Buzz around national parties and their political leaders has reached some significant highs now the election campaign is in full swing.  Although largely driven by either news sites or tweets by the general public the parties themselves are also investing time and effort in using digital and social channels to get their manifestos across – see Labour interactive videos on You Tube, Conservative Podcasts and Lib Dems ‘Mash -up’ videos.

But what about the party representatives on a local level? I have seen door steppers treading our streets and leaflet distributors targeting busy Saturday shoppers but are they bypassing the online tools that their national contemporaries are trying so hard to introduce?

Marginal Seats

With marginal seats vital in one of the closest elections in years it could make more of a difference to drive and engage local buzz online.

At this stage with three weeks to go, the efforts must be as tactical and local as they are strategic and national.  Big national issues and policies being outlined in manifestos mean very little until you can interpret them on a personal and/or local level.

Lets not also forget that a ‘grass roots’ approach lends itself perfectly for social media too. Where else can you easily bring practical strangers together over a shared interest or rally advocates for a cause?

Picking on Crawley

Tweetmister have a neat tool  that enables you to see which MPs are using twitter in your region, here we can see that Lib Dem are ahead looking at both number of tweets and number of twitter accounts but this doesn’t go down to a constituency level which is where the big difference can be made.

Using one of the many useful poll tools online we can see that Crawley is one of the most contested constituencies (even more so since their Labour MP controversially resigned so close to the election).

Both the conservative MP, Henry Smith, and the new Labour MP, Chris Oxlade, are present online to some degree:

Henry Smith, Conservative MP, Crawley.

170 fans on facebook, last update 4 days ago, responding to questions from the public.  No twitter account or blog but has a video on You Tube that has received 62 views.

Chris Oxlade, Labour MP, Crawley.

622 fans on facebook, last update today,  having a dialogue with the public around a range of issues. 123 followers on twitter although with only 8 tweets its not at all active.

Both appear to have a basic presence and good to see they are having a dialogue with people who approach them rather than just using the platforms to push their own messages out but it does seem fairly limited compared to some of the national activity occuring.

Listening Locally

Could MPs of Crawley be doing more?

We know health is one of the areas of weakness for Crawley so we had a dig around to see where relevant communities and conversations are occurring for an MP to target.  Looking briefly we have found a few already where a relevant target audience can be found around health and well-being:

Some basic tips for local MPs to get started

1. Search for twitter users and facebook groups by location
2. Find out which local community clubs / organisations have online presence
3. Use google search and enter search strings like ‘health crawley’ and filter results by discussions or blogs
4. Spend half an hour each day listening to what all these people you have found are saying
5. Think about which of these people could be ‘useful’ to engage as advocates for different policies or ideas
6. Ask the community questions on your facebook page or as a hashtag on twitter around an issue you have discovered as important
7. Produce a video or podcast that takes the most relevant issues in the national manifesto and highlights what it will mean in reality for locals

Risk and Opportunities

Last weeks peak of online buzz occurred around the digital economy bill. With sites being shared online like this, local MPs can’t afford to hide even on the big issues.

Tom Watson is a local MP who has actively got involved with people online, standing very clearly for a key issue.   Gaming may not necessarily be top of the list of priorities for all of the residents in his West Bromwich constituency but he has the right approach to the social media space.

Many are saying that this election is to be won by ‘word of mouth’. Maybe a little more conversation locally could be the tipping point for those marginal seats?

Here at Qube we (obviously) believe in Social Media as a platform for change. Social media and the Internet are such important parts of our daily lives it makes sense for public officials to start using it as a way of making a positive difference to our country. With that in mind we thought we would start highlighting some of the best and worst uses of social media and the Internet in official communication on a weekly basis. With the election looming it seems now more than ever social media will be important for the political parties.

More of This

This week saw political figures respond to questions asked by social network users. Barak Obama spent half an hour answering a variety of questions from Youtube users. While he was only able to answer a few of the 11,696 questions asked it was great to see the president of the United States taking the time to respond directly to his citizens. The video has received almost half a million views and has over 9,000 comments. That shows a great level of discussion and influence with a smart piece of crowd sourcing.

Over in the UK Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg was taking part in a similar endeavor. Reddit users had been asked to submit questions for Nick and then vote up their most popular questions. Mr Clegg then answered these questions in a refreshingly under produced Youtube video. It was great to see a party leader taking the time to go into other communities and get involved in discussions.

David Cameron has also taken some time to answer user submitted questions. Although the Liberal Democrats approach of going into existing communities may be preferential to some, it is great to see the Tories taking this action (they also have a nice and slick system for submitting and voting for comments).

Why is this worthwhile? A couple of Youtube comments from Nick Cleggs Reddit video make it perfectly clear why.

The next step is for the parties to get involved in these comments on their own videos

Less of This

Labour have a bunch of “tools for your website” on their official site. Rather than focus on their own policies they seem to have taken the school boy approach of throwing insults. There are a series of “satirical” widgets that you can install on your site to show txt speak conversations from the Conservatives. Hardly the most thought provoking or conversation starting stuff. Instead of creating fake conversations for your site perhaps they should help voters engage in real conversations with the party?

Have a look at the offending item below and let us know what you think. How do you think the political parties should be using social media?

A good news blog post…

After a successful 18 months using social media to develop a community and change driving behaviour in West Sussex, the initiative has now been widened to cover the whole of Sussex.

Needless to say, we’re chuffed our social marketing baby is growing up and spreading its wings.

A big thank you to everyone involved, especially the team at West Sussex for being a great client. I also want to say a big thank you to our in-house team of social media analysts and outreach specialists.

Now stop reading this and get on with some work.