A Serious Man for a Serious Job

YI Chairman is a responsible position, one that carries much weight and responsibility. Simply put it has different requirements from my current YI role as Social Media Director and my previous role as Elections officer.

In my current role my job has to be to build an online community, showing YI is a friendly, inclusive and thought provoking organisation. Part of that has been understanding that the online world, particularly twitter, is a much more liberal and libertarian leaning platform.

Chairman is a much more serious position, if elected my online presence will change to suit the new role. I will no longer be playing Devil’s advocate in expressing extreme views to spark debate. When Chairman any online or offline comments can be seen to represent the party and YI. I will therefore, always be handling myself in the professional and dignified way as the Chairman of the third largest party should.

I have enjoyed being Social Media Director, building YI’s Twitter presence from 0 to 1700 followers in less than 8 months, and doubling YI’s Facebook likes in the same time frame. YI now has one of the most active, engaging and welcoming communities online, which is seeing new members joining every week, citing this very community as what brought them to UKIP.

However, I now feel that I am ready to take on the new Challenge of Chairman, becoming less about stimulating debate and more about representing the views and interests of YI and our members. I want to take the online community I helped build and apply to it YI offline as well, and this does not require me to play Devil’s Advocate on issues on Social Media.