The digital profile of the Liberal democrats is not making use of the huge opportunities the internet provides. I am a young Liberal Democrat who is often annoyed at our lack of digital presence as a party. This is a time where, due to our small number of MPs, we aren’t often appearing on the mainstream media and so it is the best possible time to start creating media of our own. A strong social media presence has two key benefits for the party. It will solidify our base of support with current members and simultaneously attract new ones.

The main problem with our current social media strategy seems to me to be a lack of tailoring to each individual platform so with that in mind here would be my recommendations for each platform.

YouTube

Perhaps the greatest untapped goldmine the Lib Dems have is YouTube. The thing one must understand about YouTube is its current trend towards long form content. An example of this would be the series of interviews done by James O’Brien for Joe.co.uk. One recent interview was with Nick Clegg and gained 26 thousand viewers yet cost almost nothing to produce.

Why doesn’t the party dig out a camera, a microphone, have a young party member sit down and interview each MP for an hour. If it only gets a few thousand views no money has been wasted and a few thousand people have had the chance to listen to a Liberal Democrat point of view. Produce a podcast version of it and release that too. If Ed Miliband’s podcast can get 100,000 downloads surely, we can get into the marketplace too.

An important thing to remember is the right are already doing this, look at the recent news on UKIP or a half an hour interview with Katie Hopkins that gained 300 thousand views. This is an untapped goldmine of exposure, crucially aimed at a younger audience, that we are wasting.

Twitter

The twitter presence for the Liberal Democrats is on the whole good, the Lib Dem Press Office account being the highlight. The thing to remember about twitter is it is the opposite of YouTube. On YouTube users sit for hours watching long form content but twitter is about short, snappy and if possible humorous posts. I would change two things, firstly make our tweets funny, punchy and sharable to attract more people and gain more publicity. We need more “Stalin to Mr Bean” type tweets. Secondly, and this may seem a small detail, subtitle our twitter videos. People use twitter when they’re on the bus or walking down the street and so often won’t listen to the audio of videos, every Labour party video is subtitled for this reason, we need that too.

Reddit

Reddit is a forum website, allowing for long form debate and discussion. One of the most popular things in reddit are the AMAs (ask me anything). This consists of someone sitting down for an hour and taking questions from redditors and answering, a great way to converse with the public. We have already done these, most notably Paddy Ashown’s so why not do one a week with a prominent Lib Dem?

A Store

Another HUGE missed opportunity is a store on our website. Why not have a place for members to easily buy Lib Dem Badges, signs and T-shirts. Members want this stuff and are willing to further fund the party by paying for it, doing this raises money and engages members, its win win.

Facebook

The key to Facebook is to create a Lib Dem community. We have recently been using it well so all I would suggest is more live streams and interacting with members and the community will grow, people like to feel heard.

Social media costs little and can yield a lot

This is in no way an attack on our current digital team. We are doing well but what I’d like to see is a little more time and energy from the Lib Dems on a proper online presence. The key thing to remember is that social media costs little and can yield a lot. For the same price as an expensive Party Political Broadcast we could create hours and hours of content directly discussing our ideas and the evidence is that people would watch.

* Oliver is a first-time writer, but frequent protester and canvasser