The electorate of Social Democratic Party is mainly formed from old people, people from the countryside and they have always talked about how to attract young electorate, people from the cities, people with high education, electorate which is mainly liberal or undecided. And social media is a very good channel to reach these people. And now that they have a new president, of whom most striking feature is that he is very young, and from this all the other characteristics, I thought that one of the new approaches in communication would be starting using social media for the reasons aforementioned. It could be part of the rebranding of the party.
But unfortunately, the party is not using social media as they are supposed to. Instead, they are doing a lot of the DON’Ts.
Social media is not about having a Facebook and Twitter account. It’s about, among others, having a Facebook and Twitter account with RELEVANT and UPDATED information. It is about the CONTENT. PSD has a Facebook and a Twitter account. Let’s see how they are using them.
Last tweet was on 8th of June 2009, about the President Mircea Geoana. No wonder there are only 159 followers. Also, there is no link to the website.
Now let’s see the Twitter page of Labour Party in Great Britain.
It looks more updated. But a party which is using even better Twitter is the Lib Dem Party.
Last update on Facebook was a post of someone asking for some information, as he wanted to get involved as a militant. And he was young, living in Bucharest, the target we are talking about. Unfortunately...no answer.
I have tried to connect to RSS Feed of the PSD website, but it’s not working. National Liberal Party in Romania, for example, is using better this tool.
Another Web 2.0 tool which I found on the website is the blog of PSD, called ‘Electronic Communication Service’, with a nice motto ‘Join the online campaign of PSD. Show the people that the Internet can be red.’ Unfortunately, the Internet is still not red enough. I had to scroll down a lot to see a nice two-way communication tool, a question addressed to the visitors about what articles would they like to see on the blog. The only updates on the blog were posts related to the event on 1st of May, a post about a scholarship for young politicians and a Happy New Year post. So, in total, 2 updates since the start of 2010? Oh, and an RSS Feed of Carmen Moldovan, a former PSD deputy who is now INDEPENDENT! Update, update, update!
Also, I noticed a link to Technocrati search about the blog, called ‘Others about us’. Click.
No others. That should be a hint to them that they need to work a lot harder on their social media channel. And also, with the new President, it is the best opportunity for rebranding online and target the young electorate.
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It’s good to see the perspective of a political party in a different country. We have been used to regular updates by British parties on social media sites. Perhaps you take what you have learned here in the UK to revolutionise PR in Romania.
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