How did the European Parliament encourage online the European Citizens to participate to the 2009 European Elections?

The turnout of the European Parliament Elections has been falling steadily since the first elections in 1979 indicating increased apathy about the Parliament despite its increase in power over that period. Something needed to be done.

In order to reverse this tendency, the European Parliament is increasingly using the Internet to reach out the European citizens online. The year 2009 was particularly interesting for the use of social media like social-networking and content-sharing web platforms. Below, you can see a scheme of European Parliament online communication strategy.

To be honest, I wouldn’t have expected that just six months ago, as the EP didn’t even have a Facebook page back then. But these are the days for experimentation and quick changes, and the June 2009 election was the European Parliament’s first experience with social networks. But how does an impersonal institution use social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, tools that profile persons, individuals?
Differing from Barack Obama or any other political candidate’s use of social media, EP didn’t have a political cause, other than “use your vote”. How everything started? Well, European Parliament used America's presidental elections (and especially marketing strategies behined it) as a good example how to draw people attention.

European Parlimanet estabilshed a team of experts - the EP web team started their social network effort late. Comparing to Obama, who started his campaign two year before the election, the EP web team had little extra resources, and could only start full time campaign work when the heavy parliamentary work ended in May 2009. They had the Facebook page ready in May, and had also to do some design work for the MySpace site, which launched in April. EP team also started their own YouTube channel and released several YouTube videos during the campaign - they also made some videos, from which especially one stood up and drew people's attention.

And the effects of the EP's online campagine, you ask? Well, we can say that the numbers are interesting. All the social media efforts of the EP were interlinked in the end, and content got cross-promoted on different platforms, everything except from the blog. About 55 000 people are fans of EP on Facebook. Most fans from Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Poland, and Belgium, 2500 followers on Twitter totally, 3000 friends on MySpace, 3000 views a day on Flickr. And the final, most important number - EP’s web site had about 500 000 visitors on election night to check the results.

Where you also a part of it?