Social media and the election: "If you have a Twitter strategy, it's probably shit"

Krishnan Guru-Murthy spoke out against 'making Twitter the story' during a talk about social media's role in the UK election yesterday evening.

The Frontline Club's 'Digital Election' panel - which featured Guru-Murthy, Paul Staines (Guido Fawkes), PA's Chris Condron, Tweetminster's Alberto Nardelli and Sky News political correspondent Niall Paterson as compere - also predicted significant differences in social media's impact when compared with the US election.

Barack Obama's victory was widely seen as a milestone in social media campaigning because of his team's prolific use of online channels like Twitter. But the speakers agreed we were unlikely to see an equivalent here in the UK - mainly because Obama's team 'simply had a better product'.

So in PR terms, Obama's campaign is a classic 'product first, strategy later' example. He was significantly different from his competitors, so his campaigning could be too. Sadly, few would say the same for Cameron, Clegg or Brown.

(See the full event report here, or follow the #frontlineclub discussion on Twitter.)