Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

More hullabaloo last week about politicians and the Internet - Emily Bell asks why her local MP isn’t on Facebook, the Irish Times is all a flutter about politicians and Twitter, and there was drama as Fianna Fail unveiled their new website which was developed with Blue State Digital. Is it just me though or is everyone missing the point? Can we take a step back, take a deep breath and look at Irish political parties efforts of using the Internet from a strategic perspective, rather than simply counting how many ‘friends’ or tweets a politician has.

Digital tools should be employed by politicians as a Customer Relationship Management system. At their core, they serve as the means to organise and activate its membership base, and then reach out to engage new supporters.

Instead, political parties are looking to all manner of social media soothsayers, who at the flick of a switch will suddenly make them popular and young people will line up at the polling booths and vote them into the Dail.

Digital media can deliver answers, but not necessarily to the questions they are asking. But don’t take my word for it, the Observer carried an interesting interview with Thomas Gensemer, the other co-founder of Blue State Digital who ran Obama’s online campaign. Here are some of the key excerpts:

“The real questions are, ‘What are your goals, and how can you use technology to achieve them?’

At the heart of the Obama web strategy was MyBO (pronounced MyBeau), which worked like any other social networking site, encouraging potential voters to get a membership to this exclusive club, create an identity within it and discuss the cause with acquaintances. But there was a difference. Rather than merely join this network, passively clicking a button to donate or express an allegiance to Obama, members were encouraged to go out into the real world to knock on doors, hand out leaflets and spread the word. The site then encouraged these efforts to be recorded and shared with the online community, making the user feel empowered and on the front line of the campaign.

He wants to nurture active supporters, not passive donors - people who have a stake in the organisation they have signed up to support, envisage a long-term relationship and want to be taken seriously.

Obama saw technology as the only way to transfer traditional community organising to a national level, with volunteers and donors signing up online and then being encouraged to go out to recruit further volunteers, hold meetings and house parties, spread the message.

I find this really interesting as I’ve joined a political party recently and marveled at how closed the community is within it, something which seems to be a running theme in Irish political circles. For example, I recently went to a meeting about the upcoming local and European elections, where one of the organisers spoke about how important our support was, whether it was going out leafleting or inviting candidates to public gatherings we were involved in. However, there was no obvious way of getting involved unless you take the time to pick up the phonebook and track down your local representative. Finally almost two weeks after the event, one of the MEP’s team emailed yesterday to enquire if anyone want to go leafleting - haphazard organsational skills at best.

That’s where the idea of MyBO comes into play, where you could effectively log into your political party’s website, tick the box which matches the level of involvement you want with the campaign. Edelman’s Digital Affairs team in our Washington office looked at this and pointed out in their report on the Obama campaign that:

The Obama campaign understood that it needed to provide a variety of ways for people to be involved in the campaign based on their level of engagement. As TechPresident noted, the goal was to “provide opportunities for the most casual supporters to stay involved, while also providing more strenuous opportunities for the smaller core of activists.”

As a supporter moves up the ladder, each rung requires more commitment, creates more value, and will tend to hold fewer people. Whether you are canvassing for a candidate or advocating for legislation to Congress, an e-mail is easy to send but can be drowned out easily as well; a phone call requires more effort and carries more weight; a personal visit is the most compelling but also requires the most commitment.

The Obama campaign gave prospective supporters a menu of options:

Personal - You could start by friending Obama on a social network. Then, you might sign up for text messages and e-mails to stay informed about the campaign. As a supporter, you may make your first donation or register to vote.

Social - Once invested, you may post a comment to a friend’s profile, telling them why Obama was the right candidate for them. Perhaps you would jump to the MyBarackObama.com (MyBO.com) Web site, where you would create an account. After getting positive feedback on the site, you might join or even create a group.

Advocate - To drive interest in the group, you may post pictures, write blog posts or create a video declaring your support, which you could post to YouTube. With insights and materials from the campaign, you might host an offline event where you would ask supporters to donate money, register to vote, canvass or phone bank.

The ultimate aim is to use the web as a recruitment tool, arm supporters with information and then set them loose on the electorate. It will take some time for this to happen in Ireland as politicians don’t have enough faith in voters, as a political correspondent aptly pointed out at a recent event I attended.

While it is nice to see some signs of hope on the Fianna Fail website such as the clear volunteer section, it remains business as usual in many other respects. For example, Damien Mulley discusses the email he received immediately after the Fianna Fail Ard Fheis, which seems to indicate that Fianna Fail’s idea of engagement is asking voters to send their questions into Brian Cowen in a bid to form some sort of relationship. Given the current political climate, I think most Fianna Fail representatives would prefer email as the main form of contact with the electorate given the level of anguish expressed at constituency offices, newspaper columns and radio comment lines of late.

Email is definitely the number one digital tool, but just contrast the body of the Fianna Fail email with that of the email Keith Martin received from the Obama campaign. Pushing this sort of information out to your supporters is a clever way to get them engaging with politicians. Of course, a degree of civic education and participation is lacking in this respect in the Irish electorate, but more on that in a future post.

While people may get hung up on the latest Internet fads like Twitter and Facebook, politicians have to take a step back and set out their objectives clearly before deciding upon the most appropriate tools for the task. Start simple with email and then worry about the fancy stuff. Ultimately votes, not friends, win campaigns. Looking at Irish research, recruiting canvassers is more effective than leaflets or ads. Seems to be what Obama was thinking also:

Did it help that Obama is switched on technologically? “He carries a BlackBerry, but he doesn’t write code,” says Gensemer. “The biggest thing is that the guy was a community organiser 20 years ago, and he knew that you as my neighbour knocking on my door meant more than a paid organiser or even himself knocking on the door.” Obama saw technology as the only way to transfer traditional community organising to a national level, with volunteers and donors signing up online and then being encouraged to go out to recruit further volunteers, hold meetings and house parties, spread the message.