Facebook, Twitter, blogs... knitting the message together
Social media interacts with government

Young and old, if you have a computer or a handheld device such as an iPhone or a Blackberry, you are discovering that you can do more than write documents, do e-mail and talk to the world on it. Today, social media, a term that didn't exist just a few years ago, enables us to rediscover people we knew in our past, and stay in touch with our circle of friends in a whole new way in the here-and-now.

Relationships and social media

It also opens up new opportunities for business people, professionals and those of us in government. For more than a generation, definitions and redefinitions of so-called "relationship marketing" dealt with how a buyer and a seller added value to one another's business through a close-knit association in how they did business. Many vendors, for example, would work with their suppliers to provide a broader range of products and services so that the buyer would do, as the expression was, "more business with fewer people."

That is the marketing theory in a nutshell.

One challenge in government, especially in urban environments, is that what you do as an elected representative is really important to a lot of people, but there had, until recently, been no cost-effective, easy and reliable way to keep in touch with the people you represented as an elected official. Conversely, the people who are concerned about what happens in govenment had, until recently, no easy and accessible way to connect with the men and women whom they sent to govern in their name.

So welcome to the 21st century.

Using social media to keep in touch

For most elected representatives, there is a web site. To augment it are public meetings and a newsletter, often also called a "householder." We've gone much further than that. Check out the other ways that we can keep in touch with you, and you can keep in touch with us.

• More than 400 million people worldwide use Facebook. Now you can use the popular web tool that young and old alike have as their medium of choice. Our Facebook URL shortcut is http://tinyurl.com/delaneyfan. It links to my Fan Page on Facebook;
• Detailed content on Yahoo! Groups. Groups enable a community to come together, to ask and answer questions, to connect to resources, and to exchange information. Yahoo! administers the Groups, which means you can subscribe and unsubscribe whenever you wish, and choose how you wish to receive information. We have two such Groups to serve the western Mississauga community:
  • Mississauga Taxpayer: This Group addresses the type of concern we often see on e-mail from people like you, or hear in the Constituency office. If you've heard a topic being discussed on talk radio, the real answer may be on the Mississauga Taxpayer Group. See the Group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MississaugaTaxpayer.
    To subscribe, click here;
  • Mississauga Seniors: The fastest-growing demographic in Mississauga is not young families, but seniors! This Group speaks to many of the unique needs of seniors, who are also the fastest-growing group of on-line users. See the Group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MississaugaSeniors.
    To subscribe, click here;
• Twitter: Blogs in 140 characters: I signed up for this service to try what people were talking about. It is simple and fun. I liken it to a tap on the shoulder. If you are a Twitter user, follow me by searching for BobDelaneyMPP;
• YouTube for the video: Search YouTube under "Bob Delaney" for videos of my appearances in the community, and exerpts or short speeches from within the Legislature at Queen's Park;
• Don't forget this web site. It continues to evolve in function and in form. It will receive a complete re-make in the short term.