Winning the social media vote

In 2008, Barack Obama's clever use of social media in his campaign for the US presidency set a precedent that lead the world out of the Information Age and into the Digital Age. It was also largely credited with enticing more than one third of the American electorate to vote – a record turnout.

In 2010, however, we find ourselves in the Attention Age – where the use of social media by politicians, while commonplace, is by no means a sure path to success. The trick now is to get the attention of voters amid the abundance of information made available by the internet. And with a federal election on the horizon in Australia, the question for Australian politicians is whether they can harness the great power of social media.

In the UK, with a prime ministerial election campaign well under way, British politicians are using social media to market themselves in a whole new way, having come to terms with the fact that the traditional vehicles for getting their campaign messages across, the newspapers, aren't grabbing the attention they once did (circulation has dropped remarkably across the board).

Current PM Gordon Brown, the Conservatives' David Cameron and underdog Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg are all doing their best to update their Twitter feeds and post videos on YouTube, while creating a host of microsites with pretty pictures and some pretty frightful campaigns. (For more on Clegg's success, read Natasha Stott Despoja's "Who'll remove Rudd's blinkers?")

It's working too. A live debate that took place on UK terrestrial channel ITV last weekend managed to coerce 35,483 viewers to tweet a staggering 184,396 times. The average frequency was 29.06 tweets per second.

So, can social media have the same impact on Australian voters in the lead up to our end of year election?

Prime minister Kevin Rudd is already on the case. He has 32,827 people who 'like' him on Facebook. He has his own channel on video-sharing website YouTube, which has garnered some 99,055 views and counting, and he is on Twitter, where 918,880 people 'follow' him.

Tony Abbott is also getting involved with social media, although not as successfully as Rudd. Abbott only has 6,225 people who like him on Facebook and only 6,550 followers on Twitter. However, he does have more than 180,000 views of his dedicated YouTube channel.

But, simply having a presence on social media and employing PR and communications representatives to update a Twitter profile and upload videos of Question Time to YouTube is not going to compel voters to actually like politicians and their policies, let alone vote for them.

At the moment, Australian politicians are using Twitter as just another medium to throw out such headlines as "Rudd's health deal is a plan for a bigger bureaucracy, not better hospitals,” (TonyAbbottMHR) and "Thanks to all the medical staff and patients who have been supporting our efforts for better health and better hospitals,” (KevinRuddPM). But this approach doesn't take advantage of any of the true benefits of having an online presence.

Rudd and Abbott both need to harness social media's real power – engagement, interactivity and communication.

They should be tweeting at just about every moment, whether it is about meeting with senators, kissing babies or appearing on chat shows. Those are the types of things that turn a politician's actions into a voice and a personality that voters can identify with.

They should also be taking advantage of the fact that they can engage with voters directly – to question them, answer their questions and find out what people are really thinking in a medium that is comfortable to them.

Many politicians have blogs, like Malcolm Turnbull, but would the average Joe Voter who lives in outback Queensland be compelled to read it?

Obama's medium of choice is clearly digital and there's no doubt that, between his weekly online video updates and his official photos posted on Flickr.com, he is one of the most internet-savvy politicians in the world.

The important difference is that he is transmitting a personality through these social media channels that Americans – and many other fans across the globe – want to engage with and can identify with.

But on Kevin Rudd's Facebook page, he is as much a cardboard cut-out as he appears to be when he goes around shaking hands in hospitals. The bottom line is, Kevin's personality isn't shining through his Facebook profile, his tweets or his YouTube channel, so what is the point in having these tools at all?

Abbott is much the same. His YouTube channel's theme is red – the same colour as those infamous speedos of his that have already garnered so much criticism.

So, despite the fact that Facebook reaches 69.4 per cent of the Australian population, it seems Australian politicians aren't quite ready to embrace social media. But they are missing an important opportunity, and it's one that would not just put them in the hearts and minds of voters, but perhaps catapult them onto the world stage, as happened with Obama and is happening with Brown and Cameron.