Winning an election, 140 characters at a time

8 p.m. EST: A technology analyst says simply cutting down a press release to 140 characters is not enough to persuade Twitter followers that they are being engaged by a party leader.

Power Play: Mark Blevis, strategist

5:00 p.m. EST: A digital public affairs strategist says the leaders of Canada's political parties are not tweeting very much, with much of it being official information, which doesn't always resonate with voters.

Canada AM: Maurice Cacho, social media expert

Maurice Cacho, a web journalist says it will be up to the major candidates and their parties to mobilize social media and to have conversations with the voters. He says it is an excellent tactic to make a connection.

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The Liberal Party of Canada's Facebook page.

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Maurice Cacho, CTV.ca News

Date: Mon. Mar. 28 2011 9:45 AM ET

The election campaign is now underway and politicians are hitting the road to earn your vote. Considering Canadian voters have seen four federal elections in seven years, candidates should be well-versed with campaign techniques. But this time around, they'll be focusing on something they haven't harnessed to its full power before – social media.

Facebook

The Liberal Party of Canada leads the pack with 11,000 people liking their page. The Conservative Party of Canada has 9,770 likes followed by the NDP – which doesn't appear to have an official Facebook page. The New Democrats do, however, have a page for Leader Jack Layton.

About 33,648 people like his page, a few thousand fewer than the 41,016 likes for the page of Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff. The leader in the Facebook page race is Stephen Harper, with 42,853 people liking his page.

That last number is about four times more than the number of people who like Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe's Facebook page, which has only 5,837 likes.

Twitter

With five million Canadians on Twitter, candidates and political parties will be using their accounts – and those precious 140 character updates – preciously.

Harper has a huge advantage if it all came down to sheer numbers. With over 108,000 followers, he has the most of the leaders.

But it's also important to factor in the importance that someone has on social networks. Klout is a service that measures Twitter influence, and Ignatieff, despite having far fewer followers (70,000) has a higher Klout rating (72) because his audience is more engaged. Meanwhile, the Conservative leader has a Klout score of 71.

Layton has about 65,000 followers and a Klout score of 68, while Duceppe has 48,053 followers and scores 61 points on the Klout scale.

As the campaign progresses, candidates and parties will want to talk to voters on social media – and not just talk at them.

They should try to have more conversations with other Twitter users. Obviously they can't reply to everyone or RT (retweet) every tweet that comes their way, but focusing on talking to influential Twitter users in their riding could be a good move.

The election campaign is still early, but the major candidates have the social media ingredients they need to make an impact. They have the flour, the sugar, the eggs and the milk – but they just need to find the magical recipe to bake the best cake and get everyone around the serving plate to eat it up. Let's see what they can produce.