Tories Reach Out to Social Media With New Appointment

Another debacle for the already ailing LabourList. They've posted a wafer thin attack on the Tories' online strategy by the normally in touch PR man Mark Hanson. He reckons the Tory online strategy is not getting any backing within CCHQ, although produces no evidence whatsoever. LibDem Voice happily rows in behind and repeats the spurious rumours.

As regular readers know, I have been a sporadic critic of the Tories' online offerings but whatever their faults, they have been light years ahead of the competition. But I learned tonight that far from rowing back their online presence they are expanding it. Today they appointed Craig Elder to the new post of Online Communities Editor. He's going to be concentrating on building the Tory presence in social media and has been tasked with coordinating the party's liaison with the blogosphere. He will be looking at new ways for the party to use all the different web tools that are popping up at the moment as well as twittering and blogging in these areas himself.

And tomorrow he is coordinating the environment policy launch, which is being live webcast through the Mogulus platform. David Cameron will be doing an In Conversation session with environmental journalist Geoffrey Lean. I'll be streaming it live too, from 1.30pm.

LabourList would do better to concentrate its efforts on Labour's own pisspoor web offerings, rather than trying to stir it with other parties. But I suppose we shouldn't expect anything else.