So today one of the worst kept secrets in New Zealand Politics was released. Mana and The Internet Party are joining forces. There are plenty of other people out there better suited to discussing the ins and outs and idealogical issues around this alliance. But what I want to focus on is the social media campaign around the announcement, or lack there of.
One would expect that anything associated with the Internet Party would have a solid social media campaign associated with it. The Internet Party have for a number of weeks been the leading user of Twitter across all political parties in New Zealand. So I was expecting to see some form of graphic that would encourage their followers to share the message around. But nothing.
All that has gone out on the Internet Party’s Twitter account is a link to a press release on their website, and a bunch of retweets from the media present at the announcement.
I would have expected more from the Internet Party. Mana on the other hand have lived up to my expectations and done very on social media, there is a couple of links on their Facebook page and nothing on their Twitter account, just like it has been for the last 900+ days. Surely a great way to show voters they are able to work together would have been to have a graphic ready to roll right at the time the MOU was being announced and signed?
It will also be interesting to see how their social media channels work together. 3 different party channels, run by at least 2 different teams (making a guess here). Will we see divergent messages? Or will they have plans and processes in place to stop this? Time will tell.
