Do you know what your local councillor does? Well, one easy way for them to keep you informed –and help to boost electors’ interest in local politics – is to start a blog. And it’s an idea that works, reports David Ross-Tomlin
The local elections have been and gone. And among the key issues was not just who will be running your local council, but concern about yet another disastrously low turnout. Voter apathy has become a big problem in this country, but what can be done about it?
Voter apathy grows with each passing election and with some local election turnouts as low as 32 per cent, politicians on all levels are being asked: “How can you engage voters’ interest in politics?”
Well the latest PR phenomenon, blogging, may well provide the answer.
Meet Stuart Bruce, a certified PR guy who is founder and partner of Leeds-based agency Bruce Marshall Associates. He is also a fully paid up member of the ‘Blogerati’.
What makes Stuart interesting is that not only is he a man in the know when it comes to PR, he is also a local city councillor.. Stuart is a Labour Party councillor for Middleton Park in south Leeds, and he runs his own blog – which makes him something of a trailblazer in the way he communicates with his electors.
He said: “I started the blog in 2003. With my PR background I knew quite a bit about blogs and their potential, and ever since being elected I’d had a traditional fairly static website. I thought if a blog took off it would be a much more effective method of communicating.”
Stuart’s political blog, www.stuartssoapbox.com, is used to communicate directly with his electors. For instance, he continually publicises a weekly diary of events to show just what he’s been doing. With voters wanting to know just what their local councillors do on a week to week basis, the diary is a simple but effective way to give Stuart’s electorate an understanding of the type of work he does.
It is not just voters who use Stuart’s blog, though. He has already had stories appear in the local press that have come straight from his blog, with the journalists who picked them up not even needing to speak to him direct.
“One of the challenges people come up with is ‘Who reads them, how many people read it?’ It depends on the metrics you use to evaluate it,” Stuart said. “Personally I don’t care if there are only 20 or 30 people who read my councillor blog, so long as some of those are at least relevant people that I want to influence. For example, I know that it’s read by local journalists, I know it’s read by community groups in my ward, and I know it’s read by some council officers.”
Stuart is clearly getting good results from his political blog, through direct interaction with his electorate and local media alike. But how can he be sure that all his constituents have access to his blog?
“I know there is a reasonable number of people accessing the blog from libraries, as that’s one of the things we do have in Leeds is free internet access in most of the city libraries.”
Whilst it sounds as though there is no end to the potential of blogging, it is still a relatively new concept and as a result faces possible pitfalls. Blogs are easy to start but a big commitment to maintain, and for a blogger to keep a blog relevant and up-to-date, they must be able to write coherently and devote a lot of time.
Local councillors looking to set blogs up must face up to the sheer amount of work involved, as a bad blog can damage their reputation. But the real question here is can blogs actually curb voter apathy?
Stuart said: “It’s part of a mix and definitely has a role to play. Basically all of the stuff you would do traditionally as a councillor, you still have to do but encompass these new methods. “I try to link everything together, letters, blogs, etc. I can’t really see a time when traditional methods are replaced and will disappear as some PR and new media people will tell you. I don’t buy that, there’s just a much bigger range that you have to use.”
It is hard to say either way whether blogs are definitely the answer to help engage voters in politics once again, but as blogs like Stuart’s show, there’s real potential.
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