Why is this particularly interesting to us? Well this speech was not picked up by the Main Stream Media - actually quite ignored by the UK TV channels and dailies - there was no mention on a Google News search the following morning? So is Daniel Hannan particularly web savvy or is there something else. Well of course like all these things it is a combination of all sorts of things not least timing!
Hannan posted a video clip of his speech on YouTube almost as soon as the speech was made - so it was timely. He has had a YouTube channel for 18 months and has acquired just under 2,000 subscribers and he writes a blog for The Telegraph - the clip was reposted on his Telegraph blog around 19:14 that evening - so already has an online following.
But it was the likes of UK blogger Iain Dale, Guido Fawkes, ConservativeHome and many more who posted the clip with a comment that evening and of course many of them posted a link on their Twitter pages and all were outraged there had been so little coverage. Then rapidly by a whole lot of US bloggers such as the Drudge Report joined in and that really got the word spread across the pond.
Hannan himself says "I have been making similar speeches every week and posting them on YouTube for the past seven months." and nobody had got quite so excited. So what was it that made the bloggers get so excited? Maybe it was simply that they felt so strongly that the MSM had ignored this articulate speech (although they had been alerted to it) and wanted to redress the balance? They had reported on the Prime Minister's speech to the EU but without any counter balance which they are supposed to do?
But probably the easiest answer is to look at it in the context of the marketing communications acronym AIDA.
- A - Attention (Awareness): attract the attention of the customer.
- I - Interest: raise customer interest by focusing on and demonstrating advantages and benefits.
- D - Desire: convince customers that they want and desire the product or service and that it will satisfy their needs.
- A - Action: lead customers towards taking action and/or purchasing.
- Attention or audience targeting was already set up but this was also the right speech at the right time.
- Interest was provided by a riposte to a speech that we have not been able to hear in Parliament - so the content was focused but demonstrated the disadvantages and deficits of what is currently on offer.
- Desire to spread the word was as much to do with the MSM not mentioning it as anything else
- Action many people used online social media to view and then spread the word
What does it mean for the individual? Social Media allows the person to talk direct to us and we like that. It is no wonder the printed media are having financial problems if they are not providing the content that people want to rea. By using social media we can view what we want via the blogs written by people whose views we like or view YouTube videos because they are popular with other people . But also we can now create our own Front Pages using another social neworking service such as Twitter by following the right people who post themselves at the right time with links to articles, blogs and videos?
These are all symptoms of Network Economics:
- Direct Network effect - the more people who viewed the video the more got to see it
- Indirect Network effect - the blogs and Twitter pages with relevant readership took it onboard
- Word of Mouth - the lasting effect and it got to more people than expected and there are now questions of why it was not taken up by the MSM in the first place
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