US election and having a conversation

The Financial Times carries a major piece this week on Barack Obama and his use of online communicatons at the heart of his campaign. (Obama steals a march with technology.) The article highlights that while Hilary Clinton has made extensive use of online communications, it is in a fairly hierarchical and traditional model of communications. In contrast Obama's team has made extensive use of a riskier but potentially powerful model based on co-collaboration. Note how Richard Edelman has made extensive reference to this concept of collaboration, particularly in a Forrester presentation. The FT quotes "staff and volunteers have the autonomy to make their own decisions.

A National Conversation in Scotland

This week I was in Glasgow running a workshop on social media for the CIPR. Many of those attending were from the public sector and it was interesting to witness the strong interest from public sector organisations to develop their communications online. In particular, the Scottish Government, note now longer called the Scottish Executive, has started a National Conversation about the future of Scotland. The use of blogging by Ministers in Scotland and the strong blogging community around The Scotsman has undoubtedly influenced the way that public organisations are approaching the online environment and the need to broaden the channels of communications with their stakeholders. For example Strathclyde Police is planning to use/or is using online as part of a viral marketing campaign around underage driving and the dangers associated with this.

It would be interesting to trace the development of the idea of "Conversational Communications" as an overarching PR agenda for organisations. Richard Edelman has certainly used it in his blogs over the last few years and his presentation at Forrester is worth looking at in this respect.