Missed Opportunities
by It was dubbed the television election, the internet election, then the social media election but politicians in the UK have a lot to learn about going viral writes Nick Smith.
“Too many tweets might make a twat,” said David Cameron last June about why he doesn’t use the microblogging service and social media dark horse Twitter. A year and an election later Mr Cameron is settling gingerly into Number 10 with Nick Clegg behind him whispering “not enough votes makes a Deputy Prime Minister.”
Before the election, Facebook’s director of European public policy, Richard Allan, said: “So many more people are online than ever before and I think that creates the conditions for Facebook, and for the internet generally, to be a game changer.” They weren’t and no candidate was able to secure an overall majority or dominate the online contingent of the electorate.
This collective failure may be a sign of the times: widespread unhappiness with the political system, mistrust of elected officials and characteristic 21st century apathy were all factors. Still, the slew of MPs who fell at the hands of ill-advised tweets and personal website missteps suggests the lack of skill with which politicians exert control over the medium, not to mention the breadth of its potential reach.
Over 29 million votes were cast in this general election. There are 24 million active Facebook users in the UK, 20 million of whom are eligible to vote. But only around three per cent of Facebook and Twitter accounts follow a politician or political party.
“Social media works really well if you are generating content on a regular basis and want to get that content seen,” says Barbra Gagol, social marketing manager at genius.com. This applies to most politicians. They broadcast everything from party manifestos to daily press releases. The first problem in this election was that the candidates couldn’t generate content that people wanted to consume.
Gordon Brown was particularly poor online. He doesn’t play well on video compared to his younger opponents and the Labour party’s membersnet website is clunky at best.
In terms of size of following and volume of content, the Liberal Democrats’ Facebook and Twitter campaigns were the most prolific of the major parties but consisted of little more than an extension of the information provided on their party websites and through candidate MPs’ Twitter feeds.
Mr Cameron was the most active in generating video content both from his YouTube channel and the Webcameron portion of the Conservative party website, which featured banal videos of the party leader in his home. Mr Cameron also took a page out of US President Barack Obama’s 2008 social media campaign in setting up myconservatives.com – a site which allowed conservative supporters to create their own campaigns and donate micro-payments.
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