Politicians on the web – you’ve gotta keep it real

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Prezza Bus

By Mark Hanson

I’ve grown a bit frustrated in recent weeks with various attacks on the work being done by all of us at many different levels to improve Labour’s web presence.

Some of the criticism on Tory blogs or by sniping press commentators is to be expected. It’s all part of the ‘game’. But what bothers me is a misrepresentation that Labour on the web is all about the launch of a website. It’s not. It’s about how the Party, top-down engages with Party activists, supporters and swing voters.

The form of engagement will differ depending on who is doing the communicating and who the audience is. But tell me that we would have a tool for organising for ourselves on the web a year ago, or a convenient way of building our supporter base or even a leading Labour figure talking in normal language as opposed to sound bites.

Even the Tory blogosphere reluctantly admits that John Prescott deserves respect for the way he’s talking to supporters. This is how the US internet revolution, that we’ve heard so much about, actually started. With an ordinary guy called Howard Dean who was so ordinary that he was like a breath of fresh air

Barack Obama built on this and made it professional, which is exactly what we’re doing. OK, Rome wasn’t built in a day and there’s loads more we need to get right, but look at this blog post from a Manchester blogger

You’ll notice that in the comments section a local resident (Kay Peel) raises a number of issues that she feels Labour is responsible for in her community. Notice how Lucy Powell, the parliamentary candidate responds, like a human (!) and makes herself relevant in terms of explaining what she can (and can’t) do to help.

Then notice how Kay’s tone changes! This is real and its part of a slower but more significant cultural change taking place in how Labour talks to people and makes itself useful.

And I can’t finish without mentioning Obama again: check out this post from my friend, Jon Clements, a communications ‘guru’ in his own right, who makes some excellent observations about how refreshing Obama is in how human he is.

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