Whether you’re running for office, promoting council services or raising awareness to help people change their behaviour to achieve local outcomes (for example, encouraging people to stop smoking, eat healthier or reduce teen pregnancies), social media can play an important role in your campaign strategy.0 Comments

Using new technologies won’t eliminate the need to leaflet, use the local paper or knock on doors, but it can help you target and coordinate activities. Councillors and candidates have used to social media to:0 Comments

• understand local issues, by surveying and engaging with what people are saying online
• co-ordinate campaign workers through social networking sites like Facebook
• translate likely support to real votes by sending out reminders by email, messaging or text
• communicate more complex positions by using blogs to engage in dialogue with citizens
• keep their campaigns at the front of people’s minds using Twitter and RSS feeds

As an election candidate, Barack Obama broke new ground in using social media to work with his supporters. His team understood how people use social media and were able to provide support through social networking which helped citizens discuss issues and organise themselves for local action. Most importantly perhaps, they used their site to collect mobile phone numbers and email addresses which helped them mobilise workers and deliver votes.0 Comments

Boris Johnson’s campaign for London Mayor included resources for bloggers to badge themselves as supporters online. The 2010 local and general elections are likely to be the first in the UK where social media will play an important role in communicating issues, raising money and getting out the vote. We are already seeing the importance of both official political party use of social media and the use of social media by supporters and detractors in the lead up to the general election.0 Comments

Similar approaches can be used to support campaigns or publicity on local issues. Using social media can help you reach different audiences than you might otherwise. And one of the key benefits of social media is its ‘share-ability’; it’s easy for people to pass on relevant information to others through email, blogs or social networking sites. Effective campaign media can go ‘viral’, meaning it’s passed on from user to user reaching a far wider range of people with essentially zero marginal cost.0 Comments

A great example is the Visit Blackpool channel on YouTube. Clever professional production linked with a wider campaign saw some of their videos garner over 100,000 views. The Visit Blackpool website integrates blogging and Twitter, and there’s a Facebook presence as well. The Sussex Safer Roads campaign produced the Embrace Life video encouraging people to buckle up. It had over a million views in its first month on YouTube. Councillors can take a leading role in organising local campaigns or join in with support for those organised by councils and their partners by joining Facebook groups, posting content on their blogs or tweeting it out to their local followers.0 Comments