It is widely thought Barack Obama’s second term in the White House was at least partly due to his success in mobilising support on the likes of Twitter and Facebook.

British politicians, keen to learn from their counterparts across the Atlantic have since invested time and money in social media ahead of the election in May.

Rob Comba spoke to Progress’ Richard Angell, Eddie Copeland from Policy Exchange and PLMR’s Natalia Marczewska to get their thoughts on how our parties’ social media strategies are shaping up.

Has this increased use of social media stemmed from Obama’s 2012 campaign?

Eddie says it largely has – this can be seen through Labour and the Tories hiring members of Obama’s social media team to mastermind their own campaigns.

Who have Labour got?

Richard says they’ve taken Matthew McGregor on board who was at Blue State Digital, the company Obama used to run his campaign.

How do the parties use social media?

Natalia has noted the Tories’ Facebook promotion, which has seen them spend £100,000 a month on Facebook adverts.

Is this money well spent?

As the Tories are outspending Labour at around three to one, Eddie doesn’t think it’s that much of a problem – if it is working, of course.

Richard isn’t concerned about the money the Tories are spending because he says Labour are generating more interesting content.

What about the smaller parties?

The Green Party leader is tweeting on average of 25 times a day, whereas other leaders tweet only two or three times a day. Natalia notes that it gets harder to engage on social media the more high profile you are so parties have to rely on the grassroots campaigners.

Related links:
BLOG: Will 2015 be a Digital Election?

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