Social Media and Local Gov't Elections

Story from CKNW but I hope to see others, especially in the Cariboo-Chilcotin, use social media (blog, Facebook and Twitter) as a tool as they campaign for their various positions (Mayors, Councillors and Electoral Area Directors) in this November's civic election

It's been credited with helping a relative unknown win Calgary's Mayoral chair in 2008. Social media is no longer a new phenomenon.

But, expert Dave Teixeira of dave.ca says civic politicians wanting to fully harness the power of social media in the run-up to elections in the fall need to start now. He adds, its not good enough to Tweet messages or make comments.

Teixeira says politicians need to pay attention to the conversations happening on Twitter and Facebook, "What are the issues that people are speaking about? Because maybe they're slightly different in the Twitter-verse, or maybe they're the same. But the first thing to do is to listen, what's the conversation?"

Some civic politicans in Vancouver are already doing that. Mayor Gregor Robertson has almost 13-thousand followers on Twitter while his opponent Suzanne Anton has only 861.