As political public relations strategists place their bets on outreach plans, we’re finding the plan must be a parlay linking together both traditional and modern outreach practices. The ultimate success of these plans are dependent on both practices winning together.
As the 2010 Swedish general elections are approaching, more and more emphasis is being put on building political party brands with communities. Popular parliament parties such as The Moderates and the Social Democrats have engaged in social media outreach and are leading political pr strategies in Sweden, however; there is still no formal political social media communication strategy in place for any Swedish political party.
Social media outreach is quickly becoming a matter of state as Swedish parliament is branching out from typical campaign strategies and adopting social media to build on their pr portfolio strategies.
The Picks.
The picks for the linked strategy include both traditional and modern outreach strategies. While digital strategies will help parties build communities online, in-person engagement and traditional outreach is still a necessity.
The Odds.
Win-win. Win-lose. Lose-lose. If one assumes that the success of each single plan is a coin flip and is expected to pay out at 1:1, the true payout should instead be 3:1, a substantial difference.
The Payout.
The benefit of this parlay of a political outreach plan is that there are much higher payoffs than executing one strategy over the other since the difficulty of winning with one strategy it is much higher.
Creating a political brand using both on and off-line strategies will equip each competitor with the ability to engage communities using an array of media. The strategy will be not to use these digital strategies – but to actually engage and build online communities through social media.
At the conclusion of the 2010 Swedish general election, it will be interesting to measure the value of each plan – plans encompassing a parlay of both traditional and modern strategies – and plans that encompass only one strategy.
The end result will help pr strategists across the globe determine which plan worked most effectively in Sweden and leverage lessons learned for future elections in Sweden and around the globe.
Global Comm Class - Georgetown University 
You start with a strong point in this post – that in order to be successful in politics in Sweden you need to use online and offline channels, but the main thing missing are the proof points that help us understand where your point of view is when it comes to these. You talk about how the Swedish parliament is “branching out” to use social media, but don’t offer us an example or link to follow to learn how. You are on the right track with your thinking about how politicians need a strategy for online and offline, but we want to hear some tips from your point of view on how this could happen. (2)