A quick look through the main digital channels used by the Conservative Party. There are probably many more, these are the ones that were easily found.

Note: Other posts also looked at: The Lib Dems, The Green Party, HTML newsletters and the Labour Party.

Website

Taking a first glance at their website, the Conservatives seem to have a good grasp of digital marketing, and after 5 seconds I already like it more than the Labour page.

They're not just down with the kids by having a Twitter account, they even put their latest update right on the home page. Their website (for obvious reasons) is clearly on the attack, compared with Labours more defensive approach. The most prominent links are on the Party's stance on various issues, as well as a row of icons to other online profiles, a quick sign up form, and clear call to action on donating to the party. There's all the usually bumf in there about the people and news too.

Not too far from the first page, they have a nice Google tool for searching questions that have been suggested for David Cameron to personally answer. If you don't find anything you can add your own question in. Not only is this a way cooler way of interacting that a dull FAQ style page, or a 'Submit Your Question Here and We Might Get Round To Reading It Some Day' this really gives the impression that you point has been noted for everyone else to see. On top of that, they have the Google logo all over the place... Come on, be honest now, who doesn't like Google. "If you like Google, you'll like us." (that could be a T-Shirt best seller). 5700 people have submitted 2800 questions and voted 'Like This' or 'Don't Like This' 112,000 times. Nice way of demonstrating public interest in the party.

Blog

They have a very active blog, with posts from a range of party members on a variety of topics. They have comments under all of them, and spice them up with the odd picture or embedded YouTube video. They also use the word Webcameron... Which I like!

The only complaint I have is the text is too small on the longer articles. OK, I know how to quickly resize fonts, but how much of the general public know how to?

Twitter

First in their list of icons is Twitter. They currently follow 23,913 people, and have 23,914 following them back. How strange that the figures are so close. They're listed by 1002 people. They have handy Twitter lists for various sections of the party—pretty handy—something Labour hadn't bothered doing, and they tweet links to various video/audio clips of Big Dave as well as the odd photo.

FaceBook

They have a pretty bog standard FaceBook page with about 33,000 fans. There are links to the party members, their Flickr page, YouTube channel and a weird Count Down to election clock that, should you want to, you can send to people or even put on your website. I'd prefer a Jim'll Fix It medal myself.

My only comment on this would be that 6 or 7 posts a day might be a bit of overkill. Any fan logging into FaceBook will have most their stream filled with Conservative posts. That's great for the first time they log in, but with it being so easy to 'Hide Posts from The Conservative Party', it's not something I'd want to risk. You might have 33,000 fans, but how many are still getting your updates?

Their wall (fan posts/comments) is pretty active, with about (at 11pm) 2 dozen messages posted in the last hour.

One of the last bit.ly links they sent out had about 500 people click through.

YouTube

Their YouTube account has had about 1.6 million upload views, and are mostly hand held camera shots following Big D around the country. I'm sure this was done to show you that 'Hey, this looks just like a family video. You see, I'm a normo, just like you.'... The video I watched reminded me more of an episode of The Office! Maybe that's just me though. I'm sure these videos come across much better than grand, well shot, formal interview, propaganda type videos so I shouldn't be too harsh.

LiveCast

The Conservatives also have a LiveStream account. These videos are (the ones I saw) noticeable better produced, more formal and seem to be more toward the Party Broadcast videos we all know and love. The first video had a horrible PowerPoint looking intro, which was really not cool, the second was David Cameron in a a community hall explaining something or other.

Delicious

The next icon on their main page is for Delicious. If you really want to keep your finger on the pulse of the community party you can network with them on Delicious and browse any of the 13 links they've bookmarked. It might be of use to some people I guess—there are links there to newspaper articles, to interviews on various sites. They have a mini feed on their blog page showing the last 5 links.

iPhone

The Conservative Party have an iPhone thing-me-bob (hey, we don't all have iPhones you know). This is a great way to publish media for the millions of people that are constantly on the go. Mobile phone are great time killers so there's a fair chance that this will be used (by anyone that has downloaded it). People can now have a quick read through updates on the bus, on the subway or on the ... whatever you like. Wanna keep up to date with all the latest goings on, hot gossip and insider news from the Conservative Party? There's an app for that.

Podcasts

Published through iTunes (and presumably elsewhere) these audio files are also a great way to get info out to a population that doesn't read papers and doesn't have time to browse hundreds of webpages.

Email

I signed up (twice) for the Party whatever-they-email. I didn't even get an acknowledgement back. A missed marketing opportunity there me thinks.

Overall

I can't quite say way, but on comparison with Labour's efforts I found the Conservatives to have pulled all this together in a much nicer way. I'm sure Labour have everything online that the Conservatives do, but I couldn't find it. How many others going to really put the effort in to find out where they can download this, that or the other from the Labour party? They're not going to! They don't have time. They want it right there in front of them, and that want it easy to use.

The Conservatives weren't perfect though. RSS is maybe not used by every person on the planet, but it is a pretty standard method of subscribing to information. People look for the RSS icon. If you've got a row of icons right at the top, they're going to expect it to be there. It's buried in the footer as a text link. And do we really need a link right there on the first page we see to your delicious account with 13 bookmarks? That can be shifted off under the mini feed. People will look for 'latest links' more than they will 'join my delicious network'. Most people I know don't even know what Delicious is.