Can the Lib Dem ‘e-offensive’ succeed?

By David Prescott

It looks like the Lib Dems are trying to mobilise an ‘army of bloggers.’ Love him or hate him – and I know a lot of people fall into the latter category – but Derek Draper has succeeded in getting Labourlist up and running and the party more focused on our online offering. From the first New Media Breakfast last year, when Derek openly admitted he really didn’t have a clue about the internet (and he really didn’t) he’s been finding his way, learning from mistakes and making Labourlist an increasingly interesting read. And with Go Fourth doing its own thing online and offline and Alastair blogging like a maniac and twittering rebuttals against his wife’s claims of his domestic ineptness, the left-wing blogosphere is looking quite vibrant. (Not to mention Alex ‘Recess Monkey’ Hilton, Luke Akehurst, Sadie Smith, Chris Paul and Kerron Cross who all blazed the trail long before Derek even thought of his oft repeated one-liner ‘I didn’t know my RSS from my elbow.’)

So here come the Lib Dems claiming they’re not playing catch-up. Heading up the Lib Dem’s ‘technology advisory board’ (how quaint) is Lynne Featherstone who tells PR Week that: ‘It will oversee everything to do with the internet – e-campaigning, websites, emailing – because we’re brilliant at it at the Lib Dems..”

Whilst I don’t doubt their campaigning prowess, I’d say Lynne’s got a bit of work to do in tapping into social networks to grow grassroots online campaigns if their most recent one is anything to go by. Stephen Tall at Lib Dem Voice tried to get a Shred Prescott’s Pension facebook off the ground last week in response to JP’s successful Give Up The Bonus campaign. In spite of plugs from Guido and Dale as well as mentions on countless Lib Dem blogs, the number of people who joined the group is currently……327. (Or make that 328 in two minutes time – hello Obnoxio!) The fact is that these campaigns don’t break out into the wider public consciousness unless they’re amplified my mainstream media and get noticed by the wider public.

John’s RBS campaign started small and grew steadily, developing real word of mouth as people passed on the campaign asks – send on the email to your friends, join the Facebook group and sign the petition. It exploded when broadcast covered it. A chat about the campaign on the Jeremy Vine show and a URL mention saw 6,000 people trying to sign the petition at the same time. So much traffic that it actually crashed the site. Funnily enough, print media didn’t have half as much an effect. But you really need a personality. You can build all the tools you like, but unless you’ve got the messenger to front it, it won’t amount to much. That’s why John fronting the bonus campaign worked. He became the voice and advocate for those who signed the petition. It has to be someone people know – anonymous bloggers won’t help. According to last year’s ‘Digital Life, Digital World’ survey blogs are the least trusted source of information – only 6% of the public highly trusted them. Recommendations from your friends comes out on top. So if you want to build really successful campaigns – the RBS petition was signed by more than33,000 don’t get to hung up on your army of bloggers. Success will come from a combination of online and offline – Facebook AND Face-to-Face. But what you really need is that effective messenger. And that messenger is not your leader – it’s Vince Cable. So the first thing you should do Lynne is sort out his god awful website and get him blogging. Then you might be onto something.