link to press releases. You get the feeling that Rann is really tweeting from his Blackberry. (Rann’s twitter updates are all via text message, suggesting that they are – mostly – written by him.)

Rann also updates his Twitter almost every day, keeping a steady flow of tweets for his followers.

At a local level, MPs can use Twitter to break through to constituents, rather than relying on traditional media. Carlo Carli for example is the Labor MP for Brunswick. In addition to a Facebook page and a blog, Carlo keeps his Twitter account regularly updated. Updates range from submissions to local reviews, to his views on political issues or European football.

Reading Carlo’s updates shows that he cares deeply about his local community, climate change and social justice. You can also see that he’s using Ecofon, demonstrating that the updates are likely written (mostly) by him.

There’s lots more examples. Local MPs can give live updates on their attendance at local community events, as well as twitpic or twitvid their activities. They can also give updates on legislation as it passes through parliament, or interesting

The Greens Party in Victoria for example are all on Twitter, and have their own websites, as well as a central Greens MP blog. The Liberals are also increasingly getting onto Twitter, especially the senior ones with leadership ambitions (e.g. Hockey, Abbott, Alex Hawke).

While most non-Minister (or shadow ministers, or leaders) have relatively few followers, I’m certain this will change once we hit election season. It remains to be seen if MPs integrate their online activities with their hard-copy campaign material. For example, letterboxing leaflets with Twitter and Facebook links, as well as website addresses. I’d also like to see more MPs websites include Twitter feeds and “Become a Friend” Facebook connect links.

Getting back to that Mashable article I mentioned at the start of this post: at the end of the article it shows a screen grab of the “real time results” for a Twitter search.

This is one of the most useful tools for MPs, who can use the “live” web to try to put their finger on the pulse of their local community. Using Twitter (and Facebook and other) search tools to local chatter about a local development, scandal or landmark can help politicians engage directly with the concerns of their constituents.

(NB, politicians beware: organised groups can manipulate this kind of thing, as we saw with the anti-CRPS campaign run during the leadership chaos of the Liberal Party.)

What about you? Do you know of any other good examples of local politicians (especially local council) using social networking?

Four pillars of social networking

admin — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 23:33:37 +0000

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 to get their heads around the concepts of Facebook or Twitter. They can get frustrated that there doesn’t seem to be an immediate payback. This is particularly the case for union campaigns where it is difficult to link blog posts, tweets or comments on a Facebook page to new members, bodies on picket lines or similar. Whereas businesses selling a product or service can see a return on investment, political parties and unions have a harder time of it. Furthermore, the union communications officer or organiser may not have admin rights to the union website, access to Google Analytics or similar services to test the effectiveness of integration between the website and social networks.

To assist decision makers at unions (and elsewhere) on how to effectively use social networks, I have gathered four pillars for social networking. These concepts should give a good foundation for using tools like Facebook or Twitter. They should of course be read with my other articles about social networking.

1.There is no instant fix

While a major feature of social networking is that it is “instant” and “live”, using social networking tools effectively is a slow process. New media is not an instant fix. While it is easy to create a Facebook page or Twitter account, just setting them up is simply the first step in a long march. Like other endeavours, social networking takes time to do right.

2.Keep at it, be consistent

It is easy to let things like websites, Twitter accounts and Facebook pages slide when things get busy. I know that when my work heats up, I will neglect this blog, as well as updates on Creative Unions. This is understandable, and most organisations (especially unions) won’t have the resources for a full-time person to handle their online activities. However, you should be consistent in your online activities. If you haven’t updated your Facebook page for a long time, don’t despair. Get back on the horse. Make time when things are quiet. Some social networking apps (or software like WordPress) allow you to schedule updates, so that you can pace yourself. (This post for example was written on the weekend, and scheduled for a weekday.) Consistency strengthens the relationship you are building with your readership, fans or followers.

3. Don’t be selfish

Social networks are about communities. Communities of unionists or union supporters. Communities of progressive political activists. Communities of bloggers or tweeters. These communities value good content and are willing to promote that content. However, you must be willing to do likewise. If another union, or a member, posts or tweets something interesting or insightful, share it. Re-tweet it. Link to their blog. Respond to comments and emails. Engage in the conversation. Give back rather than simply take.

4. Trust is essential

Trust is essential for social networks. In these days of phishing and spam, smart Internet surfers only visit sites or follow links from people they trust. When websites are increasingly filled with marketers trying to sell something, people are relying more and more on what their friends tell them. This is why social networks are so valuable for unions and political organisations. They allow unions to build personal relationships with scores of people simultaneously.