- many have started to blog – but how do they measure up when it comes to the ropes to skip or thou shalt not.
Most of our politicians are still struggling to master blogging and do not follow best practice as this case study demonstrates.
12 rules for blogging politicians – rules 1-4 are a must or don’t blog
12 rules for blogging politicians – thou shalt not … rules 5 – 8
12 rules for blogging politicians – thou shalt not … rules 9 – 12
Adhering by these rules will help elected officials to use social media (i.e. online applications that aim to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users) more effectively.
Today we show you our findings regarding a few political blogs when it comes to:
Rule #1 – You must own (or be ready to purchase) your own domain name;
Rule #2 – You must use the technology to engage in two-way commmunication;
Rule #3 – You must fund/source the weblog with your own money or resources;
Rule #4 – You must write your own blog content or tweets;
12 rules for blogging politicians – 1-4 are a must or don’t blog
So here are our findings.
|
blogs of politicians part of this exploratory assessment |
own the domain |
2-way communi- cation – comments* |
fund weblog yourself** |
write your own posts*** |
|
no |
yes/no |
no |
no |
|
|
yes but not where blog is |
yes/no |
no |
yes |
|
|
no |
yes tries hard |
no |
yes/no |
|
|
no |
yes tries hard |
no/yes |
yes |
|
|
no |
yes/no |
no |
yes |
|
|
yes |
yes/no |
not sure |
yes/no |
* yes means there is a comment feature available, no means the author does not respond to comments.
** no/yes means that whilst weblog may be funded from private sources, site is hosted by a provider that sells sponsorship ads and advertising for this blog
** yes/no that most posts are written by the individual (except for translations, of course) but sometimes it does not appear when reading the post (e.g., writing style)
bottom line
Each one of the politician’s whose blogging or online efforts I looked at fails to pass the four critieria. Each one of them fails at least one if not two.
Except for Ahmadi-Nejad nobody owns the domain where their blog is hosted. All offer commenting on the blog. Nevertheless, communication is a two-way street and unless both parties share there cannot be a conversation.
Leuenberger tries to respond to comments from time-to-time. Of course he has so many it is simply impossible to respond to all of them. Sometimes he respons to a whole group of commentators but he tries and does quite well doing it. John Culberson tries very hard and his efforts on Twitter to respond to his followers are exemplary but cost him a lot of time and prevent him from sleeping more than once a week.
Leuenberger is the only one where we know that neither the taxpayer nor his political party pay for his blog. With Ahmadi-Nejad we cannot determine who pays for the social media channel.
Most, except for Gordon Brown write their own postings. Sometimes one or the other post seems to be so different that one must suspect that one of the staff did the chore for the boss.
Conclusion — Politicians have been getting in on the act but there is still a bit of room for improvement looking at how they measure up using rules 1-4 thou shalt not when you blog.
We will address criteria 5 – 8 and 9 – 12 in upcoming posts. So if you want to know how your favorite politican compares, stay tuned and read more about it here.
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