Liberal.ca BlackBerry Blog Review

The Blackberry Blog is written by Scott Feschuk, Paul Martin’s chief speechwriter. Some of you might have read Scott’s work before, previous to his employment at the PMO, Scott was a writer for the National Post. According to the intro, Scott will be “filing reports from the road using his Blackberry.” Following along, you can see that Scott has made a number of posting for each day of the campaign. Each day of the campaign is given a ambiguous title, while each posting is accompanied with a timestamp.

Unfortunately for the visitors to this weblog, the content of the postings are generally flippant and devoid of any real useful information. While Scott has done an excellent job at injecting personality into his postings, too much personality without any substance means visitors leave the weblog with little more than inconsequential gossip from the campaign trail.

Another major problem is the way in which the postings are organized on the weblog. They have chosen to only place a title for each day of the campaign and then each individual posting has only a timestamp to differentiate it from another posting. This is makes it very difficult to refer to a particular post on the weblog via another weblog and is an unconventional way of assigning post titles. Interlinking between weblogs is a fundamental aspect of weblogging, and the primary reason most weblogs employ a feature called, permalinks. Permalinks allow other webloggers to link to a particular weblog post.

The third, and possibly the largest problem with this weblog is that it fails to encourage or facilitate any positive action by the individual visitor towards the campaign. No where on the weblog does Scott encourage supporters to contribute, volunteer, etc for the campaign. Basically, this weblog is Scott talking about his personal experience on the campaign trail and provides the campaign with very little, if any, positive results.

Here is what I recommend to improve the weblog:

1. Invest in commercial or open-source weblogging software to streamline the publication of this type of campaign communication. Weblogging software packages like, Wordpress or MovableType would allow far more features (permalink, comments, archiving, etc) to be implemented and would mean the weblog would be more accessible to users already familiar with weblogs.
2. Connect the weblog with all aspects of the campaign. Rather than describing frivolous things such as what everyone had for lunch that day on the campaign, use the weblog to bring attention to important campaign events as they happen. If the leader is going to be in a certain area, use the weblog to call attention to this event and to encourage people to contribute, volunteer and or attend the event. Engage your supporters at a deeper level and they will not only have a reason to return to the weblog, but also to return the favour election day.
3. Pay homage to the weblog community. A weblog that fails to link to and engage other webloggers will undoubtedly be a lonely and isolated island of obscurity. A weblog will only thrive if it becomes part of the larger conversation that is taking place in the blogsphere. A quick glance at Technorati shows that the Blackberry Blog has only been linked to 44 times since the blog was created.

Overall the Liberal’s attempt at using a weblog for campaign communication has been a bit of a disapointment. However, Scott has the writing ability to make this a success; he just needs to connect more with the actual campaign and make an effort to engage and interact with the weblog community.

Make sure to return tomorrow for the Conservative Party’s weblog review.

Globeandmail.com Campaign Website Reviews

Mathew Ingram at the Globe and Mail provides a quick review of the federal campaign websites. I can’t say I agree with all of his conclusions, but they are interesting nonetheless. I’ll provide my website reviews later today this week.