Liberal Leadership Website Review Update 8 (en francais)

Content Review

Once a week (at random times) I'll review each site for 'freshness' of content. In order to drive traffic to a site and engage with your visitors a site requires ever changing content. The lack of fresh content and information renders a site nothing more than an Internet Postcard.

I figured the day after the LPC(O) convention was a good time to check. By late Sunday evening, each team should of had enough time to update with content from the weekend.

Freshness Scale:

1. Piping Hot! - less than 12 hours old
2. Fresh - new within last 24 hours
   
3. Day old - new within last 48 hours
4. Stale - no new content for more than 48 hours
5. Mouldy - no new content for more than 5 days
6. Putrid - no new content for more than a week

(Note: Freshness relates to original content on site, not external links to MSM stories. Calendar/Event info, while helpful, will also not be counted as content. )

Carolyn Bennett - Stale
no media advisories, no press releases or stories. Latest English blog 03 May, French 04 May. Testimonial posted on the 5th of May

Scott Brison - Putrid
no media advisories, no press releases. Latest story posted on the 30th of April.

Maurizio Bevilacqua - Stale, almost Mouldy
no media advisories, front page press release dated 02 May (teaser posted on front page, full release only available as a Word download), blog post on the 3rd of May

Stephane Dion - Day Old
New article on the front page (no date) - looks to be from speech Friday night at LPC(O). Same article in News section with a date of 06 May.

Ken Dryden - Putrid
no media advisories, no press releases, no blog posts. Latest content found was a speech dated 29 April.

Martha Hall Findlay - Putrid
no media advisories, no press releases, no new section at all. Doesn't look like any content has changed since site launched.

Hedy Fry - I'll begin tracking content on this site after I complete my initial review, probably late Monday or Tuesday.

Michael Ignatieff - Piping Hot!
Hat tip to Ignatieff's Communications team. They are obviously the best prepared and most web savvy of the bunch.

Front page - two Press Releases dated 05 May. Large logo/link directing site visitors to the team's 'Live' coverage of the LPC(O) convention. Featured live blogs and videos from Friday and Saturday. (nothing as yet from Sunday). Videos from Friday and Saturday. Special email address setup for people to email the campaign regarding LPC(O). New photos posted from LPC(O), Friday and Saturday.

Special logo created for MI Community bloggers - bloggers wearing buttons at event, with posters etc, distributed throughout the event. Only campaign that I know of that held a specific event for bloggers, and posted a quick blog about it.

Site now has a blog roll featuring various Liberal bloggers (not all Ignatieff bloggers) and an aggregator to go with the roll.

Forums are beginning to pick up steam. Anyone who has ever tried to start a forum of this nature knows that time and patience are required in order to start building. Even with the change of sites/platforms and other technical difficulties, the forums are developing. While I was on reviewing the site at 11:30 pm Eastern, there were 17 guests and 5 registered users browsing the forums. Latest stats: 470 members, 194 threads, 227 posts. There were posts from throughout the day on Sunday.

While it is still open to debate whether website strategies such as this can be turned into organizational strength in Canada, the Ignatieff team is leaving nothing to chance. Although I was expecting to see more blogs after Friday's start, the team put in a solid effort, including some good instant video. Should other campaigns try to emulate Ignatieff's at other events, they're already that much farther ahead. Excellent job.

Gerard Kennedy - Putrid
no media advisories, no press releases, news section is still under development, blog still under development. No new content can be found. Doesn't look like any content has changed since site launched. Note: watch out for those menu links that actually launch as .pdf files when you least expect it.

Bob Rae - Stale
no media advisories, no press releases. 'Virutal Community' is still under development. Front page announcement posted on Friday, although there is no date on the article.

Joe Volpe - Putrid
no media advisories, no press releases, Latest content found was a Press Release date 23rd of April

Note: in order to shorten these posts somewhat, I'll be moving all the links to a Google Web page shortly (I have to clean it up a little first), and then will only need to provide that link at the end of each post.

---

Related Posts, Blogs and Websites

Liberal Leadership Candidates Website Review - original review

Liberal Leadership Website Review - Update 1

Liberal Leadership Website Review - Update 2

Liberal Leadership Website Review - Update 3

Liberal Leadership Website Review - Update 4

Liberal Leadership Website Review - Update 5

Liberal Leadership Website Review - Update 6

Liberal Leadership Website Review - Update 7

Rob Cottingham - other reviews on the candidates websites

Liberalia.ca - a Liblogs member's reviews

Liberal Leadership Odds - a great little site put together by Sean at Trickle Down Truth. Tracking many aspects of the race. Sean is inviting other bloggers to cross post items to the site.

Blogger Endorsement Tracking - by Cerberus

Liberal Leadership Central - By Cerebus. "Candidate websites, endorsements, website rankings, interviews and other campaign resources that can be found online." Note: most complete list that I've been able to find online.