Putting a New Face on Social Networking

Victoria's bushfire emergency, Australia's greatest natural disaster. Photo: Jason South

The bushfire crisis in Victoria has shown another use for social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. According to Emma Young reporting in the Sydney Morning Herald (11/2/09), users inundated Twitter, the microblogging site, with expressions of support.

In a more practical approach others set-up an account posting updates from the Country Fire Authority, dispersing the potential overload of people in search of information logging onto theofficial emergency services sites.

Even the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, used the site to post messages to his 7,000 "followers" about how to make donations of cash, blood and seek government help.

Young also reported MySpace contact over 2 million users registered with a local group to relay information on emergency contacts and how to make donations; and Facebook had a number of groups created to support the families of those filled in the fires.

With social networking becoming a part of everyday interaction - how could you use this medium in a public relations campaign? Where would you draw the line between what was relevant information and what was straight-out promotion?

Do provocative, controversial campaigns work?

The charity, Adults Surviving Child Abuse (ASCA), has launched a campaign today of "in your face" print, radio and television commercials designed to get the issue of the long-term effects of child abuse onto the political agenda.

Do you think such campaigns work? What are the pros and cons of running such an approach to get attention to your cause? What role can public relations play in such a campaign?

Check out ASCA's media release and commercials here.

When there is no limit on budget .....

The Internet and digital media generally was used extensively during Barack Obama's campaign for President.

The numbers make interesting reading:

E-mail
13 million people on the e-mail list who received 7,000 variations of more than 1 billion e-mails

Donors
3 million online donors who contributed 6.5 million times

Social Networks
5 million "friends" on more than 15 social networking sites, 3 million friends on Facebook alone

Web site
8.5 million monthly visitors to MyBarackObama.com (at peak) 2 million profiles with 400,000 blog posts 35,000 volunteer groups that held 200,000 offline events 70,000 fundraising hubs that raised $30 million

Video
Nearly 2,000 official YouTube videos watched more than 80 million times, with 135,000 subscribers 442,000 user-generated videos on YouTube

Mobile
3 million people signed up for the text messaging program. Each received 5 to 20 messages per month

Phone calls
3 million personal phone calls placed in the last four days of the campaign.

You can get more details from this website

If you were doing an election campaign for a candidate, say someone running as a local member of Parliament, which of these techniques would you use and why? How would you obtain subscribers? How would you monitor the success of the campaign?