My friend John is having trouble sending his finished blog through to me so while we're waiting I thought I'd talk a little bit about canvassing techniques.
Now during the election I both ran canvassing sessions and took part in them. I know how boring and tedious they can be if you're knocking on doors and not getting responses, however they don't have to be this way. Something I saw during the election was to have a leafleting session in an area the week before we'd canvass there. On the leaflet would be a line saying we'd be in the area again next week and if they wanted to talk about something they simply needed to leave this card/leaflet in the window. Just by doing this you can get feedback from people who actually want to give it to you and at the same time save your volunteers the heartache of knocking on 200 doors just to get a single response.
Something else I saw which we didn't take enough advantage of was digital media. Yes candidates use facebook and twitter but what about platforms like Kaleidoscope which let them talk live to audiences and answer their questions? what about using check-in stops like local pubs to hold ad-hoc town hall meetings? And what about youtube? Our party used it very well but individual candidates varied wildly as to whether they posted anything on there at all and in this day and age where even my mother is using digital media that simply isn't good enough.
We ran a great campaign this year. We did. I however want to run a better one in 2020 so we turn a 12 seat majority into a 120 seat majority. So let's use these next 4 years to trial new campaign techniques so that in 2020 we really are on the bleeding edge of campaigning.
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