The Labour Party’s recently launched social networking site Labourspace is unlikely to make the desired impact in the wider community, who will see it simply as another attempt to be ’spoken at’ rather than an opportunity for genuine two way dialogue, according to online community specialist William Buist.
Whilst Labourspace.com claims to offer organisations and individuals the opportunity to set up campaigns they want to bring to the attention of Labour politicians, Buist, who is MD of Abelard Management Services, believes that the site suffers from a fundamental failure to establish a two-way conversation, which will result in poor engagement by the community.
“Labourspace is likely to lead to skewed results because it’s not engaging with people in the true sense of the word, the party is just using it as a vehicle to talk to the public. It’s clearly saying ‘we want information from you’ but gives no guarantees of what you’ll get back in return”, says Buist, who is also President of the Blackstar Life Members Community on popular business networking site Ecademy (www.ecademy.com).
Buist claims that whilst loyal supporters may respond well to the site, communities won’t, as simply providing the opportunity to get involved is not the same encouraging people to actively engage.
“It’s possible that Labour will create an impression that they are consulting when in reality, they are not doing it in a way that encourages the whole community to take part. This may, of course, be deliberate and aimed at generating some interest and publicity, but if so it’s an extremely costly PR exercise. It’s not about the politics, but the design and implementation, as the concept is right, but it’s too impersonal and people are likely to see right through that”, says Buist.
Buist, believes that Labour would have achieved more by having an individual rather than the organisation front the site and suggests that they take a leaf out of Barrack Obama’s book and look at what he achieved in his presidential election campaign last year.
“Barack Obama’s social networking campaign worked so well because he provided a personality to the online campaign, and people felt that he was genuinely listening to their views. Whether true or not, the impression was that he engaged personally with each and every conversation. In comparison, Labourspace seems to be more about ‘you come and join in and tell us what you want and maybe we will come and look at it some time’ – it’s a lost opportunity unless there is much more engagement by key personalities in the party than has been shown to date”, says Buist.
ENDS