Why its More Difficult to Maximise Social Media in the UK Elections.

April 19th, 2010 View Comments

Photo from Flickr – Philipp Klinger

I have long talked about Obama’s Democratic and Presidential campaigns, as being a best practice example of social media. I have also often talked about this in relation to the UK elections and pondered why none of the parties have really used this in the same way. I think there is a notable difference between the US and the UK: time.

Time is the key factor, the length of time between announcing he would campaign for the Democratic nomination (Feb 10 2007) and the inauguration at the White House (January 20th 2009) was just under two years. This is plenty of time to build a groundswell, communicate your policies and in Obama’s case his personality, and the build those commmunities.

In comparison, our parties have little over 6 weeks to unite the nation, create a groundswell, communicate policies (repair your personality) and build those communities.

6 weeks is barely enough time to get started, especially during a time where there is a great antipathy towards all parties, a desire for a change, and simply a lack of interest in anything that is said.

Obama therefore had it pretty easy compared to Gordon Brown, Nick Clegg and David Cameron. There teams will really need to be at the sharpest end of the stick to make any social media activations work.

MT

Think this is a really interesting point and agree that UK politics will never leverage Social Media as well as they did in the US, but don't agree that time is the reason. If anything, i think given the viral power of social media time shouldn't be a factor at all.

I personally believe the reason is two fold. Firstly the British don't tend to openly associate themselves with brands/organisations unless they're sport or music related. British people don't become 'fans' of brands on Facebook for example, as much as they do in the US - and even if they do, their numbers don't come near and social media is often about numbers and reach.

Secondly, politics in the US is pretty much something that represents you as an individual - Being a republican or a democrat is as commonly asked, even when an election is not on, as which state you're from. People have a sense of belonging when it comes to politics in the US whereas in the UK, it's something you tend to keep to yourself and only really bring up around election time.
mattbambow

I think that time is still a factor, but thought about your comments below
on the way home. My view is that perhaps the parties are still using social
media to broadcast rather than engage, monologue like an election manifesto,
rather than dialogue like social media should be used.

I do disagree with the "association" point of view, we have a Skittles page
which has 480k+ UK fans on it, but I do see the point that less fans engage
with brands.

Thanks for commenting! Matt

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