Does anyone on Boris Johnson's campaign understand social media?

If they do, they should probably have a chat with their campaign chief Lynton Crosby.

Earlier this week Lynton's team launched a ham-fisted attempt to steal the Mayor of London's official twitter account.

This resulted in a full blown Twitter storm, official complaints and reports in those well known radical outlets The Daily Telegraph, major tech websites and even the local press.

After accusing the mayor's followers on Twitter of "hysteria" the campaign backed down and deleted all references to the campaignfrom the official feed.

Next, for reasons best known to himself, Lynton decided to launch an attack on the strictly impartial MayorWatch website.

MayorWatch's crime? To politely request that Boris's campaign send them some press releases.

Rather than contact Mayorwatch and apologise for failing to send the releases he'd requested, Crosby instead took to Twitter.

This jibe was apparently based on the fact that Guardian Journalist Dave Hill had earlier highlighted Mayorwatch's request on Twitter.

Mayorwatch, who has been covering City Hall for over a decade, has since received messages of support and disbelief about Crosby's response from right across the political spectrum.

If Lynton wanted to have a crack at one of Boris's critics then he chose completely the wrong person.

Instead of engaging with an impartial and influential news outlet, Crosby has instead chosen to alienate them. Bizarre.

As if that wasn't enough, Boris's campaign have since been highlighting "Londoners" who have come out to wave placards at Ken on one of his campaign visits.

They've even posted a video titled "Londoners confront Ken Livingstone in Croydon"

 

The thing is, if you want to pretend that something is coming from ordinary Londoners, it's probably best not to have the cameraman telling them to shout "louder."

It's probably also wise not to have previously posted pictures of these same ordinary Londoners wearing campaign t-shirts whilst sitting on a campaign bus:

Online campaigning has yet to be a major factor in winning UK elections. 

And if Crosby's attempts this week are anything to go by then it's unlikely to be so in this Mayoral election either.

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