Barak Obama’s 2008 election campaign has among other things been hailed for its innovative use of social media and online technology. Especially voters aged 18-29 can be hard to reach with your message, as they may not read traditional media, or watch political broadcasts on TV. So Obama took his message to them, to where they were, to the internet.
Through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and his webpage he was looking like the first two-way presidential candidate and he managed to excite and engage people with his messages of change. The result was a whopping 65% election participation, the highest turnout since the election in 1908, and a comfortable win to Mr Obama himself.
Was this all due to getting his campaign online? Of course not. In politics, as in real life, if you’re going to convince anyone of anything you have to be believable and credible. You have to have a message that resonates with the people you need to convince, and you actually have to be yourself.
When David Cameron tried to copy the success through his YouTube channel “WebCameron”, it failed dramatically. Trying to prove he was a “regular guy” just busy with his kids and the dishes like every other father, just didn’t ring true. The obviously staged clip (if communicating with the British people was so important, why not do it in his office, or somewhere else where he wouldn’t be occupied with his kids and the household chores) just annoyed voters as it seemed dishonest and fake, and at complete odds with his posh image.
See WebCameron here:
The point is, social media no magic potion in politics either. It’s just another platform to reach people who may have been hard to reach before. The rules are still the same: You still have to have an appropriate, engaging message, credibility and trust. It's about being genuine.
I follow Norway's Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, on Twitter. He states on his page that most of the tweets are written by him personally, and the rest are dictated by him but written by his assistants (who he names). He tweets about politics, his party and his opinions and the odd personal tweet about the Norwegian football team or the nice weather we're having. In short it seems like genuine stuff, and he also occasionally engages in conversation with other twitter members.
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| Jens Stoltenberg is a popular politician in Norway. He has also succeeded in building a reputation as a "normal guy". Photo: Erik F. Brandsborg, Aktiv I Oslo.no |
I know his presence on twitter is a carefully thought through PR strategy, but I'm still falling for it. I still feel that I know him better now, and that, if I should so desire, telling him how I feel about something is only a tweet away. It's a transparency that invokes trust.
However, should I one day find out that Stoltenberg hasn't tweeted a single thing himself, that whole trust disappears and I will feel cheated. So unless you can be yourself, be genuine and be transparent as a politician, you should probably not try to conquer the social media scene. Voters are not stupid, and cheating is not accepted.
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