Telling that the Business & Media section of the Observer sees fit to talk about the power of bloggers at the start of the Labour Party conference. Telling also that they picked a Tory to do it…
Iain Dale says that Labour are lagging behind the other parties in embracing social media:
Last week the Lib Dems held a fringe reception for bloggers. At the Conservative conference, ‘blog surgeries’ will be held for those who want to know what it entails. I will be one of the Blog Doctors on call. And what is the Labour Party doing for bloggers this week? Virtually nothing. Labour understands only too well that their media operations cannot control blogging. They are offering all their members a blog, but these will be read only by other party members, and comments on them. Typical.
Labour is a party that won and held power by mastering mainstream media, and as Mr Dale puts it “Blogs are a spin doctor’s worst nightmare come true”. That’s bad news for the current ruling elite.
Labour in the nineties drew on inspiration and media “management” methods of American political spin doctors. Now they have stopped learning it seems, for now awareness of and positive engagement with bloggers in the US is a must for political campaigners.
I fear Labour will probably not embrace social media – and I really do appreciate the irony in that – until it experiences a real crisis of confidence, one that the coming leadership contest and perhaps a loosening or a losing of the reins of power.
: : I’d also say that there was a lesson here for brands about dealing with social media. The Labour Party is paying lip service to it and you can almost see its culture recoil from the idea of networks and openness. That could cost them dear – at the very least in not opening up to the energy, ideas and potential that social media / networks represent to an organisation which basically runs on those things.
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