Interesting discussion over at Liberal Conspiracy, started off by an account of a recent Labour meeting but also spawning a thoughtful discussion in the comments. It’s a topic Lynne Featherstone covered earlier this year in a piece on this site, where she said:
Liberal Democrat bloggers tend to be either fairly inward or local looking. There are many blogs that really talk just about what is happening in the party, along with a smaller number of – often excellent – blogs which are clearly aimed at a particular local audience (including some particularly good councillor blogs aimed as residents in those wards – understandably enough!).
What we seem to be mostly missing are those combative, outward looking souls who spot a story and want to help spread or extend the message or the point or the attack, as opposed to inwardly looking expressing their own views on it. So you tend to get stories not spreading, and where they are commented on, they are only commented on by those who have reservations to express…
At the moment, it is as if Liberal Democrat blogs provide the online equivalent of committee meetings and pizza and politics events – vital but inward looking – but don’t provide the online equivalent of those outward looking activities such as leafleting and canvassing.
To me, that is the collective challenge we face if we really want to help build the party into leading a wider liberal movement that doesn’t just bring greater electoral success for us, but also brings a stronger voice to liberal causes and which reaches out and engages with those audiences that are so often disaffected with politics.
A good example of this during the year have been my various postings about London government on this site, particularly Boris Johnson and Brian Coleman, which have often been picked up on and further commented on by non-Liberal Democrat bloggers (and occasionally mass-circulation national newspapers) but only very rarely has the story been extended or amplified by other Liberal Democrat bloggers. That some of these stories have spread without that is good, but I think there are missed opportunities here to have more stories which spread, and to add to and extend on the information which one post originally contributes.
UPDATE: If you don’t usually read comments on posts, it’s certainly worth making an exception for this one from Alix.
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I think that it’s actually a really useful function to be the online equivalent of a pizza & politics.
In terms of what bloggers are trying to achieve, I don’t think many of us would turn down the chance to become rich and famous off the back of what we write.
I’m sure most bloggers are well aware that money is extremely unlikely to be forthcoming anytime soon, but that doesn’t stop us from dreaming!
http://www.lettersfromatory.com
Grammar Police: I agree it’s a very useful role, though I don’t think it’s enough. (I can think of one local party, for example, which does excellent social events and political discussions but hasn’t won any election for decades.)
That’s not to say that every blog should try to cover everything, but overall across a group of blogs across time we need a balance of the inward and outward looking.
Agree with GP. It’s one function, and an important one (and still the main point of LDV I think). Negative campaigning of the sort Mark is talking about is another function of blogging. Positive campaigning (such as, e.g., Jennie does a lot of via her large non-LD audience on Livejournal) is another still.
I think the point possibly being missed is that outward-looking campaigning doesn’t *have* to mean getting something to be picked up by the media. Suppose all 200 existing LD bloggers each converted an average 5 readers to voting/supporting/even joining us per year? No media involvement, no single issue campaigning, just good writing and good ideas reaching a tiny target audience, but reaching them decisively. Then suppose 10% of those readers themselves take up either blogging or online commenting/information spreading in Year 2. It’s the online equivalent, in a way, of what Nick does with town hall meetings.
These are totally made-up figures of course, but I’d like to work out a way of discovering the real figures and find out if it’s worth it. We have a rough idea of how many Focus leaflets and how often it takes to secure a vote, don’t we? Can anyone think of any way (probably quite abstract) to do the equivalent for blog posts and/or online engagement generally?
Essentially, why haven’t we yet got online contact down to a science as Rennard did for traditional campaigning? Brian Coleman posts which aim to get stories in the papers are part of it, of course, but there’s got to be more to it than that.
Very good points Alix. Two things I’d add: (a) picking up stories and amplifying them doesn’t have to be only about negative points. It’s true that most often it is, but positive examples of, say, imaginative green policies by Lib Dem run councils could just as well fit the bill.
(b) the Focus newsletter had 40 years or so head start on online campaigning, so I think it’s not too surprising online is not quite as refined yet 🙂
“We have a rough idea of how many Focus leaflets and how often it takes to secure a vote, don’t we?”
IMO no. The by-elections website has 28 pieces of literature from Henley and 27 from Bromley (seats which are as near to comparable as your going to get)
“got online contact down to a science”
Campaigning is an art not a science. This is one of the problems with the party’s approach to campaigning is that it is perceived by people as a formula of “do A, B and C” and you’ll win.
Hywel – ‘campaigning is an art not a science’ – spot on.
Mark and others – the blogosphere contains much drivel. It’s virtually impossible for anything even vaguely official to avoid the ‘Pravda 2.0’ tag, or to be reliably viewed as remotely interesting.
Sites like Liberal Conspiracy or firedoglake, being genuinely independent (the latter’s piece by Jello Biafra challenging Obama’s agenda was great), are far more likely to open up to the public, if that’s the overall purpose (which I think it is). Examples of all the green council initiatives in the world won’t achieve that.
I agree Mark, there is certainly more that can be done in terms of campaigning via blog – things such as the Baby P posts show that non-political types will find their way to a blog if the story is big enough.
However, in general terms, we have to accept that the vast majority of our readers and people who post comments are (currently) Lib Dem activists and our opponents. We may also reach some less active types. As part of building a Lib Dem movement, it’s brilliant to be providing a place where people can “chat” and discuss political things, hone our arguments and face-down the nonsense of our opponents, and getting some of our less active members involved.
If something like this had existed in 1999 when I joined, I might have been more inclined to get involved – instead it was nearly 5 years before I did anything.
As an ultimate aim, I do think Alix’s idea of persuading your readers to become LDs is a good one. But it rather requires that we have non-Lib Dem readers in the first place – and that takes time to build and nuture (rather like your family and friends may become more LD supporting because they feel a connection to the Party through you – certainly happened with my lot).
As a keen reader of blogs from all sides of the political spectrum, my feeling is that blogs work best when they simply tell the truth as the writer sees it.
Sometimes I think that those interested in politics have too much political nouse in a way. Take Brian Coleman as an example. He has a whacking great majority in Barnet and Camden and I think that bloggers may perhaps look at that and think ‘why bother’. Coleman has a natural ability to make himself appear an utter fool. There is surely lots of potential there for making political capital. Yet my (admittedly biased) feeling is that it is quite rarely seized upon by bloggers and political activists generally in comparison to the number iof opportunities.
I believe I’m right in saying that at the last London elections, Nicky Gavron, the Labour Party candidate, did not even make it into Barnet, let alone launch any kind of attack (that I am aware of) on the incumbent Mr Toad. I think that this can only have been due to Coleman’s majority and a ‘why bother’ attitude.
Talk about missed opportunity! Coleman doubled his majority and got even further inflated.
Your blog sir, simply seems to tell the truth as you see it. And its a breath of fresh air.
Alix, my large non-LD audience on LJ is shrinking due to me (so far) having signed up four new members from it…
GP:
Which is precisely why I’ve never run an avowedly Lib Dem blog, concentrate a lot of my attention on non-partizan (and frequently non-political) issues and have a large readership made up of mostly apolitical sympathisers.
I know I’ve recruited at least two members, and I’ve prompted others to sign petitions, write to MPs and similar. I think I discussed with you when I lived in your neck of the woods (and if I didn’t apologies, I always meant to) that to my mind the best way to use t’internet to campaign is to run a specifically local news based blog, being less partizan and more issues based, and engage with other local bloggers on local issues.
Most blogs are apolitical, about local interests, hobbies, etc. Guarantee there are some Wimbledon football team supporters blogs out there, for example.
I joined the party because my MP got in contact with me after I’d written some stuff on my (non-partisan) national politics blogs. I was already in touch with a number of other local bloggers, some of whom are now supporters or members.
Approximately 6% of the UK population ‘spends some of its online time updating a blog’ according to a recent industry survey I read (link stored on the virus infected heap, sorry, haven’t written it up). That means that at least 1 in 20 potential supporters, voters, etc has a blog.
Pavement politics should translate online to reading local blogs, talking on them as just another local, and at times engaging on the issues.
If a local councillor read a post about, say, a problem in the local pub, looked into it and was able to comment saying they’re helping out and to get in touch further, most bloggers would be very impressed. Regardless of their normal allegiance.
There’s a wider point to what Mark’s saying as well. A lot of Lib Dem blog posts rarely link to other specific posts by others. We don’t Spread stories as well as we could.
It’s inline links from one article to another that really assists in Google presence.
Most web traffic, in the UK or globally, comes from search engines. We fool ourselves if we think that our direct, daily readers are the important ones.
The important ones are the people looking for local stories through search engines. A well configured local news blog, written with a Lib Dem slant but still being supportive, will, if done right, get a lot of traffic as long as the good posts it makes get linked to approvingly by other bloggers.
Because most use the Lib Dem Blogs aggregator instead of their feedreader, use either the LDB widget or don’t have a blogroll at all, etc, we miss out on expanding our Google presence.
Mark’s specific example, on Brian Coleman. His posts are at the bottom of the first page for his name. My post is higher, but still nowhere near top. It is top result for his name + AM, but that’ll be a much rarer search.
If a number of Lib Dem bloggers had picked up and linked to Mark’s posts and my post (which interlink deliberately), we’d be able to get top result for his name. Which would significantly help any campaigns against him next time he’s up for re-election.
The same would be true of any other person or issue we wanted to highlight.
Lib Dem blogs and bloggers are still, unfortunately, both inward looking and insular—even when discussion posts on a different blog, it’s rare to see a direct link to that post. And that’s a problem.
@Mark. Jennie has recruited a number of her readers, and always given them the LP ‘join’ link. That’s probably not being recorded. Would it be possible to set up a special code for blogging recruitment so we can track how many people we’re recruiting through blogging overall? Obviously we couldn’t track individual bloggers, but a spare LP number could be assigned to us and that could be tracked (I know online recruitment through the LP number is, or at least was).
Just an idea, but it’d really help with what Alix is saying, and we could start a meme with a best practise of having a “why I joined the Lib Dems” post with the joining link in the sidebar to everyone’s blog?
MatGB: interesting idea re special code. I’m sure we could do something. Do drop me an email at my work email address with any details on how you think it should/shouldn’t be done and I’ll pick up on this in the new year. And if you fancy writing a piece for LDV on the subject of your (very good) comment, email it over too 🙂
I agree with Mat than I do with Alix.
I think the point possibly being missed is that outward-looking campaigning doesn’t *have* to mean getting something to be picked up by the media. Suppose all 200 existing LD bloggers each converted an average 5 readers to voting/supporting/even joining us per year? No media involvement, no single issue campaigning, just good writing
I’m sorry but I don’t buy this. for a start, most people who enter blogging give up after a while because
(a) its hard work
(b) they don’t get as many readers as expected
(c) they’re repeating what everyone else is saying and after a while it all becomes a bit repetitive.
the other thing is, not everyone is cut out for blogging and they’re not even sure how they fit into the ecosystem.
The only way this would work is if people fitted into a good ecosystem of national LD bloggers, local party bloggers, policy issue bloggers etc etc, and they all talked to each other and had a feeling of continuity.
In reality it doesn’t work like that. People email me with links to their new blogs and frankly they’re regurgitating what everyone is saying. What is the point of linking to that? It doesn’t add anything.
I dont’t think blogging is suited to everyone, and I think its a bit of a stretch to think the party can expand exponentially through the medium.
By way of comparison, have a look at this diagram on how Obama reached supporters:
http://thenextright.com/patrick-ruffini/the-case-against-blogs-and-twitter
Sunny, you’re just not listening to me. It *doesn’t matter* that you (or I) find more regurgitation of samey opinion boring. What matters is that each new samey-opinion blog that springs up and that’s any good (and that the blogger continues with beyond the honeymoon period – that’s a given) wins a new, minute audience. To *them*, what you and I see as samey opinion is new. And eventually that blogger will find the tiny handful of readers in all of cyberspace who s/he is uniquely qualified to influence, and who wouldn’t have been influenced but for him/her blogging. You were on far firmer ground, I think, with your earlier analogy of small-scale extreme left-wing papers than you are here.
Re: the rate of expansion of blogging – I repeat my question of earlier on LC: why is “exponential” a good measure? Are you just using it to mean “very fast”? Because what it actually means is “doubling repeatedly at a given interval” so far as I know.
And anyway the whole point of my comment is to ask people how they think we could measure the rate of expansion and its impact – I genuinely have no idea what the figures are and how we might measure them! You and I can sit here barking anecdotal evidence from our own experience at each other until the cows come home, but it’ll make damn-all difference to which blogging models actually work and pull in more votes/support for whatever agenda one happens to be pushing.
& PS Mat/Jennie, discuss further on Sat? (In a way I’m quite relieved that Sunny doesn’t yet get this whole individualistic specialist outreach thing. He’d be bloody good competition if he did 😉 )
Alix, you sure know how to make a party go with a swing 😉
Sunny, backing Alix up a bit. Yes, a lot of new blogs that start up regurgitate the same old stuff. But sometimes, they do it in a different, new and better way.
Remember that post of mine early 2006 that pretty much all the main blogs at the time linked to about getting Labour out? nothing in that post was original, most o fit was stuff I’d said before or had seen others say.
But it captured a mood at the time and got me massive attention (far more than I was ready to handle then, especially with work commitments).
In addition, each new blogger that sets up brings in a new audience, their personal contacts. For my personal journal, I have 50+ regular readers who don’t read any other political blog, with the exception of other personal friends, and obviously Jennie. They’re my friends, family, etc.
When I linked to my Coleman post as a status update, an old school friend commented on it saying how impressed he was with it and the site in general, he’d never heard of us. You know what he does for a living? Runs a succesful social media company, lots of websites, a fair few blogs.
A professional blogger hadn’t heard of us, but did because he’s an old friend of mine from school.
Every new blogger brings in readers that didn’t otherwise read blogs. They’ll link to other bloggers, and build up a network, and spread out. Especially true if they leverage via Facebook when they do something interesting.
Blogging is at its best with a huge number of barely intersecting circles with larger nodal points. Most of the blogs I read daily you’ll have never even seen. That’s good, it means I can point you at different stuff, and point them at you, when it matters.
Ah, um, *looks at preview window*. Yeah, um three double gins makes me ramble, don’t it? I’ll leave it now, g’night all.
Alix, Mat and Jennie – I know what you’re trying to say, I just don’t think that model actually happens in real life.
You’re making various assumptions:
1) The blogger in question mostly blogs about what you want them to blog about (politics, libdems)
2) They can build up a minute audience from scratch rather than tapping into an existing audience (which happens a lot more)
3) They won’t stop blogging after 3 months or so of writing for the same 10 people.
I say all this because while it sounds like a very attractive idea, and one I should be in favour of, but I’ve not actually seen it work in practice anywhere.
The biggest political blogging market is the US, and here it is not only dominated by 5% of blogs, the market doesn’t become any more democratised. It actually becomes even more like a pyramid.
Saying all this, my actual point is that I don’t think the technology is the means by which politics can be spread as a new form of grassroots organising. I think it is a part of the online politics experience but not a big part. An important part, but I wouldn’t use political blogs as a way to build wide-spread networks.
You and I can sit here barking anecdotal evidence from our own experience at each other until the cows come home, but it’ll make damn-all difference to which blogging models actually work and pull in more votes/support for whatever agenda one happens to be pushing.
I agree with this, but there is a lot of research material written about American politcal blogging that we can draw from (in terms of online psychology, not necessarily the political environment).
I think we should both try both agendas. I have a different model than yours and I will be pushing that all next year. Hopefully both will succeed 🙂
Sunny.
Except of course for those actual examples from real life that we can point to, such as myself, Jennie and the friends that we’ve recruited, through blogging?
We’re obviously unique anomalies and it’s never ever happened anywhere else. Except for those times when it has. Because I know it has elsewhere, with other parties as well as the Lib Dems.
Nope, specifically, I said above that most blogs aren’t about politics. The most succesful small scale blogs will be general interest diary/journal based blogs about the things that interest the author and pitched at their friends or those with similar interests.
Like, say, mine. And most of the blogs I read daily. There are a lot of them. Many of them will, on occasions, mention a major news story (the one about the Pope’s bigotry is currently popular), and that can sometimes become a discussion about party politics.
Really? You have evidence for this? You’re obviously not looking at the sort of blogs I’m talking about.
I was recruited as a ‘blogger’ before I’d even heard of the term. Hell, Facebook notes and Status updates are a type of blogging (by the definition of the word). Most of my readers for the first year or so were people I actually knew in real life.
I also picked up friends of friends and people with similar interests.
I can personally point to a number of people that now blog (mostly at the level I’m talking about) I recruited to the idea. Most of them are people I knew in real life already (including my former housemate who used to write the occasional post at Not Little England, pretty sure you commented on some of them).
One of the reasons I promote social blogging platforms to people thinking about trying it (like LiveJournal and to a lesser extent WordPress.com) is because it makes it a lot easier to get to know other users quickly. When Alix was thinking of starting up I recommended WP if she wanted a wider audience and LJ if she wanted an audience of friends—she chose WP, you know the rest.
Just because you’ve not noticed it happening (a lot), doesn’t mean it isn’t, because it really, really, is.
Some will. It’s not something everyone enjoys. So what?
I have one friend who posts to his blog maybe, oh, once a year. He comments on mine a fair bit, and other mutual friends. He posted yesterday. About the Pope story.
I’m assuming you know a lot about the Long Tail stuff and similar, and I’m also assuming you’ve read a lot about the nodal points model and the diverse, disparate nature of blogging.
Both those models correctly assume that most blogs have a very small readership, but each of the readers will read a slightly different pool of blogs, and thus a good story or post on a minor blog can still get right to the top of the linking in if it captures the mood.
You yourself have recruited multiple ‘nodal point’ bloggers to write for LC.
The US may be ‘dominated’ by a small number of top blogs, but most of the blogs stay within the long tail principle. And breaking into those top blogs isn’t as hard as all that if you’re good enough, look at 538.com and how fast that grew.
Neither would I. On their own. But the definitely play a part in recruiting people, and of simply spreading information through Google and similar.
@Mark, will do.
We’re obviously unique anomalies and it’s never ever happened anywhere else. Except for those times when it has. Because I know it has elsewhere, with other parties as well as the Lib Dems.
Wait, I’m not saying this doesn’t happen – that small blogs spring up that talk to only minute audiences and bring in some new audiences.
But this discussion specifically was about, as I understood it, saying that model could be used to build a grass-roots party recruitment drive.
Alix said:
Suppose all 200 existing LD bloggers each converted an average 5 readers to voting/supporting/even joining us per year?
That is the proposition I have trouble with, given your above model. I just don’t see those small blogs translating into party recruitment.
It’s also what the small socialist groups say, and never manage.
If I want to convince people to vote Liberal Democrat, it’s a more productive use of my time to get out there and pound pavements.
Blogs have a small, self-selecting audience. They are read by people who agree with the views of the writer. If I’m delivering a Focus, I’m delivering it to people who don’t necessarily agree with me already, and this is a much more fertile opportunity for spreading the Lib Dem message.
Lib Dem blogs are always going to be insular, and not very effective at encouraging support for the Lib Dems. That doesn’t mean that they don’t have a place – there’s no other forum that I know of for discussing party policy, or how the party’s actually supposed to work, or expressing any disagreement with the way we’re doing things.
Blogging about this stuff doesn’t change anything, but it does act as some kind of safety valve which just about stops disgruntled activists from giving up and quitting the party. In a very small scale way that’s a good thing, but I don’t know how long we can go not giving our members, supporters and activists a voice.
Dave, you assume that Lib Dem blogs have an audience solely comprised of Lib Dems, that’s not always the case. My blog is a healthy mix of people I know in real life, Doctor Who fans, Top Gear fans, and music fans. Lib Dems are a sizeable minority, but still a minority.
You’ve then got people who are generally interested/opinionated but nonpartisan, & members of other parties who want to know what people of different views are thinking. Some blogs are insular, but others are not, & that is in large part down to the efforts of the bloggers themselves.
A bit late to this discussion but I tend to agree that the purpose of blogging is a process of ‘primitive accumulation’ of members etc….blogs tend first and foremost to represent the views of the individuals that actually write them and that tends to be their primary purpose…
Realistically, I know most of my audience has thus far come from Lib Dem blogs (a situation I want to change to be honest)…one of the things I intend to change about my blog this year is to try and move the blog forward to a wider audience…
Now, if the party was blogging that would be a different matter…but err it isnt so it isnt…
The party does blog to cover various specific topics – e.g. http://www.homeofficewatch.com – but also deliberately doesn’t have a central blog because, as the latest Conservative example looks like showing, official general party blogs tend not to work. Instead, quite deliberately, we encourage a range of local and unofficial sites, which overall produces a much healthier outcome.
Mark,
I tend to agree about the idea of a central party blog being a bad one. I wasnt saying there should be one more that there is a distinction between what can be expected of political bloggers and what could be expected of a party one…
I thought I’d run a trial on an article about “Brian Coleman”. Two hours later it is at no 12 on Google, so it’s not that hard to compete on the term.
>The US may be ‘dominated’ by a small number of top blogs, but most of the blogs stay within the long tail principle. And breaking into those top blogs isn’t as hard as all that if you’re good enough, look at 538.com and how fast that grew.
Agree, and I think it is the same in the UK. I’d note that 538 is a bit of an election phenomenon.
1: *all* the UK politics blogs are small in global terms, except perhaps sites such as the Anorak, the Daily Mash and the likes The First Post.
2: Therefore it should be easier to get in “if you are good enough”.
3. If we accept the Wikio rankings as a decent measure then are currently several new blogs in the Top 30:
Liberal Conspiracy (Dec 2007). Bit of a special case as they have maybe 15 MSM/Comment is Free writers, and a lot of established bloggers.
Also Old Holborn (Jan 2008), Donal Blaney (Jan 2007 but quiet for a few months), Ordovicius (Mar 2007), Miss Wagstaff Presents (Nov 2007), UK Libertarians (May 2008), Me (Apr 2007) are all effectively well under 2 years old. Even LDV itself had a fresh start in May 2007.
Several of these have achieved a wider prominence – notably Ordo and Miss W in Wales, which is a smaller pond.
In my case I didn’t even invent the moniker until the start of 2007, so it is a completely new brand.
They all have specific and different reasons why they have done well, so I think it is quite possible to break in – but you do have to work hard or be a group blog or a media figure as well as getting the rest right.
There are none that have achieved cross-over to make the “big 5” a “big 10”, but they all grew over 3 or 4 years not one or two, and there was no “Prescott” story that the MSM didn’t cover, and they hadn’t got the recipe right then.
In 12 months I think that it will be a big “5+5” in Indy Political blogging. No idea whether the WW will make the cut.
On the Google front, the first party that launches say a “shoal” of 15-20 blogs to track all the Govt Departments and gets the official/activist coordination right will be able to outcompete the MSM over specific issues. I’d love to run such a project for independent bloggers as a freelance scrutiny operation, but the other big issue is … resources. That would be a full time commitment for perhaps 2 people.