The European Parliament Online Campaign for the 2009 European Elections

How did the European Parliament encourage online the European Citizens to participate to the 2009 European Elections? In which ways, the strategic use of social media helped to raise awareness about the European Parliament Elections 2009?

Context

The turnout of the European Parliament Elections has been falling steadily since the first elections in 1979 indicating increased apathy about the Parliament despite its increase in power over that period.

In order to reverse this tendency, the European Parliament is increasingly using the Internet to reach out the European citizens online. The year 2009 was particularly interesting for the use of social media like social-networking and content-sharing web platforms.

Online Communication Strategy

Precisions

This short retrospective analysis focuses on the online communication strategy of the European Parliament.
Though I consider myself being a kind of “insider” of the EU Bubble, I don’t belong to the European Parliament and have no relations with their Web Team. That’s why, this analysis is rather a partial interpretation than an exhaustive impact assessment. So, any feedback is welcome!

Strategy

While the official website of the European Parliament played a central role in the online communication strategy of the European Parliament, two fields of online promotion to spread through its message were mainly used:

• SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
• SMO (Social Media Optimization)

Finally, one should not underestimate the power of offline communication of the European Parliament which reinforced the impact of their online communication.

Basically, the European Parliament created synergies between its different communication channels the Internet (official website, social-networking and content-sharing web platforms) through interlinking them all together and thus creating multiple online “gates” to its official website.

European Parliament Online Communication Strategy

The European Parliament Official Website

First, it is important to reckon that multilingual European Parliament website played a central role in the online communication campaign of the European Parliament Elections 2009 through informing, communicating and linking to their different web platforms.

The European Parliament Official Website

SEM (Search Engine Marketing)

Then, to raise awareness about the European Parliament Elections, the European Parliament did perform a Europe wide Google AdWords campaign directly promoting the European Parliament website and indirectly promoting their presence on other web platforms.

SMO (Social Media Optimization)

European Parliament Social Media Strategy

Content-sharing and social-networking web platforms

Indeed, in order to convey online their message, the European Parliament developed mainly its presence on content-sharing web platforms and social-networks:

• YouTube, to share videos
• FlickR, to share photos
• FaceBook and MySpace, to network with the young generation

Blogging and micro-blogging

Their dedicated blog – EP-WebEditors.eu– played a central role to provide content on the Facebook Fan Page and interact within the EU blogosphere. They also opened a Twitter account – EU_Elections_en – to diffuse efficiently short messages.

Seeding

After having identified key online leaders – mainly EU bloggers – they successfully contacted them to promote their Facebook Fan Page and manage to relay their initiative through effective seeding.

Conclusions

There are three key factors of success regarding the online communication strategy of the European Parliament are:

Integration

The online communication strategy of the European Parliament is integrated meaning that – the European Parliament used all the communication channels available on the Internet to spread through its message.

Production

Then, the online communication strategy of the European Parliament is based on the continuous production and effective diffusion on content. While the European Parliament did produce and diffuse the great majority of the content, they also relayed on the user generated content.

Interaction

Finally, the online communication strategy of the European Parliament was proactive, meaning the European Parliament – with the help of eAmbassadors – actively interacted with social media web platforms to spread through their message