Too many tweets... do not a news item make

Which is the brave move made by David Cameron. From stating that 'too many tweets make a twat', three years later Cameron has joined Twitter and been given quite the welcome. Of course it was unsolicited but it was a weekend, it was a fun story at the beginning of the Conservative Party Conference and it seemed someone thought it a good idea to submit question via Twitter. The #askdave went berserk, trending in hours. If anyone out there wants to find some witty critiques of Cameron, his cabinet, his government, his policies they are there. He made no attempt to crowdsource but the crowd appeared anyway. 

What is interesting is that there are no news items to be found in the mainstream UK media for #askdave, only the New York Times makes a wry comment. So despite the number of responses (though many are from John Prescott), the fact that it seems infamous in politico circles, it is simply a phenomenon within a bubble that encloses the politically-interested Twitter community. So, how democratizing is Twitter, does it shape the agenda; perhaps only when people say something that interests journalists, that shapes an existing story, but it is not a way to capture the attention of journalists with a story they do not want to report. A surprise in this case!

Why a social media strategy has huge resource implications

It seems many organisations believe it to be important to have some form of social media strategy. The lure of reaching new audiences in new ways using Facebook or Twitter is certainly an attractive proposition. It is easy to view these tools as resource neutral. Unlike a website they are free, there is no need for outlay on the design of building of your online architecture, it is there and ready to use. However, the implications of appearing on a site such as Facebook is that you are joining a community and every community has rules. There may well be a degree of expectation that you will interact: answering questions and dealing with customer service enquiries publicly within the architecture of that site. Equally there is an etiquette that needs observing. If you are linked to should you thank that person, should you respond to a follow Friday recommendation on Twitter, the list goes on. How do you respond?

The issue is one of resources and a report by University of St Gallen is well worth a read to fully understand fully how to consider what the appropriate social media strategy should be given the resources at hand. This month's Communication Director, provides a snapshot of the resource implications (see the table below).

Even if strategy amounts to monitoring, which should be almost de rigueur for any serious brand, this is time consuming. Thus we find that on every scale, social media increases the workload rather than simplifying the work of someone working within communications.

Research found this to be the case with MPs and recently we have been analysing Internet usage within the European Parliament from a number of perspectives (data analysis ongoing so don't ask just yet), with a follow-up questionnaire to capture these kind of issues as well as strategic differentiators. With MPs and the UK Parliament, resources (time and support) were key determining factors; so it is not simply the case of should we go 'interactive' but can we and what do we do if people interact. How is the new communication environment to be managed and how can the ecosystem be both worked with and monitored to make sense seems one of the greatest challenges for those working in 21st Century strategic communication.

If nothing else, social media can tell you if you got the message out

Due to the immediacy of public input an commentary, it is now simpler to assess the extent to which any set piece event is able to capture attention and also whether you got the message across. The US President State of the Union (hashtag #SOTU) is one such event and key to this is firstly capturing attention and secondly getting the message across.

Mashable produced some great analysis of what the social web was talking about when discussing the the SOTU. It certainly captured an active audience, 400,000 tweets is a significant number, and of those the majority talked about issues relating to education and the economy, they also note clear spikes in issue attention suggesting Obama is leading the online commentary. This, however, is an engaged audience who not only listen to SOTU but wish to add commentary and debate the issues. Sadly there is no sentiment rating to assess the extent of whether they were largely supportive or not.

A more representative sample was used to test out whether Obama's messages got through to the audience. An article in New York magazine shows two word clouds, one for Obama's speech and one from recall among 4,000 of the audience. Obama's cloud is dense and full of the sort of language one would expect. There are a lot of issues raised but also those buzzwords 'new', 'people' and references to nation and national identity with America/American/Americans. The 4,000 viewers picked out a less dense package of words. Aside from education, the key terms were descriptive as opposed to the terms Obama may have liked to have had resonate. Words such as 'Inspiring', 'hopeful', 'optimistic' describe a mood as opposed to issues - this tells us something about what audiences pick out however. But then there is the major key word they heard 'Salmon' - not a major policy area!

What do we learn from this, well we can get instance responses from an audience. Usually this would be the most engaged group however. This may look pretty positive but this may lead to a false sense of security about how you led an agenda and how politically aware the majority of people are. Asking a mass audience shows that what you think people heard may not always be what they actually left with in their minds.

Vodaphone's failed viral campaign #mademesmile

Its a great idea, you want to get a bit of positive word of mouth. You start an online campaign and so do a bit of crowdsourcing. You find an appropriate hashtag (the symbol which placed before a term allows searching and grouping of tweets) and invite Twitter users to say what 'makes them smile'. In theory it creates a buzz about the brand and gets coverage online and offline. More importantly, in theory, it associates the brand with the making people smile. Well this was what could have happened for Vodaphone in a parallel universe when they offered free phones to those who told the world what made them smile.

The major mistake was to not take into account the environment for the brand. If you are a brand ticking along just searching for a bit of positive coverage it can work fine. Tetley, the tea company, invite users to send in pictures of their mugs to 'The Gaffer' at @tetley_teafolk; it seems to be going ok but Tetley don't have enemies. Vodaphone face significant criticism for not paying taxes in the UK. UK Uncut, campaigning against cuts and tax dodging, invited their followers to hijack #makemesmile. Very soon it became a trending topic, the content said it all. See this article for examples.

Just like Labour's #changewesee, Vodaphone managed to attract opponents which shaped the messages at key times. Conservative/LibDem supporters placed a lot of observations of negative changes they saw on Labour's site. The lesson is that letting the online crowd have control over your message is a dangerous one, but the outcomes can be predictable. Basically if your brand is in trouble, possibly avoid giving your critics a space on your own website to say what they think. It can end up with your opponents getting the positive coverage and not you!

#Twinge - Twitter's potential for politics

At Labour's Conference last night there was an interesting debate on the use of Twitter, interesting because it showed in many ways the full range of attitudes to the use of the Internet and social media within Westminster. The debate was blogged live on Channel 4 news website and via Twitter (appropriately). Of the bits they showed, Tom Watson came over as the advocate. Not surprising really, given his history as a pioneer of new media and blogging in particular. For him though, social media is a way of connecting with like-minded people and given them opportunities to discuss issues of importance. For him, social media enhances democracy; possibly Kerry McCarthy (Labour Twitter Tsar) would agree. Caroline Flint rather sat in the middle on this. She was concerned about the time this kind of interactivity could take but also made what is actually a very good point that social media cannot be used to substitute other forms of interaction. But she also offered the typical political line: "at least you can get your version of the truth out there". So for her it has some uses but possibly more for propaganda and persuasion than connectivity or interactivity. Ed Balls made an interesting point about proving authenticity, and the fact that when you are a Minister people are sceptical that it is really you sending the tweets; absolutely true. He also commented on the fact it is hard to be interesting all the time, yes accept that too. But his comments also showed that his use lacked any real strategy and he was being taken somewhere through the use of social media. So he is led by the bandwagon perhaps, but is perhaps being drawn to communicate in different ways because of that. If anyone wants to seek hope from this it is perhaps in the approach of Tom Watson, the man who wants to bring people closer to politics. However, he may not be alone. Users like Ed Balls may become drawn towards a more inclusive style due to the nature of the communication and the use by one section of the Twitter community. So it may have potential for democracy after all, though still some like to announce what they had for breakfast - fancy boiled eggs now!

Strategy and social media - tricky stuff!

As with much social media, if politicians are to use them as tools for engaging with voters they must be used by the right people. This is not some normative sense of 'right' but the voters that are the key target of persuasive communication to encourage positive attitudes, support and eventually voting behaviour to flow to the party or individual. I admit that using social media may not solely be driven by vote winning, but there is often a strong correlation between being very active both off and online with being in a marginal constituency when looking at MPs' communication.

So can we tell if the users we are reaching are the ones we want to reach? It is very difficult, Obama had Facebook fans from across the globe, indicated by the network they have joined, but the location of those on other sites is hard to tell. Tweetminster has conducted research using Twitter, they find Labour would win an election by 37% to 27% for LibDems and 20% to Conservatives. Party is the main vote influencer (78%), out of the current options Brown is the top choice for prime minister (35%) and use of social networking by MPs influences 43%. What does this tell us?

Well clearly the respondents are not that representative, unless the major pollsters have got it seriously wrong. But Labour and the Liberal Democrats may either have a fairly committed audience on Twitter or have gained one (I suspect the former) Conservatives may not have as large an audience so it may have limited potential for them. These are also people who enjoy social networking (a bit of a no-brainer), probably use it a lot (as they responded to the survey) but also are influenced by party to follow MPs rather than the reverse. This means every MP should be promoting the party (if their strategy is to win votes) and not just themselves as the audience they are talking to are looking at the whole as a composite of the sum of the parts and not seeking personal relationships. Finally, and perhaps crucially, these users are influenced by use of social media, so the fact that parties and MPs are using the same tool as them (or at least just under half of them) is important to them.

So the tool may have an impact, but only in some ways. If the research is useful (and it is easy to criticise it) then it offers a few hints about how to use Twitter strategically. There is though a broader point, the strategic use of social media needs to take into account who the current users are, what drives usage and in particular what drives the proportion of users who do to use political or politicians profiles etc, and then what the party or MP wants from those people. A tricky ask but one that perhaps needs investigating if significant resources are to be channelled into any tools when both individual time and effort are at a premium and money to pay full-time employees is in short supply!

The social media battle

Something that McCain has been slow to engage in and hence he is the loser. Jeremiah Owyang has completed an analysis of the results of the social media campaign by both the major candidates and the following headlines emerge:

Facebook

Obama: 2,379,102 supporters

McCain: 620,359 supporters
Obama has 380% more supporters than McCain
MySpace

Obama: Friends: 833,161

McCain: Friends: 217,811
Obama has 380% more supporters than McCain
YouTube

Obama: 1792 videos uploaded since Nov 2006, Subscribers: 114,559 (uploads about 4 a day), Channel Views: 18,413,110

McCain: 329 videos uploaded since Feb 2007 (uploads about 2 a day), Subscribers: 28,419, Channel Views: 2,032,993
Obama has 403% more subscribers than McCain

Obama has 905% more viewers than McCain
Twitter

Obama: @barackobama has 112,474 followers

McCain: @JohnMcCain (is it real?) 4,603 followers
Obama has 240 times more followers in Twitter than McCain

The key question is will this matter at all. There is no geographic boundary on social media engagement so these online supporters may not even be in the US never mind the all important swing states and bellweather states. But is he does win then it may well be the case that social media may have be seen as a significant and central tool for future campaigns.

The turnout challenge

I will be interested to find out if turnout for the London Mayoral Election is higher than expected this year, and in particular if it is higher among the 18-25s. The reason for the latter is that a Facebook group has been created by London Elects, presumably, the body overseeing the running of the contest. It is very simple, it has a logo that reminds about the date, offers links on how to register and who the candidates are and has created an event which all members of the London network are invited to join: once joined they can be contacted about the event by London Elects and reminded the day before and on 1st May. The attempt is clearly designed to reach out to a voter group that have lesser likelihood of participating via a media they are expected to use and interact with; hits all the buttons but will it work? Will it be just the over 30s Facebook users and political anoraks (yes, that is me I refer to) that sign up and vote or will a few 18 yr old new voters be drawn out by this experiment?

London Elects is not alone in getting a seat on the Facebook bandwagon. The Power of Information Taskforce has been created, under the leadership of Tom Watson MP (right), which aims at helping government departments make better use of the Internet. Just focusing on one site Netmums a "unique local network for Mums (or Dads), offering a wealth of information on both a national and local level", Watson argues "Having 100,000 mums on a social network like NetMums sharing ideas about how you bring up kids or what it's like to give birth can be useful to government because they can talk about the services that they provide. Government can be useful to them to give them advice on what's good and what isn't good". So perhaps the notion of political marketing will incorporate data collection on the issues of concern via monitoring social networks which will then be reiterated back to the public via manifestos.

But Watson sees a far more benign purpose and one that mirrors the growing trend for politician's use of ICT, he argues: "We have got to go where our citizens are congregating". Therefore he is selling the idea of going online, reaching out to voters/citizens and I guess getting them to then visit bespoke government and party sites, ergo: "it is genuinely so easy to set up a Wiki or a chat room and that it's useful to help people do their job and share ideas". True but for what purpose and with what effect? Engagement is the bottom line it seems but, as with the bid to get more voters turning out on May 1st, will it work?

Getting young people engaged

Here is Liberal Democrat Steve Webb's take on why politicians should use social media. It epitomises the LibDem philosophy of going out to where the people are (pavement or social media) and engaging them on their terms about their issues.

Is he correct?

Lib Dems conquer social networking

Critics may mock the fact that the Liberal Democrats have the most MPs (by percent) on Facebook, well 40% is only 25 MPs, but at least they have a strategy for joining the network. Steve Webb, an MP who has spearheaded the party's web presence through his blog, argues: ""Young people are far less likely to vote than their parents and grandparents, yet many of them have strong views on local and national issues and want their voice to be heard. Social networking sites such as Facebook provide an ideal way for this conversation to take place." And he may just be right in his perspective. While many have knocked Ming Campbell for appearing 'too old' to be a party leader, it is he that has the most friends and is nickname 'The Mingler' by some on his wall; is this the springboard for attracting votes also? It maybe too soon to tell but if Facebook can be a place to start a conversation, and a lot of young people choose to join that conversation, will we see an increase in young voters, and an increase in support for particular parties; is social media the new battleground during the permanent campaign?

Yes I inhaled, that's the point

The clip from US TV is fascinating comparatively. While British politicians have been almost hounded from office for hints that they may have tried illegal substances, US Democrats are more than willing to admit trying drugs, Barack Obama in particularly. The piece argues two pints, one that it gives the impression of authenticity, being normal and real. This is argued to be a dog-whistle suggestion, heard only by the young that expect a normal person to fit into certain characteristics. Secondly it closes down debate and speculation, though perhaps David Cameron wanted to keep the mystique going for some reason. What will be admitted come the next election, or the one after, or will anyone need to speculate about anyone's behaviour when they were younger when most of it will be listed within the profile history on Facebook?

Social Network for sale, £1000 each

There are six MySpace pages claiming to be Tony Blair's, see this one for example. They are all fakes, but Peter Hain's in genuine, well one out of the three is, as are those of a number of politicians here, on Facebook, Bebo etc. But are they really the politician?

The purpose of setting up a social networking site is to offer an insight into the real person behind the political persona; to be something other than the woman or man who is fielding Paxman's questions or delivering the party line on the News, Question Time or whatever. The idea is that the person becomes authentic in the eyes of those who interact with their pages.

Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC Technology Correspondent, uncovers an interesting insight into the use of social networking, quoting a friend he writes: "I met somebody the other day who told me that online networking was so important, and he didn't have the time, he was paying somebody to be him online. To blog, network, post etc . £1,000 a month too... Apparently it's a new occupation which he reckons already numbers hundreds of people, paid to be other people!"

This is no major surprise, after all we can imagine that the more high profile the public figure the less time they have, ergo the more likely they are to have staff to update their blogs, write on people's walls and update their profiles. The problem is that you expect that there would be some instruction on what to write, that it would not be situation where the supposed individual was totally detached from their network.

One can imagine that PR and Advertising agencies will begin to add this as a service, next we know there will be virtually identical profiles appearing where every politician has a pet, is family oriented, cares about the constituency, has the Arctic Monkeys on their Ipod, watches Lost while having a vision of a better society; or has this already happened

The e-campaign comes of age?

Candidates in the primaries and the parties themselves are increasingly utilising the Internet in their bid to win the US presidency, with the Democrats leading the race in building up a community around their social networking activities according to an article published today. The activity on their open threads does not suggest a party talking to voters, but evidence that there may be strong public engagement and cross-contributor horizontal dialogue; is this the e-public sphere that many academics of public discourse suggest the Internet can facilitate? Two observations here are very important, both made by John Durham the Internet strategist behind the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. Firstly that a candidate going online "needs to cede a certain amount of control for a certain amount of visibility", and when "Every vote is going to be necessary... [the] undecided group of voters [must] be reached in non-mass ways". British counterparts need to take note of this, and the level of interactivity French presidential candidates engaged in; being online is not sufficient, but creating a real dialogue and so building relationships requires a degree of openness and interactivity. If positive and fresh perceptions of politicians is to be built online then it needs to adopt a different model of political communication than the simple repeat-remind, one-way push communication! While Howard Dean did not change the face of political communication in 2004; the forthcoming contest could see the candidate with the most interactive web presence win the primary and the election - it is possible!

Was it social media that won it for Sarko?

A brief piece on For Immediate Release discusses the role of Loic le Meur in developing the web presence of Nicolas Sarkozy and getting him to interact online. Explaining his role on his blog, le Meur describes the interactive element as follows:

"I finally joined the Sarkozy campaign as one of Internet advisers and took care about the conversation. That means anywhere on web, in a decentralized way. Based on the previous debates experience, I thought I should start by finding a way to sort the questions and launched a digg-like for Sarkozy, debat-sarkozy, people could ask their question, then vote for the most important one, and Nicolas Sarkozy committed to answer the questions: 1500 questions were answered and more than 8000 comments appeared on the site, a good start... We started having a very close relationship with bloggers from all political areas of society, invited them to the campaign headquarters every week to meet a political figure, about a thousand bloggers showed support to Sarkozy, many others who would not vote for him were still happy to be in touch with us, and by the dialog that was created"

And it was not simply a process of interacting with the online community through formulating answers to the most popular questions:

"[le Meur] also launched an island in Second Life, l'ile Sarkozy, which has been an amazing experience. The island has been managed by voluntaries who created the buildings and monitored it 24 hours a day, more than 400 avatars joined a Sarkozy group and many became residents of the island. We survived attacks from opponents which were interesting to see, bumbs, naked people, insults, mines dropped, weapons, demonstrations.... The island has been packed during the entire campaign, reaching the SL max avatars limit most of the time [see screenshot below]. The most interesting for me was when we started streaming the debates at the real headquarters in the virtual headquarter on SL and had lots of interactivity, we took questions from SL and had the political figure answer them. The conversation and bridge between the virtual and the real life was fascinating"

There was a downside for le Meur getting involved, he had to start moderating comments to his blog, but this is also a measure of the level of engagement across the online community. As Sallie Goetsch agreed, this could be 'a harbinger of what is coming in political communication' as 'blogging and politics go well together as people have strong views'. The online environment provides a variety of ways for the political candidate and electorate to form connections; but it must have the interactive element. There must be a connection between equals not the traditional top-down from politician down to voter approach that seems most common and is simply a transference of techniques used for old media to new media. Many lessons can be learned from the French presidential elections, possibly this is an indication of the shape and style of things to come.

The party's choice?

It seems that the real contest within the Labour Party is not who will replace Blair, but who will will replace Prescott. With those the media call the 'credible candidates' stepping aside to crown Brown, it seems we know who the next PM will be. The Deputy however is highly contested with many of the candidates creating second lives on MySpace and Facebook and setting up campaign centres reminiscent of candidates for the US presidency (but of course on a small scale).

There is a front runner however. Polls indicate Hilary Benn has a lead of anything between 9 and 20 percentage points from his closest rival Alan Johnson. Why might this be. Hilary is the son of perhaps the most famous Labour politician never to become leader, and a man who commands respect within the movement; however Hilary is not the ideological descendant of Tony, he represents a far more pragmatic, modern and dare we say Blairite approach to left wing politics. But that does not mean he is the slavish follower of all things Blairite, he has criticised the war and the government's record on Third World Poverty during his time raising the profile of the Department for International Development; he also claims to be in touch with the grass roots of his Leeds constituency and the party itself. Perhaps this positions him as the right man for the job among party members.

Hilary Benn has also made use of e-communications. He has a blog format website, a campaign website full of credible endorsements, a Facebook profile, though his MySpace page seems to have never quite seemed worth the effort. However the important aspect to the web presence seems his underlying philosophy, he states:

"I want to be your voice as Deputy Leader because I believe we need a more open and more straightforward kind of politics that really listens. Over the coming weeks, I'll be adding lots of interactive features to this site to help you as members and activists say what you think. I hope you will find it makes getting in touch directly with me, and with other supporters in your community and local party to debate our future, that little bit easier"

Rhetoric many may cry, and perhaps it can appear this way and may be proven to be empty long term. However, in the run up to the contest he is being interactive. This creates a pull factor to his sites and may be partially responsible for building and maintaining the momentum behind his campaign. Possibly, however, the fact that he is using the site to interact, something that could be described as best practice for e-political communication, reflects his personal philosophy. Many of those whose votes he is fighting for may well have had contact with him, recognise that the desire to listen is not empty rhetoric and hence the sites become an extension of the man rather than purely a vote winning tool. Yes, there are a lot of 'perhaps' here; but at present it seems to be having an effect.

The social media revolution? Campaigning online

Labour's hierarchy appear to be falling over themselves to have a social media presence. We find an 'independent' site campaigning for http://www.myspace.com/hazel4deputy while Peter Hain's http://www.myspace.com/peter_hain is openly his own. The BBC claims others such as Hilary Benn, Alan Johnson and Harriet Harman also have a profile but they appear to be hard to find. Facebook is also being utilised, but you have to register to find 'friends' and quite frankly I couldn't be bothered.

Social Media consultant Lee Odden talks of a holistic approach to marketing and that online communication should be part of a coordinated strategy. Is this the case, well perhaps. While there are a number of politicians that have successfully embraced the online environment as a form of communication, it seems that Webcameron has created a bandwagon where everyone thinking of campaigning is heading to their PCs first and trying to 'engage'. Will it work, who knows. The general argument (or criticism) is where is the pull factor? But Hazel Blears seems to be attracting a small group of supporters, could this be the beginning of a new stage in the professionalisation of political communication. That rather than being just in the local press, the national media, a serious MP needs to have a not just a website or a public email address but also a Wikipedia entry, a Facebook and Myspace profile, Podcasts on Youtube, a blog and whatever the next stage will be as well? Are we witnessing the birth of political communication via social media?

But there are problems. Are we all then to measure success through hits, friends etc. For a researcher it may make life simpler, we could produce spurious correlations between the Youtube view counter, the blogspot profile views and poll ratings (cool!), but will it prove anything? Is the next election likely to see an explosion in this, and links made between a successful online presence and success in the voting booths, or will this all implode as either users take over control of content or the views are so few it becomes an embarrassment? Questions, questions, questions!!!