By UTalkMarketing Editor, Clark Turner.
November 4, 2008 was a momentous day for global politics. Not only did it see the election of America’s first black president, Barack Obama, but the day was also heralded as a victory for social media.
Never before in an election contest had the platform played such a critical role with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and bloggers all contributing to Obama’s success.
Now, almost 18 months later, commentators have been predicting that social media will play a leading role in the UK general election race, being dubbed ‘the digital election’.
But despite identifying the importance of the platform some time ago (Labour appointed a Twitter Tsar back in August 2009) and setting up branded feeds little more seems to have been actioned.
In a bid to engage with voters and generate debate, Facebook, even set up its own Democracy UK page. But buy-in has been somewhat disappointing for this (just 16,000 fans) and across the board generally for all parties in the UK.
Barack Obama has over 8 million fans on Facebook. Compare that to David Cameron’s 21,000 and the Conservative Party’s 34,000. Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg fare equally poorly on 5,000 with their parties having 15,000 and 13,000 fans respectively.
On YouTube, TheUKLabourParty has received 261,000 channel views, placing it ahead of WebCameronUK with its189,000 channel views and LibDem 96,164.
But considering the millions of users on the site it’s a somewhat poor performance and is in part due to mixed levels of commitment from the major parties towards social media.
E-mail marketing services company, Return Path, recently found that every major UK political party was promoting its social media presence on the homepage of their websites (apart from Labour and the SNP); yet only the Conservatives and the BNP were incorporating social media links into their email messages.
The company warned that parties that don't incorporate social media links in their emails are missing a trick, and depriving themselves of a quick and easy way to grow their communities online and dominate debate online.
It advised that parties should be including ‘forward-to-a-friend’ links in their emails, as a natural grassroots method of spreading the word about party activity and getting others to sign up to the email programme.
However, so far none of the major parties have followed this advice.
“Our study showed the Conservatives were by far the strongest party in their email communications,“ said Margaret Farmakis, Return Path's senior director of response consulting, who lead the research.
“They took the least time to engage with new subscribers; sent messages at the promised frequency; and incorporated social media within their messages. If they were judged purely on the superiority of their email strategy, they'd win by a landslide.”
In recent weeks, the parties’ social media activity has been stepped up with the Liberal Democrats have releasing a new ‘Labservative’ viral (28,000 views).
Meanwhile, yesterday (April 13, 2010) Labour launched a new online drive to promote its manifesto to the masses. The Green Party has also been tapping into the platform in a bid to maximise its limited budget releasing an advert that can be personalised and passed on.
But without a pro-active towards social media for any reasonable length of time, is it a case of too little too late? Or is it a case that the population is too apathetic to care?
A former political communications consultant and strategist, now operating as a Director at Octave Online Communications, Paul McGarrity, said that while it can be tempting to talk of the 'digital election', the race will be won on a few core fundamentals which have more to do 'the message' rather than 'the medium'.
“'Election 2010' is a classic PR battle. The party to convince voters that they are 'best placed to safeguard the economy' will win,” he told UTalkMarketing.
“'Getting the vote out' then becomes the second dominant factor - elections are won by parties who get their supporters to the polls.
“I believe the role of social media and internet marketing will be critically important for persuading the public on the issues that matter and mobilizing voter turn-out. It's still early days, so expect more election activity through social media closer to May 6."
However, director of social at digital marketing agency Tribal DDB, Allan Blair, warned that parties were missing a trick.
“You only need to spend a short amount of time on Twitter to realise that there is a significant amount of conversation in social media about the election, but very little of this is happen in the political parties official spaces,” he added.
“This is because the major political parties are not really grasping the true power of social. They have made the classic mistake a lot of brands make in treating social as just another broadcast medium to ‘get their message across’.”
Blair went on to say, “Social is without doubt a great way to share information and content but the real value is in the conversations people are having, with each other and with brands and organisations. “
While social media worked spectacularly well for Obama, the social expert was of the opinion that it was unfair to make comparisons between the current UK election and Obama’s presidential campaign, due to different cultural circumstances.
“Obama was perhaps the most remarkable US presidential candidate ever, coming at the end of a very long term for one of the most controversial and unpopular presidents of all time, Bush,” said Blair.
“Obama offered something completely new and different to the people of the US and found it easy to broadcast and ignite people’s passion for his campaign across all media channels. His popularity also meant that people wanted to discuss what he was doing and actively show that they were supporting him, social media became the natural place for people to do this.”
He concluded, “In the UK the Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem candidates are coming into an election mired in general mistrust for politicians and a belief that none of the major parties really stand for anything different. They need to be listening, joining and starting conversations people want to be involved in.
“If the political parties want to tap into these conversations then they need to start thinking about how they move on from just asking their fans to do things with their content (“share this manifesto”, “watch this video” or “tell us what you think about this policy”) to integrating into real conversations people are having in a genuine and transparent way… something a lot of politicians aren’t used to. “
Paul Fabretti, co-founder of social media agency Gabba, agreed that there seemed to be a general lack of interest in what MP's had to say on social media channels in the UK as a result of the onset of ‘Friend Fatigue’.
“Brands find it hard enough to penetrate social networks and these are typically brands that we actively consume and have a degree of affinity for. There is just not space for an MP and his ‘message’ in our personal networks and we certainly do not want to be seen to converse with him,” he added.
“Social technologies are a great way to get across the different values of an individual, brand, or political party, yet only at the election do we actually see any of the parties actively doing anything with their channels.”
Fabretti continued, “How can it be reversed? It's too late now. The time has passed; there has been too little action and listening in between party political broadcasts for anything meaningful to happen.
“Hugh Mcleod of Gapingvoid fame has a very simple lesson to teach MP's: ‘If you talked to people the way advertiser's talked to them, they'd punch you in the face’. Politician's need to realise that they need to talk to people on the public's level and do so on an ongoing basis.”
Lack of communication has certainly been a problem, but so has sloppy CRM.
Commercial director at digital agency, Jigsaw, David Balko complained that the Conservatives still sent him communications addressed to his partner Amanda, despite flagging up this fault twice.
“In the UK, ambivalence towards the parties, their message and their antiquated approach to electioneering will ultimately keep the public interest in them low,” he added.
“They simply don’t ‘do’ conversations in the way that they could on Facebook etc.”
As election trail rolls on, perhaps it’s the politicians’ wives that might turn out to be ‘secret weapons’. After all Sarah Brown, has more than one million followers on Twitter.
This, according to Group Account Director at immediate future, Niall O’Malley, illustrates how politics and social media are coming together.
“In a way, the US election was predestined to be a case study for people power – with many different sections of society being united under one candidate. The UK election is fragmented in comparison and no one party has settled on a consistent message,” he added.
“Without a coherent ‘battle cry’ from any of the major candidates it is no wonder that the UK electorate is still apathetic both in the offline and online world.”
“At the moment the parties are hoping that a message broadcast to the masses will spark online conversations and it doesn’t work like that. Essentially, they have to get to better at small talk to create that connection. Unfortunately, with the election weeks away, it is unlikely things will turn around.”
So would it be unfair to call this the UK’s first digital election with so little uptake?
Not according to managing director at Uniquedigital, James Briscoe, so said the measure had to be set beyond how many fans a party has on Facebook.
“Perhaps the hype has set very high expectations of what a ‘digital election’ means but there is a lot of activity taking place that was unheard of in 2005 election: Digital Q&A happening on Facebook and YouTube following televised debates, parties communicating with voters by email, Labour’s Stiletto Socialist blogger, Sarah Brown constantly tweeting and loads of party supporter blogs,” he added.
“Conservatives were definitely the ‘earlier adopters’ with lots of activity a long time before campaigning season; Webcameron, myconservatives.com, and despite labour and Lib Dems improving they still seem to have slickest strategy out of the main parties.”
Briscoe went on to say that a search for ‘Nick Clegg’ and ‘Gordon Brown’ on Google brought to light some nice pieces of PPC activity from the Conservatives, nicely targeted with tailored messaging.
“Away from what the parties themselves are doing it has never been easier to find out more about party policies and manifestos than in 2010. It feels like there are a million blogs that you can follow, easy access to policies and manifestos, along with tools to help you vote – see ‘Vote Match’ on Telegraph.co.uk,” he added.
“Ultimately the usual social media rules that we discuss all the time with our clients apply to this election. Be authentic – there is no point in trying to make Gordon Brown ‘cool’; blogs are public property - don’t do a Stuart McLennan; and social is ‘always on’ – keep up the conversations.”
Whether the parties do keep up the conversations post Election Day remains to be seen.
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