Diffusion MD, Daljit Bhurji, joins a panel of industry experts to assess how well the UK’s political parties are using social media. Read the full article here.

This week’s issue of PR Week takes an in-depth look at the BNP’s success at the recent European elections and asks a straightforward question - was enough done by the main political parties to prevent their breakthrough? My own view, shared by other industry colleagues, is that a communication strategy based on the premise that if we simply ignore the BNP they will just disappear has clearly failed.  A new approach is now needed, focussed on countering BNP propaganda whenever and wherever it appears, with a far more proactive stance taken by all mainstream political parties.  This includes online.

While I agree completely that there is no substitute for knocking on doors and talking to voters directly, the inability of the BNP to use the mainstream media as a mouthpiece, makes the internet a key component of its campaigning strategy. The online world will therefore become a key battleground in fighting extremism.

I was given the opportunity to debate these issues further with Luke Pollard, an account director at PR consultancy Edelman, as well as a prospective parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party. You can watch our discussion in the PR Week video podcast below.

It’s often difficult to pinpoint moments when new online services cross the chasm and become mainstream. Yesterday’s ‘Friday Night with Jonathan Ross’ was one such moment for Twitter.

The momentum behind Twitter has been building for a while now. Last April saw Downing St launch its own feed, which has now attracted almost 20,000 followers and key media including the BBC, Guardian and FT have used Twitter updates to not only disseminate news, but to drive all important traffic to their websites.  Twitter is becoming a core online communication tool, with Boris Johnson for example, launching a Mayor of London Twitter feed last week and David Cameron answering questions posted on Twitter, during a live webcast discussing his green agenda.

However, arguably it’s been the power of celebrity endorsement which has propelled Twitter into the national consciousness.  Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry have in the UK become the services most important advocates - even inspiring the Mail on Sunday of all papers, to devout half a page to a rather dismissive article about the service a few weekends back.  You can watch them both discussing their love of Twitter on Ross’ show below - seen by at least 5.1 million viewers according to the BBC.

Ross and Fry have been joined by a growing international list of sports stars and pop stars, who in contrast to Facebook, have started using Twitter long before the majority of their fans.  So will all this massive amount of free PR be enough to turn Twitter into the success story of recession-hit 2009?

Well, as ever the hype will need to meet the reality.  The latest statistics from Hitwise show that Twitter was one of the fastest growing sites of 2008 with a 10-fold increase in traffic in the past 12-months. Given the amount of glitches which have afflicted and continue to afflict the service, it would be generous to say that this growth has taken the company ‘by surprise’.  For me, Twitter really comes into its own during big events, such as Macworld, CES or Barack Obama’s inauguration and this is exactly when Twitter decides to crash under the weight of traffic. This isn’t acceptable or feasible going forward. While early adopters grudgingly accept that new online services may have teething troubles, the mainstream public will not be so patient or forgiving.

This year Twitter is firstly going to need to make a rapid and significant investment in its infrastructure, if it’s to cope with potentially millions of new users.  Secondly, for an online service designed to connect people and share information it is beyond ridiculous that Twitter has also been unable to fix its search functionality. Twitter users need to be able to find each other and track what is being said about their favourite subjects. This investment will be ongoing and expensive which means that Twitter will finally have to bite the bullet and implement a revenue generating business model – whether ad-funded, subscription or a mixture of both.

For Twitter’s fanatical users it’s obviously exciting that everyone is finally taking about it, but to paraphrase David Ogilvy, all this great PR could  just end up killing a bad product faster.  In 2009 Twitter needs to get serious or risk crashing permanently under its own success.

Thanks to Techcrunch for the footage below

Diffusion’s 2009 Graduate Scheme is now open, for more information and to download an application form please visit our graduate careers page here. Remember, the closing date is 13th February.

With a new year ahead of you it’s perfectly natural to be contemplating whether you are in the right job.  Are you working for clients you love, in a culture that is constantly innovating and pushing the boundaries of PR? Is your career where you want to it to be and can you see a clear path to promotion ahead of you? Is your employer investing in you to make sure you have the digital communication skills which are essential for effective PR today?

If the answer to any of these questions is ‘no’, perhaps now’s the time to see what fresh opportunities are out there? Here at Diffusion, we are looking for another Senior Campaign Executive to join our seven-strong team in early 2009.  After 18-months in PR, you will have a Blackberry bursting with media contacts across the digital media, marketing, technology and national press. You will have a real interest in how brands are using the web to engage with stakeholders and a real desire to represent clients across a wide range of industry sectors, from hot digital start-ups to global consumer brands.

At Diffusion, you’ll not only get job satisfaction from doing brilliant work with great colleagues for fantastic clients, though we think that always helps. Through our commitment to Talent Management we offer fast-track career development to the brightest and a tailored training programme. And it goes without saying that your hard work and commitment will be rewarded with a market leading salary and benefits package. So if you want to spend 2009 and beyond working for one of the fastest-growing and most talked about agencies of 2008, we’d love to hear from you!

To apply and for further information, please send your CV to daljit.bhurji@diffusionpr.com. For more information on our Talent Management approach and benefits packages click here.

Closing date: 23 January 2009

No recruitment agencies please.

Diffusion PR MD Daljit Bhurji discusses the role the web is playing in the US elections. What is the state of online political campaigning in the UK and what are the wider implications for the PR industry.  Click here to watch.

Being both a politics and digital PR junkie I’ve been rather spoiled and completely fascinated by the US Presidential elections. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to record a video podcast for PR Week on both my favourite topics last week, which you can watch here. I think it’s fair to say that we are witnessing the first Social Media Election, where online platforms have become so much more than just channels for raising money but central to campaign strategy for both the McCain and Obama camps.

While the US elections have no doubt showcased the scale of what the web can achieve, there is still so much more that could be done in terms of sophistication. I touch on the issue of better campaign integration in my podcast - amplifying the power of political campaigns through intelligently linking traditional media relations, Search marketing and Social Media.  This is one of the areas I highlight where political parties in the UK, particularly the Conservatives are taking a lead and have a thing or two to teach our American cousins. The Tories live-bidding on Google for keywords spoken by Alasdair Darling as he was delivering his last budget speech is just a sign of the things to come.

Another example of integration in action, which I never managed to blog about at the time was Obama’s visit to the UK in July and his private meeting with David Cameron. Though most of the actual meeting was conducted away from the cameras, the party released a video on YouTube of Cameron discussing the encounter within an hour of it ending and then pushed this out via its press office, an email marketing shot and a sustained Google PPC campaign. The video made it into the Top 10 most popular YouTube videos that weekend, with over 20,000 hits in 48 hours, helping to ensure that the Tories at least matched the coverage given to Obama’s meeting with Brown.

As with most things Social Media we have barely scratched the surface, particularly when it comes to using the two-way communication potential of online platforms to the full. Watching how the UK parties fight the next general election online is going to be compelling viewing!

“The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself” were the reassuring words of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 as the US faced the realities of the Great Depression. This week our own political leaders have been trying their best to reassure the  financial markets and assuage the fears of ordinary voters worried about their jobs, homes, savings and pensions.

To help get his message across Gordon Brown on Thursday launched a new series of podcasts on the economic crisis - the first discussing the government’s rescue of the British banking sector.  Hosted on the new Number 10 website and on iTunes, the podcasts are part of a concerted strategy to communicate government policy directly to voters, bypassing what remains a largely hostile media.

I can see, or rather hear, why the podcast medium is attractive for Gordon Brown.  His deep Scottish brogue works far better on radio than on TV, where his visual tics invariably distract the viewer from what he is actually saying. The live interview format also usually results in Brown reverting to repetitive and robotic stock-phrases and apart from when being interrogated by Mariella Frostrop, I’ve yet to see a TV interview where he looks genuinely comfortable.

So the pre-record of a podcast works well and his delivery is relaxed and reassuring to the listener.  I would however be tempted to experiment with different formats in addition to the standard Churchillian address.  Perhaps have Brown “in conversation with…” the types of individuals he mentions at the start of his podcast - first-time buyers after a mortgage, small business owners trying to secure bank loans or a housewife trying to balance the household budget. Why not record it at the local Lidl?  The conversations wouldn’t need to be confrontational or overtly party political, but would arguably help demonstrate how the government’s £500 billion intervention will positively impact on the day to day lives of ordinary voters.

Anyway, having listened to the Prime Minister’s podcast, my iPod immediately segued into Abba’s ‘Money, Money, Money’, which kept me amused for the rest of Black Friday at least.

UK PR professionals have been urged to learn from the digital PR techniques currently being employed by Barack Obama and John McCain in the US presidential election. Daljit Bhurji, MD of Diffusion PR, told PRWeek: ‘The US elections are almost like a PR laboratory. They happen every four years, lots of people experiment and the results are fascinating for people in the PR industry regardless of the sector in which you work”…..Read more.