Yes they need to learn it plus they need to learn to be more open vs old style command and control (need a bit of that, but not too much) or it won’t work, that will be the challenging part.

Thus the message to all Politicos: Technology and the information age …understand it, or suffer.

Done right, using social media in politics or in business can be a game changer. Done wrong or ignored when competitors use them properly, it can be a disaster.

During a downturn like the one we’re in, social media consultants have to start developing ROI models, or organizations will see social networking as a nice-to-have, not must-have, tool. This post is a model of excellent research and analysis.

from reading that link I think Vision Vancouver just admitted to it but didn’t apologize for it. Maybe they apologized somewhere else and I didn’t read it though.

Funny to think that the FAKE Ladner and Sullivan were not by the same people:

http://twitter.com/peterladner
http://twitter.com/samsullivan

The offer still stands to the person who did to contact me and we’ll sort it out. I know that these things happen, and campaign workers can get overzealous.

As for the commitment to being “real” with the voters through social media, it’s an important tenet. The tools should project the values and ideas of the candidates and the campaigns, not manipulate them.

If it is up to me I’ll always reinforce the importance of this media to today’s voters with any campaign.

Seeing as Vision has nothing to do with the sam sullivan twitter, I’d suggest you rehone the sleuthing skills that led to that accusation and find the login yourself.

regards,

Kori

yes it was off brand but i think the biggest problem with it was not just the twitterjacking it was that the campaign never really seemed to admit it was wrong and apologize for it. Maybe they did, I’m not 100% sure but that was my impression.

You’re right, in the midst of a campaign it’s probably not as easy to be objective amidst all the chaos. What monitoring tools did you use to keep track of what bloggers and twitters were saying about your candidate and the campaign in general and how did you use them?

Thanks Monique.

Thanks Michael,

I agree Sam has more content on his site. He does have more photos with his name on it in Flickr then Peter Ladner, 868 vs 252.

Are you sure that it’s people from the Vision campaign that twitterjacked Sam Sullivan? There’s more than a few people who might not like Sam that might have done it. How do you know for sure?

I think part of what’s important for social media in the campaign is not just the knowledge of the people doing the social media, it’s the buy in by the candidate and other staff members of the degree of importance of it and how much resources are they willing to devote and are they willing to change the style of their campaign to be more open, and accept the risks and rewards that it brings. The last one especially is not what most political campaigns have been traditionally in favour of.

One danger for the NPA is to think that if they just use the tools more, they’ll get a different result next time, the belief that’s all that’s needed. Kind of like the typical line many politicians use, “we just need to change how we delivered the message” vs actually changing the message.