So after the ball is over…… Australians see the prospect an equally divided vote and  a hung parliament.

Did the 2010 election live up to its expectations as being a social media election?

Tony Abbott very early in the piece virtually stopped using social media. He produced a very small amount of tweets and very few Facebook entries. Gillard, on the other hand tweeted and Facebooked and YouTubed a lot, though not necessarily in an interactive way.

We will have to wait for some PhD student to analyse the data and see if there is some cause and effect here, to see the effects on voting patterns and politicians social media use bu their is no necessary obvious correlation…… though lotsa questions posed.

Malcolm Turnbull who has a developed a voracious online appetite had a swing of 11.5% to him at the election. Joe Hockey another frequent tweeter had a swing in his electorate of 8.6% & Julia Gillard4.5%. Just as interesting was the 4% swing away from Rudd who does tweet and 5% swing in his favour for Tony Abbott who left behind all pretense of online communication following his pollie pedal.

To win government Tony Abbott needed to win more seats in NSW. Four more seats in NSW would have seen him in government, but he wasn’t able to translate that personal swing in his electorate into this winning vote. If he … had he… could he have…?

It does seem the overwhelming winner for online communication was the voting public. On election night Julia Gillard stated that the people had spoken but she couldn’t understand what they were saying yet. Perhaps if she (or her minders) had trawled the comments on her facebook page or through the tweets on #election or #ausvotes to get an idea of what the people were saying or thinking.

The public have been able to source much understanding about ideas, policies and attitudes from a wide variety of sources and biases online and so were not just stuck listening to party spine.

Perhaps this is the online message we can gain from the election results. People want communication about real ideas and not just manufactured spin. As Gillard and Aboott and the various Independents ponder their position over the next week or so perhaps they should keep that in mind. If they are unsure perhaps they should check out the twitter stream #auswaits

Tonight we sit in for a long night and watch the Australian federal election results come in. Since the ban on political advertising on the ‘old’ media in the last 48 hrs, the politicians and their parties have been tweeting a lot… all except Tony Abbott himself who still has simply not embraced this medium. In the last week or so Julia Gillard has posted 70 tweets to Abbott’s 2.

Often the leaders have left their Facebook commentaries and tweets to their minders and it will be interesting to see how people will respond to the 3rd party commentary, as opposed to engagement. Malcolm Turnbull has been the exception to this rule as he has consistently engaged with his online followers.

Their has been much criticism through this election about the poor use by the leaders of online engagement… using the medium as a loud hailer rather than a form of interactive engagement.

It will be  a big night as we wait in to see the new government elected

There has been much comment and criticism that our political leaders have been poor users of the social media tools that are available to them. Indeed, I have made this comment on numerous occasions.

So lets have a look at how our protagonists have performed this week.

Tony Abbott on Twitter

I will start with our Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott. Since the week beginning Monday 26 July (just over a week ago now) he has sent out zero/nought/zilch/zip tweets. He has, as of today 15,418 followers on Twitter.

Tony Abbott on Facebook

On his Facebook page he has uploaded  zero/nought/zilch/zip images of himself out and about and he has added zero/nought/zilch/zip commentary. On his facebook page he has 10,374 people following him. On his Facebook site, he has a page called ’submit an idea’ and when you click on this to submit your idea you are sent to another Liberal Party page which outlines a series of coalition policy initiatives and there is room to leave your comment. Very few people have done this and I would love to see the google analytics to see how many people even find this page.

Tony Abbott’s Website

So Abbott’s web page is the obvious next port of call, and here we see, finally, a bit of action. On his website Tony abbott’s team have downloaded 35 speeches/pronouncements/interviews in the week (and a bit) since 26 July. We finally get to see Tony Abbott in action here, spelling out his ideas to the electorate, but nowhere among these 35 posts is there any room for people to post any comments or queries, let alone get a response.

Hunting down his blog page on his site, we can see the last blog he posted was in mid June and there have been no comments posted in response. is this because the blog was so unimaginative or it was just too hard to find as there were no simple leads into it from other social bookmarking sites.

So Where is Tony Abbott

It would appear that Tony Abbott and his team simply don’t know how, or aren’t interested in getting his message out to the online electorate. So, the question I am going to pose here;  Is this the man to lead our country into this millennium?

Julia Gillard on Twitter

In this same period Julia Gillard has posted 30 tweets. So what can you say on 140 characters or less. Is there anything meaningful you can say on Twitter…. well thank goodness for www.tinyurl.com. Of these 35 tweets, The Prime Minister has tweeted 6 pictures of her out and about on twitpic and has cross-referenced 9 commentaries via tiny url’s in her tweets, 3 on health policy, one on mental health,2 on disabilities, and one each on pension policy, student voice on google, mental health and the National Broadband Network. Some of these links are to policy announcments and some are to blogs which allow the reader to comment and interact. Today, Gillard has 30,650 followers on Twitter. Of course she has more than Abbott. Incumbency has its advantages, but so also does usage.

Gillard also crosses her tweets across to #ausvotes which allows her tweets to be involved in the broader conversation in the twitter stream.

Julia Gillard on Facebook

Gillard has posted 13 updates in the last week on her Facebook page. Many of these updates include video’s or cross-links to further information on the various policy announcements. And, of course people are commenting on the updates themselves on her Facebook page, with many of her updates receiving hundreds of comments

Julia Gillard’s Website

On her website, her staff have uploaded all the transcripts of her interviews and speeches, though there are no blogs written by the PM herself to explain her thoughts or to interact here with the online electorate, perhaps too much to expect in the middle of an election campaign.

So Where is Julia Gillard

In an online sense, it would appear she is everywhere. Seemingly a recent convert to the online world of social media, she and her staff have become adept at getting her message out to the electorate in this millenial form.

Given the recent leaks and strife within the Labor Party and the poor polling of the Prime Minister over the last week, it does appear that Julia Gillard and her team are using all the tools in the armory to get her message across to the Australian voting public.

In an election period where the 30 second media bytes are the accepted norm for old media, at least we can see Gillard trying to engage online in explaining her policy. Her tweets and Facebook updates and crosslinks allow people to find out the ‘devil in the detail’ of her policy and to engage in commentary online. It certainly allows for easy access for those who want to be informed. It will be interesting to watch the next three weeks remembering that’ a week is a long time in politics’.

Parliamentary Leaders Debate

Well what a lousy boring scripted beige offering the federal election leader’s debate was last Sunday. I was talking to someone during the week who fell asleep midway through the droning of our two less than effervescent leader aspirants.

I, along with over 3 million other Australians, watched the various worms doing their thing.. the gender worm on Channel 7 and the other singular 9 worm and the wormless ABC.. still nothing inspiring…. but don’t you just love the interactive online world of social media. Thank goodness for Twitter. The perfect way to watch the debate was with TV remote in one hand and laptop perched dutifully on lap tuned into ‘#debate‘ or ‘#ausvotes‘. There was a dizzying array of commentary (and entertainment) proffered by the twitterati. For the duration of the debate there were a minimum of 20 tweets per 6 seconds as people actively engaged in the debate… forget the worm….. In fact, I think the worm respondents are fictitious… still haven’t met anyone who was given a worm control… or anyone who knows anyone.

It was fascinating to see so many people passionately opining for their horse. Political interest is alive and well in Australia….. and Australians are sick of platitudes and puerile spin, if the online comments during the debate are anything to go by. It will be interesting to watch the amount of informal votes this election, if the party leaders just stay on spin and don’t learn to actively engage with the voting community online and off.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Twitter

Julia Gillard, in her first Twitter outing on the 4th July tweeted that “I’ve decided it’s time to take the Twitter plunge! Hopefully I’ll master it. JG.” A quick look at recent stats shows that Julia Gillard has indeed mastered it, tweeting 32 times in the last 10 days covering a broad range of topics from health and hospital reform, a number of issues around climate change, trade cadetships,  population sustainability and distribution and the importance of regional cities.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott on Twitter

To say the the Prime Minister and her team are ‘out-tweeting’ the Opposition Leader is a massive understatement. A look at Tony Abbott’s tweets for the same period reveal he has tweeted the sum total of zero times. Is he even in this election???? If Tony Abbott has an online social media advisor, then he should sack that person right now and find out who Malcolm Turnbull is using and grab them, for in the same period that Tony Abbott has sent out no tweets, the Honorable Member for Wentworth has tweeted 66 posts, and in recognising the importance of this form of communication with the public, recently tweeted a speech by Belinda Hutchinson on the importance of social media which he has placed on his blog site

Updated Twitter Stat’s

Currently Julia Gillard has 26,728 people following her on Twitter and Tony Abbott has 14,188. Just for interest, the backbencher from Wentworth has 23,728 followers. Watch this space.

The Prime Minister has called an election on 21st August. This gives the Australian public five weeks to make up their mind about their voting intentions and, conversely, five weeks for the Labor Government, the Liberal Opposition and the Green’s to effect their message to the Australian voting public.

The first poll to be published following the election announcement puts the government ahead of the opposition, on a two-party preferred basis, by 52 to 48. This is not a big difference between the major parties.

There has been quite a bit of media commentary in this being the twitter election. It certainly will be interesting to see who is able to use web 2.0 technologies and the avenue of social media to spread their message…. not only Twitter, but also Facebook and YouTube and their blogsites.

Tony Abbott – Federal Opposition Leader

Tony Abbott tweeted about his updated website on 16 July and on his front page we can see transcripts of his speeches and statements along with his updated tweets and flickr pic’s. When you scroll through to his blogs, we can see that he has actually written two new posts since his pollie pedal, one on the 26 May and one on 18 June…… they must be such riveting blogs because there have been no responses or comments on them. But then he didn’t exactly promote them on his twitter stream or his facebook where really, we just see more pic’s ….. If this is to be a twitter election, I’m still not sure whether he is even in this race.

Julia Gillard – Prime Minister

As for the Prime Minister, since her recent conversion to twitter, she has been tweeting almost every day. She tweets her own personal commentaries in addition to tweeting her speeches and announcements. Her facebook page is updated with both pictures and words (note for the opposition leader) in addition to posting her YouTube videos. Julia Gillard’s website is not nearly as dynamic as Tony Abbott’s. She has essentially just copied every transcript and thrown them onto the site. There is not a blog to be seen, however she does provide the opportunity for people to give feedback on her Facebook page.

So who will pick up their social media skills to make a difference in this election campaign……. or is it a case of asking who wont?

So, it’s game on.  Julia Gillard is now on twitter and her followers on both twitter and facebook have surged.  Tony Abbott has engaged with social media again since Gillard has led the way.  The competition is now heating up.

The key point from the video is that Gillard turned her ‘joining twitter’ into a newsworthy event.  Quite interesting when you think that twitter is now so mainstream.  But before we get excited, let’s think about the big pieces of the web 2.0 puzzle: blog, facebook, twitter and youtube.

• First, at the time of writing, Julia Gillard does not have a blog, with blogs being a very effective way to communicate with people.
• Second, she does have a facebook page and it looks like she is probably going to use this to good effect
• Third, she now has a twitter profile and we’ll see how well she utilizes that, and
• Forth, we need to see some more action on YouTube.

These 4 basic building blocks of a social media campaign are not new and have been tried and tested.  What we’d be expecting is to see a very effective use of these basic tools and then also an innovative use of other social media tools that are now available.  What about foursquare for instance?  What about slideshare?

We’d love to hear from you and learn about your approach to using social media for brand awareness, to promote an idea, or to promote a business.  What are the lessons for you in this social media Australian election?