- What have David Cameron (leader of the Conservative Party – UK) Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, David Miliband (UK Foreign Secretary), John Culberson (U.S. Congressman), Moritz Leuenberger (Federal Councillor – Switzerland) and Gordon Brown (Prime Minister – UK) in common besides trying to deal with the banking crisis in their respective countries? They are blogging…. but how well , is the question. Find out here.
Politicians are getting ever more into using social media. But the question is how well they use such opportunities. For this purpose we developed 12 rules that politicians should consider when trying to blog starting with rules 1-4.
12 rules for blogging politicians – rules 1-4 are a must or don’t blog
We assess how our elected officials are doing when it comes to following these four best practices and presented the results here:
case study 1 – blogging politicians – how do they measure up?
In summary, data showed that politicians must improve and many of them still fail the basics such as blogging on their own domain.
Today we focus on
12 rules for blogging politicians – thou shalt not … rules 5 – 8
- Rule #5 – You must keep it short and simple, stupid – KISS;
Rule #6 – You must not get up on your soap box;
Rule #7 – You must make sure your content adds value;
Rule #8 – You must keep your blog free of advertising;
Below is our Tabledddd
Table 1 – ComMetrics Politico Blog Index
|
blogs of politicians part of this exploratory assessment |
KISS |
Don’t get on your soap box |
add value |
no adver- tising |
criteria 5-8 points max score = 4 |
criteria 1-4 max score = 4 |
Sub- total max score = 8 |
|
yes |
yes / no |
yes / no |
yes |
3.0 |
2.0 |
5.0 |
|
|
yes |
No |
Yes |
yes |
3.0 |
2.0 |
5.0 |
|
|
yes |
yes / no |
no |
yes |
2.5 |
1.5 |
4.0 |
|
|
yes |
no |
yes / no |
yes |
2.5 |
1.5 |
4.0 |
|
|
no |
no |
yes |
no |
1.0 |
2.5 |
3.5 |
|
|
yes |
no |
yes / no |
yes |
2.5 |
0.5 |
3.0 |
So what do these findings tell us? It is clear that there is still room for improvement.
For instance, Moritz Leuenberger (Federal Councillor – Switzerland) could still try to follow the KISS principle a bit better. As well, he is getting a bit often on his favorite soap box. Worst is, of course, that the main telecom provider (the telecom regulator reports to Leuenberger’s ministry) advertises on his blog. If this is not a conflict of interest, what is?
John Culberson (claim to faim – first U.S. Congressman tweeting from the floor of the House) is sometimes riding his soap box as well. Additionall, the reader is not always sure if his material adds as much value as one might hope for to the debate (e.g., bail out of Wall Street by U.S. government).
Gordon Brown (Prime Minister – UK), of course has no time to blog himself really, instead he uses his staff to do the job for him. But he also ends up at the end of this quick ranking exercise.
How Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad can write such long posts spending no more than 15 minutes a month on his blog remains a mystery. Although he has failed to post anything for quite a while. When he posts, he surely tends to preach a bit.
David Cameron (leader of the Conservative Party – UK) is not doing too badly for himself. The scoring, however, indicates that even here there is some room for improvement (he got a 5 out of a maximum score of 8 points).
bottom line
The New Definition of Marketing (est. in 2007) according to AMA (American Marketing Association) states:
Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.
I am not sure if our ComMetrics Politico Blog Index will measure this difficult concept fairly and accurately. Nonetheless, the table above shows that our politicians have started to embrace blogging and are doing quite well.
What do you think about political blogs, leave a comment and tell us what your experience has been so far with your favorite politician’s social media efforts… curious minds want to know.
More things that might be of interest:
social media – ropes to skip – Twitter – FAQ #5 – McCain vs. Obama
FT Global 500 – what is a corporate blog
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