In advising aspiring politicians about communications, you can hardly ignore the phenomenon of social media on the Internet. It is reality and it can be useful, is your advice, but—and it is a very large ‘but’—you have to keep it controlled. Do you, for example, call yourself a blogger if you remember to post something every few months? Do you think, your followers will be satisfied with a twit on twitter every other day? Do you consider vapid twits from twitter as sufficient postings for facebook? Obviously the answer is ‘no’ to those questions and that is the sum of the problem.
If someone is doing their job as a politician, there is really no time for social media. If you are Prime Minister Harper, you have staff to do that sort of thing. And even then it is not done all that well. The Harper spoof sites are far more entertaining than the real Harper site.
And, if you are a serious politician, you pay attention to the spoof sites. We were delighted that a spoof site was created on twitter recently for a fictional Peter Lowry @babelonthebay. We are being recognized! It was reasonably well done and linked the Babel mayor’s tweets to give it some content. A spoof site shows that you have pissed somebody off. It is the highest award you can earn in social media.
You have to remember that social media is dominated by 13-year olds. You have to work in their mindset. It is not a grouping of rocket scientists. From a marketing perspective, the most important product discussion is about acne treatments. If you make somebody angry, you get a childish response. You try to encourage people to communicate with you directly if you have written something with which they disagree but a childish mindset cannot handle such direct contact.
Obviously, Babel-on-the-bay is not written for 13-year olds. It is written for people interested in politics—mainly Canadian. It appreciates that the reader is an adult and uses adult language. It is an attempt to communicate ideas for Canada’s future. It seeks to deflate the pompous. It is for people who want to understand. It is fun to write. Please communicate if you wish to comment or to disagree, we rarely bite.
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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry
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