Over the next few days we are hosting articles from communication advisers to each of the main parties at Holyrood.  We’ve asked them to share with us some of the communication techniques they are using, particularly focussing on digital communications.

Our first in the series of articles is from James Mackenzie who works for the Scottish Green Party.

Sometimes the best pictures are pure chance. We booked the Edinburgh Botanics’ new building at the West Gate for our manifesto launch, which I’d assumed would let the snappers have easy Green metaphor fun in amongst the foliage. When we were setting up they found an 18 inch diameter shiny sphere on the table, and you could see the cogs turning. In the right hands – Patrick Harvie’s – it would reflect the greenery around him. One said “it’ll look like a wee green planet”. Who are the hippies now?

The image also worked well given that the balance of our campaigning has shifted pretty significantly in this election. The traditional green stuff is all still there, but the economics and the cuts are right at the middle too. As far as possible they’re tied together to get the message over that going green isn’t a hairshirt option. It’s warm affordable homes for everyone, for instance – and that’s working really well for us.

This is also the first election where we’ve not been complaining publicly or privately about the coverage we’re getting from the media, with the exception of the exclusion from the debates. The awkward questions are coming, the post-election speculation includes us as often as not in the list of significant players, and there’s a buzz internally too.

One of our secret weapons has been our designers – Glasgow-based Do Good Advertising – who have effectively over the last year given us an entirely new look and feel in print and online. It’s fair to say that some of the materials we used to put through doors or online were a tad homespun, but Do Good’s utter dedication and clear new visual style has worked well for us.

An example of their work is the look and feel for the social media microsite we plugged the election broadcast into -  http://scot.gr/because. It’s the only party site I’ve seen in this campaign where all the content comes from the public – we’re inviting them to say what they want from a bigger group of Green MSPs, and each reason gets punted out through Twitter, as well as optionally to their own Facebook page.

The site’s theme fitted well with the broadcast itself – http://scot.gr/because2011 – which was a narrative pulled together from voices around the country saying why they’re giving us their second vote. The film itself was launched first on social media, and appears to have been the only one put up on Vimeo as well as YouTube: it’s currently the second most watched of all the party’s efforts online, behind only the SNP.

If you ask political hacks how they think a campaign’s going, they’ll give you an answer based on two things – facts, like polls, and hunches. The polls for the Greens are steady on 6%, either ahead of or in touching distance of the Lib Dems, although they’re going down faster than we’re going up. I’m always over-confident, but here’s a hunch: we’ll win a seat in every region for the first time, even the only two we’ve never won before.