Russell Brand has more followers on Twitter than the whole House of Commons put together (OK, I haven’t done the math, but it’s a fair assumption with his 9.11 million followers). But is this real political influence? Probably not. After all, Russell Brand has said time again when asked by angry _QT_ers why he won’t stand for parliament: ‘I’m a comedian, mate.’
So how important is social media in getting people to vote? And do we even want our politicans on Twitter?
As a marketing tool, social media stopped being a nice-to-have long ago. And now it’s becoming a crucial strand in the bigger marketing campaigns. Even the household of HRH The Prince of Wales has put out an ad on a recruitment site this year, asking for applications for the newly created role of ‘digital engagement officer’.
Traditional organsations have realised that they need to get over the fear and become more discoverable online.
[Michelle Obama] does the ‘cool mum’ thing, and people love it.
Social media is the number one place millennials get their information and they are more likely to tweet a complaint than call up or send an email. A study by Fishburn found that ‘65% said they believed social media was a better way to communicate with companies than call centres.’
The social networks themselves know they can help in facilitating the growth in youth voters. The installation of the ‘I am a Voter’ button in September 2014 had a big effect. Researcher James Fowler told TechCrunch: ‘Facebook caused an extra third of a million people to vote.’
The conversation around politics on Facebook is constant, especially as was seen in the Scottish referendum debate, with ‘over 10 million posts, comments and likes relating to the debate’, according to Elizabeth Linder, Facebook’s politics and government specialist. That’s a LOT of people who can be reached.
Social media is still a huge grey area for politicians who are hiring social media and communication gurus at a rate of knots (and the Tories even hired Obama’s campaign managerJim Messina back in 2013).
But rather than using social media as a crude popularity contest and trying to ramp up as many likes as possible, why aren’t they using it as a massive, dynamic, ever-evolving focus group, making sure they are listening to feedback and engaging in an authentic manner?
Politicians simply aren’t reaching millenials and we aren’t reaching them – as young people and students making up the ‘missing million voters’). However, we’re here on Facebook, on Twitter, waiting to be engaged with.
The fact of the matter is, like any good digital native, we can spot a fake personal brand a mile off. So a word for all politicians dipping their toe in social media: try and be yourself, don’t post stuff for the sake of it, own it when you fuck up and just do the very best you can at your job offline and online. And then maybe we’ll listen.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.