A sign of changing times

26 Apr

Politics! I never thought the day would come when I would discuss politics on my blog since I’m not the most politically inclined (I do exercise my right to vote) but I’m not the most engaged voter.
So before I lose you, I won’t be discussing politics but merely how one politician was using social media last week here in Montreal to connect with potential voters.

Facebook.

Sure, we know American candidates are all over Facebook and Obama pioneered the use of social media in his 2008 win but in Canada this was a first.

Let me backtrack.

There I was last week, casually glancing over my Facebook newsfeed when I caught sight of a Michael Ignatieff town-hall event being livestreamed through Facebook.

Curious, I went over to check out the page and this is what I saw:

social media elections canada

  • A live stream of the event that was taking place in Montreal but available to the fans everywhere(over 64,000 fans)
  • Questions being asked by the Facebook audience and being answered by Ignatieff
  • Discussions happening online amongst the Facebook audience

All live.

A very impressive use of social media by the Liberal party candidate.

It shows that

  • they know and acknowledge where people are spending their time online and were willing to be there.
  • they are actually engaging the fans that they worked to aquire
  • they were willing to take a risk- while they weren’t answering every Facebook question, you are still putting yourself out there anytime you engage with people in real-time
  • they are willing to use existing platforms  (Facebook) instead of asking people to participate in the talk on another site (for example on their website) and risk losing people along the way

And in doing so they have benefited because they were able to get their message out to people who may normally not have listened (myself included) or are no longer tuning in to the same channels anymore. Interestingly enough, people were asking in the chat if these types of events would happen in the rest of Canada. Ignatieff also mentioned that if elected they would use this channel to regularly communicate with constituents.

The message may not have changed but the mediums sure are!  Definitely a sign of things to come, it will be interesting to see how many more brands and businesses use their Facebook pages to engage this way.

How are you engaging your audience differently given the choices these days?

 

P.S  This is in no way an endorsement of the Liberal Party Candidate. I’m still undecided.

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