Your PERSONAL-ity Brand
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- Image by nattu via Flickr
It was refreshing last night to hear several senior members of the NSW Liberal Party speak about the importance of putting your personality on display!
Dai Le (The Community Relations Co-Ordinator for the NSW Parliamentary Team spoke all about this, and displays this pretty well on the site she built for the recent Cabramatta Bi-election - in which she achieved a record swing against the encumbents www.electdaile.com.au)Â
The discussion was all around how the NSW Liberal Party are utilising Social media to assist with their campaign efforts heading into 2011.
As Mark Neeham (State Director NSW Libs) said;
“This is not about replacing good old face to face campaigning or TV or radio or the press, this is about an integrated approach to make sure our candidates have the best chance of being elected”
Everyone agrees that there is no substitute for campaigning face to face and pressin’ the flesh…so what can be learnt from this and applied to the NSW Libs foray into Social Media?
The game of politics and the goal of getting elected is all about influence and persuasion - so how does one do this online:
- Share your personality - less and less people care about your policies or stance on the economy, they want to KNOW you.  Do they like you, can they relate to you, do you sound like someone who will listen to them?  Share photos of your childhood, your family and the things you love doing in your spare time.  People demand this stuff, and want this stuff.  They NEED this stuff before they will start listening to you bang on about issues and policy In the battle between personality and policy, personality wins EVERY time!)
- Listen - people like to meet you in the flesh partly because they can EAR BASH you over their views and gripes about the state of their world.  So make it easy for them online.  Share your email address, have a blog with an open comments section, ALWAYS be seeking questions and comments on every online medium you use (twitter, facebook, YouTube)
- Trust - People are so paranoid about “what if they send all these bad guys over and comment on our site and say bad stuff!”  Are you kidding…they are already saying bad stuff!  Worse, they are saying it to their friends behind closed doors!  Let them air it, and spark discussion…trust me, your supporters WILL come to your aid and revoke the negativity (if they don’t there is a message here too…you have NO support).  Finally, you can always moderate the comments before they go public.  Trust and acceptance of criticism shows you are human…
- Frame the Debate (Noel McCoy spoke about this last night also) - Content is KING…nothing has changed…and content is even more Kingly when you create it!  People like (love) original thought, and are MUCH more likely to buy into the conversation.  Criticism of the Government is not original content - it is simply giving the Government more press for their issue!  Choose new issues - let people know what is REALLY important to you…it may even be important to them!
- Listen - OK, I have mentioned this before, but you get the drift…we all have two ears and one mouth; well you will notice that with your Broadband Plan you have more download capacity than upload!  There is a reason for this..so you can download peoples questions, comments and contributions!
There you go…my thoughts on why campaigning online is no different to campainging online; it is all about being INLINE!
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05 Feb 09 7:04 pm
I agree with your insightful assessment about campaigning in the era of social networking.
Last year senior New York Times journalist, Matt Bai, gave a talk on the impact of internet campaigning in the US.
He said that the internet provided a profound two way dialogue, which conventional media hasn’t been able to achieve.
Relating it to the then upcoming presidential US election, he stated that the
internet will be the next mode of political campaigning. As it was happening already in the states, people head online for almost everything.
We were on the cusp of something
profound, to borrow his words.
Through online and the web, national boundaries have been broken.
Cultural barriers and language barriers have basically disappeared.
People are sharing their stories,
their experiences, documenting their life in which ever format, or
recording them in whatever forms, in order to be heard, in order to
express themselves.
I believe one of the reasons why the web has had such a global impact is
because it has allowed for diversity of voices and experiences to be
shared in conventional, and unconventional ways.
The web experience is that, there are no limits and no boundaries.
People are interested in being connected to one another. Fear disappears on the net and you can approach someone - through ‘following’ them on Tweeter, of ‘poke’ them on Facebook, or SMS them, or upload your own video on Youtube, or blogging. These methods allow people to get to know one another first before taking the next step of seeing each face-to-face - if they choose to.
And yes, to Trust and to Listen are two important factors in political campaigning.
It will be interesting to observe the Liberal Party’s foray into social media.
I know that our Leader Barry O’Farrell has his website up an running (www.barryofarrell.com.au) as well as using Youtube to upload his videos.
So does Federal Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull, who’s using Tweeter and Facebook a lot.
I’m in the process of building a website (www.daile.net.au) and making it interactive.
I hope we will be utilising this tool to break down communication barriers and cultural barriers and to get the message across that we are there for the people, to represent the diverse voices in our society and to get this State back to the dynamic and premier State it once was.
dai