Labor herald

By relaunching the party magazine Labor Herald as a digital proposition, Alex created a fundraising and communications vehicle with the aim of creating community amongst Australian Labor Party members and supporters.

It took months to build and launch the WordPress site, as we had to raise some extra funds to ensure the WordPress website and community could be built. I led the Pozible crowdfunding campaign, which you can see here and exceeded the fundraising target.

During the pre-launch phase, we relied on “Labor greats” videos to seed interest on social media and encourage Labor Herald email sign up.

The Labor Herald was an ambitious project that came in for plenty of internal and external criticism. The ALP nat sec office ultimately closed the site after I left as editor.

The site was about building a community and empowering members to comment and engage on ALP policy, while also regular asking for donation commitments to support electoral campaigning.

Labor Herald was an internal communications platform for the party, inviting key Labor MPs, staffers and members to contribute content and ideas to debate policy and positions. It offered an ‘insider’s view’ when Parliament sat, publishing Tony Burke’s 5 best and 5 worst moments of the week.

The content strategy involved promoting the Labor Herald brand to stakeholders to contribute content and encourage members to participate regularly. There was daily posting on social channels, especially Facebook and Twitter, and a weekly email to members who opted in.