While many scoff our politicians in their attempts to ‘connect’ with constituents by using the latest internet-based thingy or iFad, both the Labour and LNP marketing teams have been somewhat on the ball in ensuring their key candidates for Premier are all social-networked-up.
Given the success Obama had in using things like YouTube and Facebook through his election campaign, you’d offer these tools are now as important as having the website (right, Anna?) ready to go to support your tilt. With the surge in support and awareness now of things like Twitter, both parties have ensured their leaders are all set to Twit (or at least someone on their behalf). The differential, however, lies in the content…
The LNP and Team Borg are somewhat slow on the upkeep of their website, YouTube, Facebook pages, etc and particularly his Twitter account (with the latter noting only one entry from Jan 24 offering he’s “just getting into Twitter”). The ALP and the Blighster, however, use all these various mediums to fill into their website. The Anna4Queensland Twitter account gets constant, daily use, alerting followers to the latest updates or policy announcements or photo ops, or whatever. Anna’s YouTube account is setup to show off all their policy and promos, where as Lawrence’s just has a few videos listed. Anna’s facebook account has her correctly listed as a politician, so anyone can browse the info and there are links back to her YouTube entries for all of that content. Lawrence’s facebook account is extremely limited unless you request friendship… and then wait for that to be approved.
As for the others…
The Greens have a website (and Ronan Lee, noted ALP defection, has his own too). No social networking or other official internet media to speak of. Pauline Hanson, while only just throwing her hat in the ring, has a website however it was last updated nearly a year ago. As nominations don’t close until 03 MArch, there’s more time for others to weigh in. The Courier Mail has a better online presence (and better budget), allowing you to both track the movements of the main pollies via GoogleMap, and analysing speeches by both key candidates with a very web 2.0 tag word cloud. No candidates for the DS4SEQ party, but their website is at least current, and they have the mandatory Facebook group.
I’m confident that no matter who has the best online presence, this will not be the keystone that gets either team elected as a part of QldVotes09. The flip side is that if both the LNP and ALP (or any of the other candidates) want to connect with the younger, web-centric, socially networked voter and ensure they are across the important policy issues, then one camp certainly needs to sort out their act poste haste.
Tech/media score to date:
ALP – 1
LNP – 0
Ind/Others – 0
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