Online Campaigning: 10 Lessons from the General Election

  • It’s about convergence – print with blogs; TV with online discussions; Twitter into the mainstream media – and you can’t control it. So stop trying.
  • The more effective the tool, the less sexy it is; Think databases and email.
  • Twitter only gets your message so far.
  • Novelty value doesn’t hack it. You need a strategy to get the message beyond social media and into the public eye that goes beyond doing something really smart, really cute or completely stupid on Twitter.
  • Websites aren’t really that great for elections. They’re a good repository for all your policy documents but most people won’t read them.
  • If you want to engage go to where people are already engaging. Newly created ‘campaign’ spaces lack social capital and even the extended campaign period isn’t long enough to establish necessary levels of trust.
  • If you want people to engage with you, listen. A lot. And let them set the agenda rather than trying to control the conversation.
  • It’s about local. Use social media as part of a wider constituency strategy when it’s appropriate but never in place of getting out meeting people or leafleting.
  • Digital media now permeates the lives of the majority of British adults who use it to socialise, discover and discuss. So when an election comes along, they will use the internet for this too.
  • That means that this wasn’t an internet election, it was an election that couldn’t have happened without the internet.
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