SimpleScott Former Design Director, Obama for AmericaScott Thomas is constantly seeking the simplest answer to complex problems. Scott began his design pursuits studying architecture before bouncing to graphic design and web development.
In 2007, Scott's career took a dramatic leap when he was invited to join the New Media team at Obama for America. The chance encounter led Scott to becoming the Design Director of the historic Obama Presidential campaign. He is currently writing a new book that explains how an obscure senator rose to the highest office in the land and celebrity status with the aid of branding and design.
Learn more at http://www.designingobama.com (where you can still preorder!)
With one day to go to the general election I am shocked the parties aren't using social media more to get their message across. I would expect talk of it to be every where I look and it’s not! This must be the equivalent of the World cup for Politicians? Yet I have only had one friend send me an email from a Political party asking for my support, that he had been asked to forward on. (Orange email if interested : ) I love the dedication of my local Green candidate handing out leaflets outside the train station or Lib Dem candidate at ASDA. But with the technology available to engage people, I would be aiming to get the highest percentage of votes ever cast on these shores, to happen tomorrow. Why isn’t social media being used more? You have the potential to touch more people, more times. Even if all you did was search your party and candidates names. RT positives and answer negatives. Great you have a face book group, but why aren’t you using it more? Conservatives 84,447 People Like This http://www.facebook.com/conservatives?ref=ts#!/conservatives?ref=ts Have to google them to get links else where http://www.youtube.com/user/webcameronuk I got a minute into their 1st video and it’d Tony Blair smiling and mentioned Labour 5 times, I can smell the negative messages and stopped watching way before the 9.50 sec message #badchoice. Labour38,211 People Like This http://www.facebook.com/conservatives?ref=ts#!/labourparty?ref=ts Also advertise…. You can also find us at:
http://labour.org.uk
http://youtube.com/labourvision
http://labourspace.com
http://twitter.com/UKLabour Lib Dems Users:4,734 monthly active users but only f 2,884 fans?? http://www.facebook.com/conservatives?ref=ts#!/apps/application.php?id=2577016717&v=wall&ref=ts but limited use and no engagement. http://www.youtube.com/user/LibDem Are you messaging your fans telling them what great stuff you are doing? Inviting them to share and send little ripples out amongst your supporters friends too? Set up an event called election and invite your followers. Gather your supporters and ask them to forward a good message tomorrow encouraging everyone to vote! Every time someone joins a group, likes an article, writes on your wall (Up to the individual) they could be triggering a notification in ALL their friends on Face book. How many times could that message be sent on again if it’s interesting? Twitter Labour http://twitter.com/UKLabour 17,013following 16,342followers 830listed Conservatives http://twitter.com/conservatives 28,010following 30,426followers 1,338listed Lib Dems http://twitter.com/libdems 19,272following 19,508followers 1,146listed Twitter followers RTing your messages? You answering their concerns (Rally the troop’s god dam it) Are you following the online forums commenting? Are your supporter’s blogging? Are you mobilizing them asking them how to spread the message? What about YouTube (the 2nd biggest search engine) How many video’s of good stuff going on does your party have? Why aren’t they being passed around as examples of good work? Added on face book, RT’d, dropped into blogs. Why aren't you using a common #hash tag on all your online stuff so people can find/search for it. Lib dems are http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23lovedemocracy but may be down to http://twitter.com/davidangell ‘s good work : )Could still do more!
If some one #hashtags @yourpartyname and search for the wrong spellings too especially the blue party! But these people are your supporters and with some guidance they will do even more for you. That is just what you could be doing. But what if you open it up to your supporters, set up a group ask them their main concerns or what they think are your biggest achievement? Think of your best message or better still the one you want the undecided people to be thinking when they get to that ballot box. Spread it to your supporters and ask them to share what they think is relevant or better still ask them to forward to people they know it will resonate with. There are still un decided's out there, so go fish where the fish are! Here are other things that could have been done… You could have a widget just search #labour #conservatives whatever just showing a constant stream of positives. Make it easy a quick how to add a Party widget to your blog or website. More people will see it, maybe the National Newspapers give a bit of coverage. A lot of this stuff is free. Twitter do a variety of widgets, that can search whatever you want even so that only one a central account favourite. Ensure every piece of material you send should have a share me button or a send to a friend link. You can make things so easy to share, that’s what you want isn’t it? The cleverest thing I’ve seen so far was a mock up of a political ad where you could change the words and then it encouraged you to post to your Facebook profile or blog (which had a link to make your own). I’ve also been impressed an Ad for my local MP comes up when I search google maps too (nice touch Ms Greening), but that and 1 e-mail does not make a Political World Cup. Am I missing something? Are all my friends bar 1 not political? I do think its great having the TV debates but I think the Political parties have missed a few tricks. Obama had some fantastic idea’s why haven’t you used them? http://www.slideshare.net/MarkjMcNally/tsb-social-media-kt-ns-feb-2010 Who wants my vote? No one has showed me enough reason that they deserve it yet (I’m not alone)!
The noblest of all ideas.........to get every British Business Onlinehttp://www.gbbo.co.ukIt should be fantastic, the weight of the british Government behind it, this sounds impressive : ) They’ve involved BT Google e-skillUK enterpriseuk and they want to give you · A free .co.uk web address· Free customized website· Free online marketingAre you as excited as I am about, the government could help all these small businesses get online, make more money, this initiative should be a massive stimulus (think of all the new taxes these new businesses could generate, what that along with the RBS shares, the UK could be on the up!)But you know what shame on you ( BT, GOOGLE, E-SKILLS UK & ENTERPRISE UK) for such a piss poor effort.This is dire…. Is this the best you can do? To say these sites you are encouraging are web 1.0 is demeaning the guys who were making them back in the day, I know they say things come back into fashion but really 1D (brochure ware) websites in 2010? The companies along with the british government are churning out dodo websites, extinct before they go live. Give people the option to take the web site to other places….. to weebly & yes please use this link, or wordpress or well anywhere else. #fail isn’t strong enough. Getting tied to a crap web site isn’t going to help many businesses, the consumer is too savvy to by from a brochure ware site now a days!But Geo Location if it was left to this initiative half these website wouldn't even have a map to find the Business!I was just about to start a petition at http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/new but there must be an election on as you can't ask for change at the moment : ( I will try to find the best person in Government to complain to about this and add later but this is dire. Does anyone know who to raise this with? (mentioned it to Justine Green MP & emailed her this) People should be able to get these “fantastic benefits” but have the option to use another website building kit!! Or point it anywhere else they want. Crikey I survive pointing my website to a facebook group & also a linkedIN account. Both I would argue more beneficial that this junk.
So I signed upto @GaryVee email newsletter Which mentioned this article about the potential of Geo Location technology within social media being used for business.I had to comment as I find it so interesting, which you can read here. Then I spotted this article via twitter which ended with the comments, "Whether it’s Foursquare or Gowalla or Facebook or Google or Apple’s app portfolio taking the lead in social shopping, one thing is for sure: the infrastructure is in place and the people are ready to participate, showing social shopping has arrived.)
So my plan was to just stick the link for each article, on the opposite page to link them both together so people would see both.
But then I started writing and the next thing I knew it was gone 5am on a Saturday morning.
So If you’d like to see my very non techie, social media feelings wrapped up with trends/directions across a few sectors/businesses or objectives feel free to read on : )
(Apologies for things I don’t get/understand…… but I will ask, investigate & figure things out along the way, this is the journey not the destination)
The idea of Geo location hasn’t even registered for most small & medium size businesses, lets face it only a small percentage are even registering social media may have a role in business.
I went to a recent Business link training course on web optimization (&help getting what your business needs from a web designer etc) in London http://ow.ly/1CsoK where to a packed house of small business owners (100+)
Here’s my caveat (spot my background in propertyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caveat_emptor)
It was a fantastic course & I would defineteIy recommend it but here goes…….. am about to pick on 2 statements with no context from a full day couse….
But he the guy running it said……….
A Small business needed to spend a minimum of £1700 to get a decent website
and
B) He doesn’t know how/any business who/is making money with twitter.
I took umberidge with both statements
A) Can be a lot cheaper (FREE WEBSITE) or a lot more & to just stick a figure in a hungry room is just going to lead to over charged/not doing all it should because in essence it is a flat fee a flat fee.
(but I was in the small percentile disagreeing with him) and he will be doing that course over and over again. See here if you need clarification that neither is true.I definitely think people are starting to wake up to the potential of social media and that combined with geo location technology is going to be a great tool for some businesses.
The whole point of search and why Google have done so well is when they gave the answers, the person moves one step closer to the main objective of a site (to be found) and takes people one step away from the till/cash register.
Imagine when the person is passing a till and you can just send/call them in (not just existing customers but new ones too)!!
But we are certainly not as far down the line as this.....
"one thing is for sure: the infrastructure is in place and the people are ready to participate, showing social shopping has arrived."
Which is a bit strong even in the States who are streets ahead of us (Europe)
If you want to see what the British Government are Evangelising check out my next post
I think the some businesses in the UK (any way) are only just catching up to this whole idea of social media, let alone having the infrastructure in place for it to be common place. & as gbbo.org in my next post shows the british government are still trying to encourage many on line!
I would guess at the start of the year at larger companies there were conversations going on at board room level with people asking what twitter is?
With some people who are switched on to the benefit of social media thinking what strategy shall we use with social media. While the people who get it are trying to figure out clever ways to “engage” their customers or more importantly their community of potential customers. If you laugh you don’t get it yet.
I know there will now be a load of case studies quotes after this post saying here’s an example of social media at work. I say brilliant that’s because it does and I look forward to reading them : )Feel free to let me know your thoughts below or at my LinkedIn group
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