Don’t Go Mad |
Staying Sane in the Digital World |
"We find DC extremely attractive, we used the net to go interactive." 'Cameron Girls' Saskia and Hayley say they've created this video to help the Tory cause. Sure, it's a talking point, but looks unlikely Simon Cowell is going to be on the phone to them any time soon.
As it starts to become something of a YouTube hit, Tory HQ apparently denies any involvement. So does it help the Cameron campaign or is it just excruciating?What do you think?
Glad to be back in the office after a one day work trip turned into an epic four day journey across Europe. It has all been because of the other big story -- the erupting volcano -- so here's an interesting trend to have a look at.
The chart here shows relative search volumes on Google, and sure enough there are around twice as many searches for the volcano right now in the UK than for the election. But while the fiery Icelandic monster continues to spew ash into Europe's airspace, there's another digital trend developing elsewhere: ever more people are searching online for "Liberal Democrats", in fact the trend suggests that imminently Nick Clegg's party will see a higher volume of searches than Labour currently do (see green and purple lines meeting).
Given that the majority of internet journeys begin at a search engine, this kind of analysis can indicate what's on people's minds. So when the ash finally clears it'll be interesting to see how the LibDems emerge and whether search trends are an opinion poll in their own right. I'll be checking this one again after the next TV debate.
This week sees the start of the televised election debate series, as the three main party leaders go head-to-head on the airwaves.
The BBC, Sky and ITV, together with the party leaders, have agreed 19 key principles about how the shows will work and another 76 points around the structure of the programme, the set, what camera shots are acceptable and to confirm that the leaders will shake hands at the end of the programme. It has all been worked out to precision.
Millions of voters may well tune in -- but I suspect it'll be the clip of a gaffe, a moment of triumph, or something that wasn't even noticed on TV that will be played and replayed online, emailed around, voted and commented on. It's this kind of online video that might be what's remembered; using the internet to share and comment on it could turn out to be what really fires up the debate.
We've published our Weber Shandwick guide to the election -- you can read it below. There's lots more also on our "Inside the Election Blog" at http://election.webershandwick.co.uk
Does the amount of Twitter buzz around a party/candidate have any correlation with whether they'll get elected? It's a question that's being hotly debated and you can follow one experiment in this kind of "predictive modelling" at Tweetminster.
Right now the site is predicting an outcome of 36% for the Tories, 33% for Labour and 22% for the Lib Dems. That's pretty close to the latest YouGov poll which puts Conservatives on 37% and Labour on 32% -- doesn't do quite so well with Lib Dems on 19%.
Clearly there are lots of questions you could ask about how valid it all is, but, given Twitter is one of the many digital tools that simply haven't been available to voters before, this will certainly be an interesting one to follow.
OK, so this video is a bit geeky but if you are a child of the mid 70s then you'll get it!
So the nation's worst kept secret is officially out. But while the battlebuses rev up their engines, the internet is well and truly bringing soapboxes to the 21st century.
Type the word "election" into Google this afternoon and suprisingly there's no mention of Labour, the Tories or the Lib Dems on the first page of the non-paid for results. Meanwhile, the BNP does feature. Search is incredibly important in communications because it's the way so many internet users discover stories and content. This particular search doesn't look great for the main three parties.
Impressive feature improvements coming to Photoshop -- makes you wonder just how many pictures are 'originals'...
Interesting to type "Alistair Darling" into Google today to see what happens. It's a preview of what the digital election battleground may well look like.
From a search marketing perspective (marked "sponsored links")
On the natural search side (the rest)
Comms takeout? Search is incredibly important for discovery of a story. Need to tell a consistent story in an appropriate way across multiple platforms. This extends to traditional media as well as digital. The door knocking, shopping centre appearances, rallies and TV debates are coming in a virtual form to an internet page near you. All parties are finding ways to make their stories work harder and search will be a critical part of this moving through the election period.
Never mind the state of the economy, the jobs market or indeed the imminent election -- today's budget online was about cider.
TV producers will be running round preparing evening news bulletins (been there, done that) but are still several hours from going live. It's more than half a day until morning newspaper readers open print editions to read detailed analysis of today's budget speech. Meanwhile, online communities have already had their say on the detail. (Of course some of this is on TV and newspaper websites but my point here is that the internet is realtime, rather than on an appointment-to-view basis).
A glance at Twitter shows "White Lightening" (albeit a typo) is now a trending topic. Interesting to see also that Alistair Darling himself is trending -- not "budget" or "tax" or "Labour" or anything related, but the man. It's personal, and the talking points are around the Chancellor and increasing tax on cider.
Looking at conversations across the digital space -- from blogs and forums to Facebook, YouTube and beyond -- I've used Radian 6 to create this word cloud of the hottest topics:
Right now Radian 6 has identified these terms as being at the centre of budget buzz. You can see what's really driving wider conversation online -- it's cider again, along with discussion around spending (both cuts and increases) and topics connected with housing and business.
Monitoring conversations gives us a realtime view on what's front of mind, as well as enabling us to identify the most influential players in the discussion. An opportunity here would be for interested parties (be they the Government, the opposition or any other stakeholders) now to look again at their stories and messaging around each of these issues in order to see how they can shape the conversation, using digital tools to facilitate the next stage of the discussion.
Ultimately social networks give online communities a way to examine and talk about every part of the story, however large, however small. Today it's about cider -- and when the election comes you can be sure that internet users, ordinary voters, will examine every detail, regardless of whether the politicians want them to or not.
This is personal blog of Robert Anderson who works on Digital Communications team at Weber Shandwick in London, counselling clients and colleagues in all things digital.
Robert worked for a fair few years as a TV journalist before helping develop Internet strategy at Sky and then crossing to the so-called “dark side”.
He’s using these pages to express his own views and opinions– his employer does not necessarily share them.
This is the Posterous beta version of www.dontgomad.com which is his original blog, and is something of an experiment.
So now you know.
