A regional publisher is teaming up with Twitter to promote its General Election website.
Johnston Press’s What Matters to Me site will be promoted on the social media site all day today, via the use of the hashtag #WhatMattersToMe.
The hashtag will feature as Twitter’s “top promoted trend” all day, a slot given over to companies paying for advertising on the social networking site.
The What Matters To Me site, pictured below, was launched earlier this month, featuring videos shot by JP journalists of readers giving their opinion on the issues that matter to them, ahead of the General Election.
Each video is under 30 seconds long and is tagged by the issue and location, while users have chance to ‘upvote’ or share their favourites.
Paul Napier, JP’s group editorial development director, is heading up the campaign.
He said: “It is clear from the content on whatmatterstome.co.uk that there are many different issues at the top of voters’ priority lists, and that the opinions on any single issue are diverse.
“We’re very excited to be working with Twitter to help give people up and down the country, from Land’s End to John o’ Groats, a platform to voice their opinions.
“With this activity, we hope to take the focus away from party politics, and create a national conversation around the issues themselves, from the perspective of the people.”
Despite all the fancy window-dressing is this not in fact what used to be known as ‘vox-pops’?
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I’ve looked at this. I’m sorry to say it is like being stopped in the street by a stranger saying something like: “To me, if I’m being honest, health is the most important issue”. And then it’s gone. What is the point and, more fundamentally, how will it attract web traffic?
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Mr Napier is “very excited”. I bet he can hardly control himself and the rest of JP.
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Regrettably, 30 seconds wouldn’t be long enough for me to give my views on the state of the nation – 30 minutes – maybe.
Good idea though, and at the risk of being boring, I have said many times that newspaper websites should be entertainment portals. News plus other stuff that people want to read/watch.
If so many of us weren’t being made redundant across the industry I think we’d all look at these ideas in a different light.
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‘Teams up’ ???
More like pays to advertise!!
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