Posts Tagged Twitter
21% of MEPs use twitter – according to us and someone else
- Image via Wikipedia
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
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3 comments November 3, 2009
Public Affairs Action Day – 30 November
Conference season is upon us once again. And boy does our workshop at last year’s Public Affairs Agenda two day extravaganza seem like an age ago. This year we’re partnering with the good folks at Dods on their European Public Affairs Action Day to be held on the 30 November at the Renaissance Hotel (it is a day rather than a summit this year, but the hotel remains the same).
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.
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JamesAdd comment October 20, 2009
A look back at turn of the century Brussels
- Image by Jungle_Boy via Flickr
Thanks to Aart van Iterson, a former colleague now at Cambre Associates, who points out by email that our current survey of the use of the internet by Members of the European Parliament is not the first time we have undertaken to research how digital tools are being used in Brussels.
Back in 2000 the then GPC (even then an Omnicom company, but at that stage still to become part of Fleishman-Hillard) teamed up once again with Simon Leysen of Morris & Chapman to conduct “a first of its kind survey investigating primarily how the Brussels based international community use email and internet in their work.”
The highlights of the 2000 survey included the following:
- The Brussels based international (EU political) community generally prefer first contact to be established via e-mail rather than by letter.
Over 90% of respondents directly receive and process their own e-mails. - For almost half of those surveyed, the Internet has become their main source of information.
- Before dealing with an organisation, over 70% of respondents say they will visit the organisations’ web-site first to obtain background information.
- Close to 50% of survey participants prefer to download large amounts of data as opposed to receiving it in its original format.
Despite being less than ten years old, our findings from 2000 have an air of a different era about them. Almost like finding that more than half of us prefer the car to the horse to get to work.
In looking at the online communication activities of our MEPs, we should therefore not be too harsh. Much has changed in the tools we all use to communicate in a very short time. At the last European elections the likes of YouTube and Twitter did not exist, google was not a verb and Facebook was only accessible to students at Ivy League schools. With this in mind, the use of any of these tools by MEPs, even just a third of them, is truly impressive. What’s more, I am sure that in another nine years our findings from 2009 will seem so beginning of the century.
James
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1 comment May 22, 2009
Euronews on the digital trends study
European lawmakers underuse the internet according to new research. The findings show that while three quarters of MEPs use their personal websites to reach the electorate, only a minority understands the potential of using online technologies to help them interract with people. Only half visit blogs once a week or more, and two thirds have never heard of the social networking tool Twitter.
1 comment May 19, 2009
Do MEPs tweet, blog and Facebook? We find out.
- Image via Wikipedia
Today we launch the results of our European Parliament Digital Trends Survey – www.epdigitaltrends.eu It examines how Members of the European Parliament are using the internet to communicate with their voters as well as how the same MEPs use the internet to inform their daily legislative work. As such, we hope that the results are interesting both for MEPs and for Brussels public affairs practitioners.
In summary MEPs are using the internet to communicate to voters but are not yet for the most part using all the tools available. No doubt MEPs have come a long way since the last elections, but there is still a road to travel.
For public affairs practitioners we believe that our results support the view we espoused when we started this blog 2 years ago. Like all of us MEPs are going online for information to inform their decisions. To be effective, our public affairs strategies need to integrate digital communications into their toolbox of tactics. Digital can not replace traditional tools such as contact programmes and media relations it complements them, rendering our activities more effective.
On the microsite www.epdigitaltrends.eu you will find the following:
- Our main results with supporting statistics
- An e-brochure
- A full report
- A library of downloads, including graphs and the raw data for you to make your own analysis and graphs
- Commentary from MEPs
- An opportunity for you to post your own thoughts
- The charities we supported in conducting the research
- The methodology we used – sample size etc.
In the coming days we shall be taking time to reflect on what the different parts of our results mean for public affairs practitioners in Brussels on this blog.
Thanks to all MEPs who participated and to the hardworking FH team who made it all possible (everyone in the office played some role but in particular I’d like to thank Mike, Reg, Veronique, Liliana, Julie, Carey, Aurelie, Tim, Michele, Jay, Clara and Rosie)
We look forward to your reactions to the results on the microsite and to having a debate on this blog about what our survey says about digital public affairs.
James
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2 comments May 18, 2009
Social in Sweden? Yes, if it is social media.
In Sweden it’s also interesting to note the proliferation of the use of social media. All main candidates, irrespective of their political belonging, are using blogs, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to interact with potential voters on the Internet. The US presidential election campaign in 2008 is a source of inspiration and all Swedish candidates are eager to imitate Obama’s success in campaigning through social media.
Swedish MEPs’ willingness to embrace digital communication channels is a factor well worth bearing in mind for anyone wanting to engage with these MEPs in the next European Parliament. More about these trends soon in an FH report about how MEPs use digital tools.
– Magnus
1 comment May 15, 2009
Understanding the digital lives of MEPs
Eagle-eyed colleagues have spotted that French daily Le Monde cited this blog as a source in its profile of MEPs and what they do.
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
1 comment April 24, 2009
Which MEPs are Twittering? I know a few…
Following on from our digital audit of MEPS last year, we now want to know which MEPs have caught the Twitter bug…
These are just a few we’ve found so far:
- Graham Watson
- Matthias Groote
- Katrin Saks
- Benoit Hamon
- Eoin Ryan
- Neena Gill
- Arlene McCarthy
- Peter Skinner
- Jim Nicholson
- Mary Honeyball
- Andrew Duff
- Daniel Caspary
- Jules Maaten
- Jeanine Hennis
- Sophie in ‘t Veld
- Daniel Cohn-Bendit
- Åsa Westlund
- Anna Hedh
- Kathalijne Buitenweg
- Helga Truepel
- Colm Burke
- Joost Lagendijk
- Gunnar Hökmark
- Dagmar Roth-Behrendt
- Alexander Alvaro
- Jorgo Chatzimarkakis
- Richard Corbett
- Ed McMillan-Scott
- Rodi Kratsa
- Vincent Peillon
- Urszula Gacek
- Jean luc Bennahmias
- Catherine Trautmann
- 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.”
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11 comments March 19, 2009
We twitter on EBS2009, do you dare to care?
A year ago we posted on the European Business Summit 2008 and their use of video and blogs for their event. Well they are back again for another go – blog here and website here - and so are we.
This time we have decided not to comment on their blog, which seems to have more content that last time around, but instead to take up the challenge offered by New Europe this morning and to twitter from Brussels’ premium annual business/policy event. I know, you are about to all enter into existential angst about whether Twitter is a passing fad or actually useful for something. Debate away. However, it’s late and we want to go home. We know it’s working for some of our clients and that’s enough for now.
So if you are really interested (and herein lies the rub of Twitter) in what we think of events at EBS 2009, you can follow us at twitter.com/eurotwittering late next week, hashtag ebs2009 will be used throughout.
James
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Add comment March 18, 2009
Enviro.aero wins a gold medal(lion)
Admittedly this was not the type of award that led to long blubbering acceptance speeches (or in fact had an award ceremony), but it was accompanied by a gold medal (the digital variety). Enviro.aero, a cross-industry aviation and environment web resource, won Best New Aviation Website in the Flightglobal Webbies 2008.
Enviro.aero is the website of FH client ATAG, The Air Transport Action Group, a global association that represents all sectors of the air transport industry. It was launched with the purpose of providing clear information on the many projects and cutting-edge innovations that make up the aviation industry’s response to climate change. Enviro.aero has engaged in the latest social media in order to spread their message to a wider audience, gathering followers and fans on Twitter and Facebook. The Plane Talking blog has also been a valuable medium through which to engage the flying public. The judges praised enviro.aero for providing “a long-overdue industry-wide response to the aviation environment topic” and a “clear user interface that allows quick access to interesting information.”
Finally, I’d like to thank my Mum, my Dad, my team……
Add comment February 13, 2009
