Posts Tagged ‘Elections’

Posted on February 19, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

DA invites bloggers to Social Media unveiling

The Democratic Alliance today unveiled their new social media strategy to a small audience in Cape Town comprising journalists, party members and, believe it or not, bloggers. I was one of the lucky ones to crack an invite yesterday afternoon and I have to admit I was extremely excited to hear what the DA had up their sleeves.

Cape Town City Mayor and DA Leader, Helen Zille gave the first speech highlighting the DA’s progressive and forward thinking strategy. Mayor Zille said that,

this new digital strategy will reach South African voters in exciting and groundbreaking ways. Our approach is to build a personalised relationship with the DA’s supporters by involving them in our activities and campaigns.

The speech was followed by another from DA CEO Ryan Coetzee and he took us through the elements of the new communication strategy. This new strategy includes some of the following:

• Two Interactive websites
• Online advertising and marketing
• SMS communication
• Mobile web access
• Engagement with voters via social networking and in the blogosphere

New DA website launched

Then the two new websites were unveiled. The first was the DA’s main website www.da.org.za which has seen a major facelift and integration with various forms of Social Media. Some of this include videos embedded via Vimeo and Times Multimedia, a new forum component and various other social tools for sharing information. It’s cutting edge, usable and really puts the pressure on the other political parties. A job well done.

Contribute To Change

The new contribute to change website is equally impressive at first glance. The core of the website is to allow people the freedom to bring upon change in our country and the site has a strong social networking aspect to it that facilitates this process. In addition to the social networking you can pledge your support to making a change in the following ways:

• Build a team by recruiting your friends.
• Spread the word by sending letters to all the major newspapers and talk shows.
• Attend or host a DA event.
• Make phone calls and reach out to voters.
• Go door to door.
• Donate some cash.

Each of these allow individuals to take action and contribute to change as Helen puts it. I noted that while this website was extremely well put together I worried about what the value proposition was for end users and laymen like you and I. My first impression of the site was that this is very heavily directed to helping the DA and while this is positive I struggled to see how this benefited consumers – in other words, what were the DA doing for us in return.

For those who have heard Helen Zille speak you’ll know that she delivers a convincing and strong message and she was very quick to answer my concerns. The whole aim of the DA is to ultimately shift focus on opposition toward the focus on our country and how we as citizens could help make a difference. While I do respect this and it was a convincing argument I am still concerned that an ANC or COPE supporter wouldn’t use this website as it’s too heavily focused on the DA.

I wanted to ask, but thought not to at the time, whether or not the DA had given any thoughts to making this website agnostic – similar I guess to the new SA Elections website – as this could really bring the whole country together and not just DA supporters. If the Contribute To Change website was powered by the DA yet remained in the background I think this website could be far more successful in the long term.

What has really impressed me though is that the DA are by far the most progressive political party in South Africa. The ANC’s attempts at social media have been dismal and these two new sites by the DA really highlight their commitment to long term change in our country.

Both the new DA and Contribute To Change websites are built off open-source technology, specifically WordPress, BBPress and BuddyPress, and it’s great to see the use of open-source to drive the DA’s campaign.

I have to commend the DA, their web development team and the guys running the social media strategy behind the scenes on a job well done. I’m only worried that the Contribute To Change website is a little too advanced for a South African audience but only time will tell.

 

Posted on February 17, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

SA Elections website launched

The Times newspaper has today launched a new initiative – a website dedicated to the upcoming SA Elections. The SA Elections website was developed by Avusa iLab and is by far the best election-related website I’ve seen in a very long time.

While the design is fantastic I have to admit the real value is really in the functionality and features of the site. First up you can vote for your party of choice and the top-ranked parties are displayed near the header area. I love this and it’s going to be very interesting to see how the online community vote in relation to the rest of the country. I’m guessing it will be a lot closer than the actual elections.

The other feature that really stood out is the aggregation of news, not just from The Times, but from all the major news sites in South Africa. While this is a Times powered initiative it’s brilliant to see a site dedicated to the interests of democracy and not just re-purposing existing content from their stable.

There are detailed profiles of each political party as well as the key members of each party and in true Web 2.0 fashion the political profiles have been aggregated from Wikipedia.

This is a great site and really useful but I also have to bring in a few flip-side suggestions. If the guys are reading this then I’d like to suggest the following:

• There needs to be an easier way to comment on stories and commentary. Use the WordPress model and allow everyone to comment without the need to register.
• The comment form is not so lekker. Might need a little sprucing up.
• Finally, I think SA Elections needs to have an Afrigator feed in the “from the blogosphere” box. At the moment it’s only aggregating The Times blogs and I think this blogosphere box needs the same spirit as the news aggregation box.

I think this site is going to be massive for The Times and I wish them all the best with its continued development. Well done guys!

Disclaimer: I used to work for both The Times and Avusa iLab so take this into consideration when reading what I have to say. Despite this I still feel they’ve done a sterling job without me having to be biased.