1. Content strategy

It’s a given that MEPs use the web to conduct research and inform their thinking on issues e.g. 80% visit interest group sites every week. However, for the PA professional, it’s not just about sticking information on a site and assuming they’ll all come flooding.

There’s an overload of information available online and you’ll need to cut through the clutter. However, as PA professionals we’ve too often been so smug as to think that the tenets of good communications strategy – analysing audiences, testing messages, developing a content strategy – should be left to corporate communicators and marketers.

Absolutely not: provide dull content and assume MEPs will be interested at your peril. For instance, 80% of MEPs look for summaries online – more than those who look for position papers – so your content strategy may want to look at how to present key information in a more digestible manner, perhaps using video or info-graphics even. Likewise, what’s the public profile of your issue: is it a technical under-the-radar issue? In that case, technical argumentation works. Is your issue high-profile? In that case, you’ll need to show you’re aligned with broader opinion and make your content more “value” based i.e. more real stories, less facts and figures.

In terms of channels, more MEPs appreciate issue-specific websites than organisation websites (80% vs. 75%) so perhaps rather than looking at building a single site where you centralise all your content you might want to adopt a more scattered approach where you build issue-specific microsites and bring them together on your main site? Perhaps you might want to blog?

Then there’s Wikipedia, which needs to be incorporated in any content strategy (78% of MEPs visit Wikipedia every week.) Do you know what’s on all relevant Wikipedia pages? Are there Wikipedia pages which don’t yet exist which you could develop?

2. Driving traffic

99% of MEPs use search engines every week, 93% of them every day. Google especially is the gateway to content online. Step nr 1 to ensure that you have a presence when MEPs look up your issue is the content bit above. Next in line, you’ll need to think of search, which involves search engine marketing in the short term (e.g. Google AdWords) and Search Engine Optimisation in the longer term (i.e. making sure you appear high up in organic search.)

There are scores of other ways to drive traffic, from advertising on social networks (e.g. Facebook ads) to banner advertising on 3^rd party sites (e.g. local news sites).

The best way is to produce compelling content which others are willing to spread for you (make it easy for them from the off e.g. send to a friend and Tweet functions next to your content.) Sometimes the content isn’t enough and you’ll need to develop campaigns, small and large, based around a campaign concept and a campaign “driver” (e.g. a competition?) which results in traffic if done well.

But always start with search.

3. Increasingly, you’ll want to engage and build relationships with MEPs (and others) online

The holy grail is direct interaction with MEPs (and their influencers) via channels such as Twitter, and this trend is on the up given that 69% of MEPs use social networks (mainly Facebook) and 34% are on Twitter. However, these figures need to be taken with a pinch of salt. MEPs might use the tools, but that doesn’t mean they engage and listen to what anyone tells them. Likewise, they might listen to constituents but not others. But certainly, the trend is for more of them to engage and listen: in a recent interview we published on this blog, Ryan Heath, Neelie Kroes’ Social Media Manager, outlines how eager he and Neelie are eager to receive valuable input via Twitter and yet PA professionals are often absent from the conversations.

The best way to start is to map the players, MEPs and beyond, and determine how they use social media and networks. Based on that, develop an engagement approach. Most importantly, develop reciprocal relationships: in return for attention you should be providing insight and content, not just you blurting out messaging.

4. No it’s not all moved online: integration is key

Let’s not get too caught up in the excitement. By all means, the web is essential, and will only grow in prominence. However, traditional channels remain core e.g. 95% of MEPs visit online versions of traditional newspapers several times a week whilst personal contact is also valued by 95%.

Direct advocacy and media relations won’t be replaced any time soon and remain key to any communication strategy in the Public Affairs realm. Having said that, the manner in which MEPs and their influencers take in information is so varied that ubiquity becomes essential: being present not in one or two channels, but five or six.

5. Beyond the bubble

Yes, events beyond the bubble have always mattered, especially at constituency level, but information transfer and exchange is so quick that an organisation’s broader reputation matters in the Public Affairs space more so than has ever been the case before. When 99% of MEPs look up your issue online, they may find good content you’ve produced, but if the other content all addresses a recent crisis half way across the world, it won’t matter. Meaning what? Get out of your PA comfort zone and think reputation; speak to the marketers, your brand people and the corporate communicators, because the disciplines are increasingly intertwined.

As ever, if there’s anything you’d like to add or remark on, please speak up in the comments below. Thanks.

Steffen

Counting the number of MEPs that use online tools to communicate is not a bad way to start your company’s blog and attract traffic. We should know as our post that claimed that 11% of MEPs blog is still one of our most visited posts to this day. E-marketing newcomers Digimahti have followed our lead and list 115 157 tweeting MEPs. Not an insignificant number I am sure you’ll agree.

At 21% of the total members of Parliament,  it’s exactly the same percentage that our MEP digital survey suggested used Twitter when we polled them in May this year! Digimahti of course notes that ‘using’ Twitter and having a Twitter account are very different. Our digital survey suggested that only 13% use it ‘regularly’, while 8% use it ‘occasionally’.

We’ll be looking to run our digital survey again next year with the new Parliament to see if that number improves.

James

We shall be hosting one of the workshop sessions, which will be structured in the form of a panel discussion complete with Q&A. Our panel is entitled “To Twitter or not to Twitter: the use of digital tools in public affairs” and will run in the second morning slot from approximately 11.30 until lunch. Appearing on our panel will be:

• Alexander Alvaro MEP talking about the use of the internet by Members of the European Parliament in and after the election campaign earlier this year.
• Pat Cleary our SVP of digital public affairs from our Washington DC office talking about the use of twitter in advocacy campaigns on the basis of a recent piece of work he did for the Fix Housing First coalition.
• Mark Redgrove. Mark heads up communication at manufacturing industry association Orgalime. He shall speak about how his organisation is using the internet to support advocacy in a Brussels based context

Registrations are not yet open, but should be soon here. We hope you can join us.

James

The European institutions rarely do party politics well, but this week was a rare exception as the current European Commission (EU executive) President Jose Barroso fought for the approval of the European Parliament (lower house one part of our bicameral legislature) for a second five year term in office. The verbal jousting between the Green leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Barroso was a delight; proof that the Punch and Judy politics regularly seen at Westminster can take place in a chamber hampered by simultaneous intepretation, stilted debates and differing national traditions.

In the end Barroso scraped together enough votes for approval by an absolute majority (not required but politically important). Portuguese and Spanish Socialists ignored their own group and joined the centre-right, liberal centre and looney right in voting for a renewal of his term of office.

There may be some scepticism as to whether Barroso will shake lose the shackles of the 27 Member State governments or whether his policies have contributed rather than dealt with the recent financial and economic crisis but he was in effect the only candidate and everyone knew it. The negotiations in recent weeks between Barroso and the political groups were as much about the structure and programme of the Commission as anything else.

While the programme (Political Guidelines for the next Commission) includes sweeties for all deserving children – promises for financial services regulation, a decarbonisation of transport and electricity etc – I’d like to concentrate on two new structural changes announced in Tuesday’s debate that interest me:

- A Commissioner for Climate Action

One of the 26 other Commissioners in Barroso’s yet to be formed team will get the climate change brief. Green members I met down in the Parliament this week remain concerned rather than overjoyed. While Barroso once again pointed out the EU’s leadership globally on climate change issues, they fear that a new Climate action Commissioner will get the climate change part of the department for environment (DG Environment) and put it together with the large energy department (DG Transport and Energy). For Greens, this is disaster time. Energy cares about market liberalisation, energy security and has an unhealthy like for nuclear they would say. The climate change activists at DG Environment will be drowned out by the energy obsessed hoardes, or so goes the theory. In reality, climate change is not going away and the debates that currently occur between the different departments are now likely simply to take place within the department. The issue of ambition is probably more about which politician gets the portfolio. Do they come from a big Member State and carry the political clout to push the agenda on Member States, who like to talk good game but then shy away from hard legislation (see the current debate on the energy performance of buildings as an example). We shall watch with interest as Member State’s lobby for their own nominees. It would not be a surprise if the UK went for the brief.

- Chief Scientific Adviser

Barroso also announced the creation of a Chief Scientific Officer who has “has the power to deliver proactive, scientific advice throughout all stages of policy development and delivery.” The EU institutions, mainly Parliament to be fair to the Commission, are hampered by a lack of access to scientific advice at appropriate stages in the policymaking process. The Commission’s scientific committees and agencies such as EFSA (food) and ECHA (chemicals) provide a good service upon request but suffer from work programmes and the need for both consensus and time. It shall be interesting to see what role such an adviser takes, how political or independent they will become, how proactive they can be and how they fit into the current structure of scientific advice. How would BSE, phthalates in toys, melamine in milk have played out should such a figure have existed at those times? Would some of our more reactive Members of the European Parliament have been slapped down or encouraged by this person’s presence? We await the details and of course the person.

James

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• Barroso wins EU commission second term (guardian.co.uk)
• Barroso faces vote on new mandate (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Europe’s institutions and what they do (telegraph.co.uk)

Well, some good news for those of you who want to know more about the digital lives of our European Parliamentarians. Fleishman-Hillard Brussels is currently engaged in surveying the digital lives of Members of the European Parliament. The audit is seeking to establish how far, and to what effect, MEPs in this Parliament are using the internet in communicating to the outside world in the run up to the elections and in informing their own views on policy issues in their daily working lives.

We shall be looking at everything from how many of them intend to use Twitter to reach out to voters, to how often their offices say they use Wikipedia to look stuff up. We are hoping that the results will be of interest both to MEPs themselves and to all those who are interested by MEPs – like us.

We hope to have the results of our research ready for public consumption in mid-May, at which stage they shall be made available on a dedicated micro-site.

If you are interested in learning more in advance of the official launch, drop us a line at the address below:

epdigitaltrends at fleishmaneurope dot com

We shall be keeping everyone informed through this blog and our twitter feed over the next couple of weeks.

James

These are just a few we’ve found so far:

1. Graham Watson
2. Matthias Groote
3. Katrin Saks
4. Benoit Hamon
5. Eoin Ryan
6. Neena Gill
7. Arlene McCarthy
8. Peter Skinner
9. Jim Nicholson
10. Mary Honeyball
11. Andrew Duff
12. Daniel Caspary
13. Jules Maaten
14. Jeanine Hennis
15. Sophie in ‘t Veld
16. Daniel Cohn-Bendit
17. Åsa Westlund
18. Anna Hedh
19. Kathalijne Buitenweg
20. Helga Truepel
21. Colm Burke
22. Joost Lagendijk
23. Gunnar Hökmark
24. Dagmar Roth-Behrendt
25. Alexander Alvaro
26. Jorgo Chatzimarkakis
27. Richard Corbett
28. Ed McMillan-Scott
29. Rodi Kratsa
30. Vincent Peillon
31. Urszula Gacek
32. Jean luc Bennahmias
33. Catherine Trautmann
34. Bernadette Vergnaud

If you have come across any, please let us know. We shall update this list as we get new names.

Rosie

P.S. As we mentioned in a previous post, the utility of Twitter is still not clear to us. We do find Daily Show host John Stewart’s opinion about Twitter quite humorous: “They’re struggling because they confused new with good.”

As it turns out, this is the ‘hard’ part of the EP communication strategy for the 2009 European Elections. It asks hard questions, such as “How open should our borders be?” and “How much labelling do we need?”. The “soft” part is the EP elections website, launched a few months ago.

The wall, I presume, shows choices, if if that wasn’t obvious, there is a phonebooth “Choice box” next to it.

Tune in to the EP live broadcast at 10:30 for the official unveiling.

Image by loungerie via Flickr

A post last week on the website Wired got me thinking about the use of grassroots in Brussels. The author highlights that GM has sought to use its own employees to lobby federal US policymakers for the money it needs to stay afloat as a company.

It reminded me of a recent dinner conversation about whether grassroots – digital or otherwise – can work in Brussels when conducted by corporations. The conversation was sparked by the Vattenfall campaign that has been running in PLux (see our recent post).

Principally our dinner conversation focused on two points:

1. Whether contact from concerned individuals would have an effect in Brussels
2. Whether it is acceptable for a corporation (as opposed an NGO) to undertake such a tactic

I’ve already argued, and continue to believe, that such contact can make a difference. In fact, I’ve even taken it to the extreme and argued that given our Brussels sensitivities about being in touch with citizens and the fact that direct contact with citizens is a relative novelty that it may be more powerful when done well.

Of course, when grassroots tactics have been used here they have tended to have been used by NGOs. Even a chemical-head like me has to take his hat off to the campaigns run by NGOs during REACH. Who could forget postcards featuring Barroso and Verheugen feeding chemicals to a baby through a test tube. Or delegations from the jam-making WI turning up in the European Parliament. Industry fights on fact, loses on emotion (again). Life ain’t fair, is it folks?

Thus, while I don’t buy the statement that just because it works in the US it can work here, I equally don’t buy that it can’t work here. It’s just going to be different. See some examples we’ve already featured in this blog (here, here and here).

Back to our GM case. The company, as you will recall, is seeking to leverage its own workers in support of its advocacy. What would corporations have to think about to this in a European (read EU) rather than US context? Three considerations in my humble view:

1. Transparency. As the leaked GM email shows, your email seeking to motivate people (workers or otherwise) could be made (very) public. As such, you need to be transparent about who you are and what you are doing. My dinner guests believe this makes the grassroots advocacy less credible towards policymakers, I think it makes it more so. If you can get ordinary folk to care about an issue that affects your organisation, then surely that in itself is worth more than an overpriced ad in the EV?
2. Engagement. People don’t care about the EU, I hear you scream. Well, hell no. But it so happens that most of the legislative grind that organisations care about is about issues that are personally relevant on a local level – waste, air quality, the 2 for 1 issues you see in the shops etc. People do care about that. Knock on any door in the land and see what people want to talk about; pop quiz, is it (a) the failed Lisbon Treaty (b) the LIBOR (c) things that matter to them at a local level?  The internet should make it easier to find people interested in your issue, as we tend to congregate around stuff we are interested in online. Now of course GM have picked a group that has a direct interest in the issue on the company’s plate and thus should be interested in doing something about it. It is after all their jobs at stake. I would however foresee some teething issues in a similar approach here in Europe just because of differences in our workplace. Discussing politics in the workplace is akin to discussing religion, pledging allegiance to the corporate stone tablet or admitting you enjoy knitting. It’s just not done. Having said this, in all communications your employees should be the keenest ambassadors of your messages. As such, whether it’s your employees or a population you are seeking to engage on the internet, success is probably going to be defined by whether or not you are able to make a emtional link to what these audiences care about.
3. Familiarity. Clearly in the US, citizens at least have a basic understanding of the federal government, how the legislative process works and who represents them. As such, the importance and potential impact of writing to Congressional leaders or their federal representatives is likely to be obvious. The same cannot be said for European understanding of MEPs, Commissioners or indeed Council perm reps. Once you have gathered your group of advocates together, you are going to have to explain why the EU is important. Equally, there is a question for Brussels PA people about their own familiarity with the tactics we are talking about. Look at us. We for the most part come from an either technical or policy background – very few of us have tasted national or European political campaigning. Indeed in some countries such campaigns may in any case bear little or no relation to the kind of activities which our US cousins revel in. Is it therefore any surprise that we prefer on the whole to stick to traditional GR tactics like meeting folk?

All this is to say that there are challenges out there and the way we approach engaging third parties of any kind on Brussels based advocacy issues is going to be, well, different. But in my view, not impossible – as the Vattenfall campaign has shown. Perhaps in the Obama-bounce, we may find ourselves considering tactics that up until now have been considered not suitable for Europe?

Since the post on Wired, I note from Bloomberg that GM is now petitioning the German government for such funding on behalf of Opel. It will be interesting to see if will contact its 25,000 German workers to ask them to write letters to the relevant German politicians.

James

Image via Wikipedia

The European Parliament today joined the Council and the Commission in adding RSS feeds to its website.

There’s a general feed for the general public, presumably that will be fed by the same stories currently featuring on the landing page. A second group of feeds is focused on the needs of journalists, offering background briefings, press releases and summaries of reports adopted.

Finally there are feeds for three types of podcast, the most interesting of which is probably the MEP’s own takes on upcoming issues – at least in theory.