What Kevin Rudd did well offline but hasn’t brought online. Yet. Getting Engaged.

It must be local election time out my way. Either that or the word is out amongst local Queensland Liberals that you have to be seen to get votes.

Today while driving in I saw a team of supporters (or staffers) setting up a road side ‘vigil’ (for lack of a better term). This is where they sit down amongst 4 or 5 signs of the politician in question and wave to the traffic. One presumes this is to:

a) Create recognition of their ‘brand’
b) Maybe get someone to stop and discuss some policy items and then go back to HQ with market research
.. to be honest I am not sure why these road side booths are setup. All sides of politics in Australia (and I assume elsewhere as well) do it.

To me it seems to be a pointless exercise, but then maybe they get enough from it to justify it. It could also be that no brighter ideas have come up and in the absence of a better activity they do something rather than nothing.

Our current Prime Minister @kevinruddpm (Kevin Rudd) was a master at clever and efficient use of himself in his local electorate. I no longer live in his electorate but given how large a Federal electorate is versus a local electorate, when we did live there, I wondered how he managed to make himself so visible.

I believe Kevin07 (I wonder what he will be at the next election – Kevin2.0?) understood offline what he unfortunately appears to miss online. Offline he would choose cleverly where and when he was seen.

There are a limited number of Major Shopping Centres in his electorate and so every Saturday morning (because mostly he knew he would be back in town then) he would be standing out front casually chatting to people walking by. There was no propaganda, just 1 human engaging with others. There was no party message, but there was a lot of Kevin branding. You knew who your Federal Member was. He made sure of it. And he had a lot of foot traffic walking by.

Engagement.

He knew that sitting beside the main road might get you eyeballs (akin to page impressions) but many were irrelevant and for the most there was no engagement. Whereas for every person he gave his time to in a casual and friendly way (supporter or not) he became connected to them in a real way. He did not have to know everything about them or be their closest friend, but he did have a real sense of what life around him was like.

Then of course there are the ‘Rudd Bikes’  which, if you don’t know about, are part of his very clever way of engaging his community. There would be few if any schools (or sports clubs) in the electorate who have not been given a ‘Rudd bike’, to auction off or sell to raise funds. Like a viral post that gets spread, everyone knows the goodwill involved and has talked about it in the area. Everyone has gotten some benefit from them.

Engagement.

He spent $30,000+ of his own money, fighting for no second runway in Brisbane, and albeit that his wife may have the cash to support that, it was still a personal stand expressing himself in the community.

Engagement.

So why then are our politicians doing blind road side booths in the online world?

Why has @kevinruddpm become so distant in an important part of the community? Some might say it is because he is now too busy.  Yet in the past he still made time to be engaged. If he is too busy then he should not be using twitter or other ‘social networking’ tools.

It is an important lesson both online and offline. If you are going to do it, do it well.

Engagement comes from being interested, active, participating, and relevant. Engagement and relationships come from perseverance and effort. There is no magic bullet to building contacts or friends or colleagues. They come from trust and from showing yourself to them in a way appropriate for the style of relationship. Then as the people begin to learn about you they can determine if they trust you and what you say.
Roadside signposts for politicians to me are no different to email or twitter spammers. A rapid follow,  followed by a direct post or message, do little to serve you well. In most cases you get blocked.

I know I blocked out the roadside booth today. I cannot tell you the person’s name or whether they are my local member or not. There is no engagement for me and thus no active participation from me in the relationship.

This is very different to the Griffith community and how they feel about ‘their Kevin’.

Online it takes less work in reality but it does take effort.

@turnbullmalcolm is working at it and has to be credited with putting in and learning how to use twitter and blogs to help communicate. His e-card this year was well planned and a creative but subtle message. He is learning how to engage in the online space and he’s starting to create a lot of space between himself and his rivals in this one medium. He is earning some ‘street cred’.

In Griffith, Kevin07 is hard to replace because he has so many trust miles that have been walked, his opponents are years behind. I am not sure if Malcolm can leverage the internet to the same effect nationally but he is getting involved. It has been pleasing to see him getting slowly more involved with Twitter. But personally I don’t feel engaged by him there. I am not a big fan of #KevinPM TEAM posts either.

Get engaged. There are so many rewards for all!

Recently I sent a post to @turnbullmalcolm “try getting your point across not trying to score points”. To me that sums this all up. By being engaged and having a point you are much more likely to be engaged with the community around you. Trying to buy votes with point scoring or temporary road side billboards is so very 1980.

It is way past time for our politicians and aspiring politicians to get engaged with their community online too!