Many cities across Southern Ontario are in the home stretch of a boring and uneventful election campaign to vote in mayors, city councillors and school board trustees.

Toronto’s municipal election is prominent simply because it’s a big city and big city politics seem to be more exciting. It isn’t, believe me, but at least it makes for interesting TV with 29 people running for the mayor’s seat.

The incumbent, David Miller, is said to be the front runner and will most likely retain his seat. The 2 other contenders – Jane Pitfield and Stephen LeDrew – are given much love in the media.

What’s important about these 3 is that they’re turning to social media to help get their message out. They’re using blogs, YouTube, MySpace and other Web 2.0 devices to tell people about their platform.

Out of the 3 front runners, the one who uses social media the best is Stephen LeDrew. Why?

• His website IS a blogsite. The front page changes often as Stephen (or someone from his team) updates the blog with key information. Nothing is stale or static and I don’t have to click around just to find out what Stephen is thinking. His blogsite shows that he’s current and that he get information out quickly.
• His blogsite includes lots of video. The videos are uploaded to Google and then embedded into his blogsite. They’re short, punchy and deliver key messages.
• LeDrew’s blogsite is actually a blog. Miller also has a real blog, but Pitfield, unfortunately, doesn’t. Although her website points us to a blog, it’s actually just text on a webpage.

One thing that Stephen LeDrew didn’t do that David Miller did is identify that there will be others aside from the mayoral candidate updating the blog.

Miller did that in this post and I didn’t see a similar message on LeDrew’s blog. That could just mean that LeDrew is updating the blog himself, however, if that’s the case, please identify yourself with a name other than admin.

Aside from this obvious faux pas, LeDrew gets my vote of having the most innovative mayoral campaign. Now, if only he could get his own domain name.

Technorati: david miller, stephen ledrew, jane pitfield, toronto, toronto politics,