Category Archives: Public Relations

SOCIAL PLAN: 11 Golden Rules for Social Media in an Organisation

Holding the door open for bright people should be the aim of every organisation’s social media plan.

Because managing the message is dead.  And because the corporate voice doesn’t work.

The social web includes places like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and every platform that allows for two way debate and discussion.  The social web is about conversations, the human voice and a completely fresh approach.

One person once said the best way to approach this new landscape was to put aside everything that you’ve learned so far about how traditional communications works. That’s not all that far from the truth.  First amongst these is to recognise that social media is deep down not that different to the telephone, the PC, email and the internet.

When every one of these was first introduced those in the workplace feared what it would do in the hands of staff. Gradually people realised that the more people had access the more positive they became.  You’re unlikely – I hope – put all email activity into the hands of comms people. So why think about doing it for social media?

The best answer is for comms people to have responsibility for social media but to try and allow as many people as possible to use it. Preferably on the frontline as that’s where most of the stories are.

Here are ELEVEN golden rules for comms people:

  1. As a comms person be a supportive gatekeeper. Be keen on the idea of people in service areas having the keys for social media. Sanity check and support.
  2. Use the language of the platform. Dear Sir works as a letter. It doesn’t over the phone. Get to know which ever platform you are looking to use and follow it. Be relaxed. Be conversational.
  3. Gently remind people that there’s a code of conduct. Shout and swear in a public email, on the phone or in a letter and there’s procedures. The same goes for online too. Gently remind but don’t labour it.
  4. Be a human being. People respond better to a human being than they do to an institution. Let staff use social media in their own name if they are keen to.
  5. Be transparent. Make it clear you are working for the organisation.
  6. Be polite. Be respectful and be professional at all times.
  7. Be connected. Let your social media be linked to offline communications but don’t let it restrain it. Have a comms plan and have social media within it, by all means.
  8. It’s about conversation. Recognise you can’t control the conversation. You’ll feel better straight away.
  9. Don’t let comms hog the sweetie jar. Let people in service areas use web tools. Let their enthusiasm and knowledge shine through. They’ll be more genuine than you’ll ever be.
  10. Be a digital native. Learn how things work as yourself.
  11. Don’t be afraid to experiment and innovate. It’s how the best ideas come about.

First posted in Comms2point0.

Picture credit:

Door http://www.flickr.com/photos/neworleanslady/2403909871/sizes/l/in/photostream/

GREAT WORK: 23 bright ways to use social media in the public sector

There was a brilliant update on Twitter the other day which hit the nail right on the head.

“The best social media,” it read “doesn’t happen in an office.”

That’s dead right.

For a long while now I’ve been arguing that communications people should share the sweets, relax a little and learn to let go. It’s by doing that they can really reap the rewards of good and trusted communications channels.

I’m not alone by any means in thinking this and it’s excellent to start seeing the rewards being reaped.

Here are some good examples of digital communications that caught my eye over the last few months.

What’s worth commenting on is that the majority of the good examples are not done directly by comms people. They’re done by people in the field telling their stories or they’re using content that first originated outside an office to tell a story.

Real time updates by people on the ground work brilliantly.

Back in 2008, digital innovation in the public sector – and third sector – was isolated. What this quick link collection now shows is that it’s mainstream and unstoppable.

Twitter

National Trust Dudmaston Hall, Shropshire – If only more organisations were like the National Trust. We’d all be eating better cake for one. They’re also getting good at digital communications. They’re equipping venues with social media accounts to give you updates and insights from the ground.

I’m quite partial to this stream from the Shropshire stately home which is near Bridgnorth and a personal family favourite. They talk to people and they update. More people are likely to sign-up for a venue rather than an organisation that looks after lots of venues although there is a space for that too. You can follow them on Twitter here.

Acton Scott Museum, Shropshire – An imaginative use of pictures makes this Twitter stream fly. How can you not see horse drawn ploughing and not want to go and visit? You can follow them on Twitter here. 

National Trust Central Fells – Using the principle if you do good things tell people the @ntcentralfells Twitter do a good job of updating people on the work they do. Most of the time it’s witnessed by two walkers and some sheep. They updated progress on building a bridge in a remote spot of Easedale in with pictures of them at work and reaped the benefit of feedback from people stuck in offices. You can follow them on Twitter here. 

Supt Keith Fraser – A Superintendant in Walsall who keeps people up to speed with events and crime in the town. Personable. Informative and willing to engage on the platform. You can follow him here.

Swedish Tourist Board – It’s rather marvellous is this. Technically, it’s run by the Swedish Tourist Board but this isn’t a collation of picture book shots and platitudes. They give the @sweden Twitter to a new Swede every week. More than 20,000 people follow it. You can follow them here.

Walsall Council Countryside Officers – I’m a bit biased in that I know Morgan Bowers the countryside ranger but I absolutely love what she has done with social media. A digital native she uses her iphone to update Twitter with what she is doing, what newt survey results are and pictures of the sky over Barr Beacon. This is brilliant.  You can follow her on Twitter here. Her manager Kevin Clements has also picked up the baton on Twitter with regular updates. You can follow him here and it’s good to see the burden shared.

Walsall Council Environmental Health Officer David Matthews – Britain’s first tweeting environmental health officer David Matthews was a big part in why Walsall 24 worked as an event. He was able to spot snippets of interest that he passed through for others to tweet. Afterwards, he didn’t need much persuasion to take up an account in his own name. The @ehodavid was puts out the normal updates and warnings but with added humour. Much of the frontline updates is anonymised. Pictures taken of dreadful takeaways need a health warning to look at during lunchtime. You can follow him here.

Blogs

Pc Rich Stanley blog – Walsall has a stong claim to be a digital outpost. One of the big reasons for this is the way West Midlands Police have picked up the baton – or should that be truncheon? – and embraced social media. Pc Rich Stanley uses Twitter well but also blogs excellently on various day-to-day aspects of the job. Here he talks about policing the Aston Villa v Chelse football game. 

Walsall Council Social Care – People in social care do a brilliant job. They’re good at saving lives. Literally. But all too often they don’t do a good jo of telling their story. As a sector they shelter behind big stone walls and hope a high profile case like Baby P NEVER happens to them. Tina Faulkner and Becky Robinson are comms people who both understand old and new media and have blogged stories from the frontline. You can read them here.

Audioboo

Walsall Leather Museum Audioboo – Francesca Cox eyes lit up when she heard of Audioboo. A couple of days later she posted this chat with a demonstrator about her first day at work. What the clip does is open up all sorts of possibilities with oral history and when embedded on another website brings a different aspect to this. [gigya src=”http://boos.audioboo.fm/swf/fullsize_player.swf” flashvars=”mp3=http%3A%2F%2Faudioboo.fm%2Fboos%2F721044-first-day-at-work.mp3%3Fsource%3Dwordpress&mp3Author=Leathermuseum&mp3LinkURL=http%3A%2F%2Faudioboo.fm%2Fboos%2F721044-first-day-at-work&mp3Time=11.02am+21+Mar+2012&mp3Title=First+day+at+work” width=”400″ height=”160″ allowFullScreen=”true” wmode=”transparent”]

Pinterest

US Army – Like geeks with an interest in sub-machine guns the people behind the US Army social media presence are blending both interests well. Pinterest is a way to collect pictures in the one place. If pictures tell 1,000 words this collection speaks a great deal on what messages the military would like to get across. It’s split into themes. You can find it here.

Facebook

Can We Make Walsall A More Creative Place? – Walsal Council’s regeneration scrutiny committee wanted to look at the creative industries. We launched a Facebook page to begin to connect. Fifty people have liked it so far to allow the start of feedback. Face-to-face meetings are now planned. You can like it here.

NASA Facebook timeline – One of the many things I really love about this page is the way NASA have embraced timeline. Scroll back to 1965 and you can look at content they’ve updated from that year featuring the first NASA spacewalk. For any organisation with a long history this approach is a must. You can like it here.

Northycote Park and Country Park on Facebook – Wolverhampton Council’s parks team do a really good job of innovating using social media. They’ve been experimenting with creating Facebook pages for venues. This is Northycote Park and Country Park and has 200 likes a few weeks after it was launched. It has pictures of new born lambs and updates on events. You can like it here.

Monmouthshire Council Youth Service on Facebook – Hel Reynolds has flagged up this page. A youth worker updates it. Not a comms person. This means that it has a tone that suits the people it is aimed at and doesn’t come over as trendy uncle Monmouth breakdancing at a wedding. You can like it here. 

Flickr

US government’s EPA Documerica project on Flickr – In the early 1970s the Documerica project sent photographers to capture environmental issues across the country. They captured car jams, low flying planes, people meeting up in public spaces and other things. They’ve posted many of the images onto Flickr and they’re a time capsule of how the US was. You can see them here. To update them they have a blog to encourage a 2012 version here and a Flickr group here.

Torfaen Council on Flickr – Here’s a council that is posting images to Flickr routinely. They show a good range of images that residents can see. You can see them here.

Covering meetings

WV11 on PACT meetings – The wv11 blog have worked with West Midlands Police to cover public meetings – known as PACT meetings – to allow residents to pose questions and see what is happening in their patch. It’s great work and shows how you can connect to people who want to be civic minded but struggle to reach meetings. You can read a blog of a meeting here and a storify here.

Oldham Council – It’s an excellent idea to make interactive council meetings. This Guardian pieces captures why.

Birmingham City Council – Comms officer Geoff Coleman has done some excellent work with live streaming council meetings. It opens up democracy and promotes transparency. It’s netted 10,000 views. You can read about it here.

Crowd sourcing

Birmingham City Council’s election plans – This year plans to be a big year in Birmingham. There’s a chance of a change of administration and there will be great attention on the council and most importantly, how they communicate the changes in real time. What better way than crowd source what people want?  You can read it here.

YouTube

Caerphilly Council – Digital video clips are easy to consume but notoriously difficult to do effectively. Many have tried in local government but few have been as effective as Caerphilly Council with their nationally sigificant use of YouTube clips. One clip both pokes gentle fun at themselves and features a sheep with social media logos roaming the borough. It makes you smile. It keeps you informed. It’s fleecey brilliance.

Creative commons credits: 

Road at Rifle, Ohio in 1972 http://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/3815027813/

Documerica Photographer, David Hiser, at Dead Horse Point, 05/1972 http://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/3814966348/

WE LIKE: Ideas for a good Facebook page timeline

It’s the easiest thing in the world to create a Facebook page. It’s a lot harder to do it effectively.

As a platform used by almost 900 million people the question is not ‘how’ government and local government uses it but ‘if.’ There are some cracking examples of how to use Facebook outnumbered by scores of absolute stinkers.

As part of a brilliant session at the rather wonderful Comms2point0 and Public Sector Forum event in Birmingham we looked at how the introduction of timeline Facebook pages would impact.

As the session wore on it looked pretty fundamental. Think timeline is just the chance to stick a big letterbox picture on top of your page? Think again.

Here’s some collected learning gathered at the event and some extra.

Thinking about it afterwards, I can’t help but think that what’s needed for an effective Facebook page – timeline or not – is:

  • Good content to connect to people.
  • Shouting about it online.
  • Shouting about it offline (which is actually the most important than shouting online).

The getting started: ‘We need a Facebook page’

It’s almost as common a thing to hear as a comment on the weather. It’s what people want. But ask a simple question: do you really need a Facebook page?

Ask if people will monitor every day and are prepared to respond. If they’re not, don’t bother. If they’ve never used Facebook before don’t start with a page. You’ll fail. Start by creating your own profile and then using it for a month or two to work out how it all works. If you are none of the above you are better off chipping in to the corporate page or someone else’s page.

What does good content look like?

A couple of posts a day or three at most so as not to drown people with noise. Make it engaging. Post pictures. Stage polls. Link to YouTube. Think beyond the ‘I’m linking to the press release.’ Make it fun. Make it timely. Make it informative.

With Facebook timeline, what’s the same…?

Facebook pages are still the platform for using Facebook as local government. You get loads of stats as an admin you won’t if you don’t have a page. With timeline you can still add posts, add pictures, links, video and create polls. You still have to have your own profile in order to create a page and become an admin. It also doesn’t change the frequency of how often to add content. More than two or three times a day and it starts to get a bit noisy and people will switch off and yes, you do need to add text in a way that works on Facebook.

Don’t be stuffy and formal.

Be sociable.

But we all know that, don’t we?

Ally Hook’s Coventry page is a good place to look to for ideas. It’s something I’ve blogged about before here.

What’s different with timeline compared to the old pages?

There’s a stack of extra features I’d either not noticed with the old page or have been slipped on with the new timeline approach. Here’s a quick run through of some of them.

Admin

When you first navigate to your home page as admin you’ll see the under the dashboard part of the page right at the top. Helpfully, there’s a natty chart which tells you the reach of the page and how many are talking about it. In other words, how many have posted a comment or liked.

You can have a cover pic

It’s the letterbox shaped image that’s right on top of the page. Facebook are keen for this to be not predominantly text so a nice shot of your borough, city, parish or county will do just fine. Or if its a service maybe it’s a shot of them doing something. But change it every now and then.

For me, this is where good links with Flickr members somes in handy. With their permission use a shot and link back to their page.

Dawn O’Brien for Wolverhampton Parks has used this rather wonderful shot of one of their parks, for example.

You can still have a profile pic

It’s just not the main emphasis of the page anymore. But try and keep it interesting. Use Ally Hook from Coventry City Council’s time honoured tack of not using a logo. They’re not terribly social things are logos.

There’s a funny info bar just under the cover pic

It’s a handy place to see how you are doing with likes as well as a place to search for pictures. That’s a bit tidier.

You can create and add content to a historic timeline

One person at the Birmingham event pointed to Manchester United‘s Facebook page as a trailblazing way to use a historic timeline. They were formed a long time ago and this particular bit of functionality means you can add old, historic content from years ago. It’s actually really good. Click on 1977 and you can see a shot of two members of the FA Cup winning team. Clearly, as a Stoke City supporter they remain a plastic club with fans who live in Surrey but I can live with this screenshot as it has a picture of Stoke legend Jimmy Greenhoff on.

I was talking through this change to Francesca from Walsall Leather Museum.

All of a sudden her eyes lit up. “Wow,” she said. “We can add old pictures to the timeline.” She’s right. You can. The possibilities for museums and galleries are pretty endless.

Even for a council page you can add historic images that build a bit of pride. You can do this by posting an update and then in the top right hand corner clicking on ‘edit.’

You can select a date that best suits it. Like 1972 for Stoke City winning the League Cup, for example.

What the edit page button can do

You can let people add content to your page whether that’s a post or video.

Many councils, especially during Purdah, are a bit nervous about letting people do this. Especially when they are not monitored around the clock. Allowing it builds an audience but it’s a judgement call. There’s also the moderation block list. That’s not really something I’d noticed before but you can add terms you are not happy with.

I’d use it sparingly and not to stiffle debate.

It’s also probably worth adding the swearing filter.

For a few days there was a setting to pre-approve all content. That’s now disappeared and a good thing too.

This star post thing

On the top right hand of each timeline post is the star icon. Click that and your post gets larger and is seen by everyone who navigates to your page. Obviously choose the best ones for that.

The pinning a post thing

In the top right hand of each timeline post is an edit button. Click that and you’ll see the option to pin. That sends the post to the top and something that will remain at the top until its unpinned. Save that for the really important ones.

Insights are your new best friend

If Facebook have gone to the trouble of providing you with a pile of stats for free the least you can do is use them. Let people know. Sing from the rooftops. Include them in reports. Tell people what you are doing. Don’t think that everyone will notice.

Don’t forget to use Facebook as a page

It’s something I’ve blogged about before but needs repeating. You can find out how to do it here. Your page is a very small allotment in a country the size of France. Use the principle of go to where the audience is so add and comment on larger pages.

Facebook adverts From the Birmingham session there are few cases of big numbers coming from ads. However, Shropshire Council have used it for specific job ads with some results. A blend of shouting offline and good content to interest if people do drop by would seem to be the answer to building useful Facebook numbers.

A successful Facebook page makes lots and lots of noise offline

It’s amazing how it’s easy to fall into the trap it is of only thinking Facebook to shout about your page. Actually, that’s one part of it. Look at how others do it.

1. Put your a link on the bottom of emails. Tens of thousands of emails get sent every week. They’re mini billboards.

2. Tell people about your page via the corporate franking machine. Tens of thousands of items of post go out every week. They’re mini billboards too.

3. Put your Facebook page on any print you produce. Leaflets, flyers and guides.

4. Put posters up at venues with QR codes linking straight to the page. I’m not convinced QR codes are mainstream but I am convinced its worth a try.

5. Tell your staff about a page – and open up your social media policy to allow them to look. As Helen Reynolds suggests here and Darren Caveney here.

6. Don’t stop shouting about your Facebook page face-to-face. If people enjoy a visit to a museum tell them they can keep up on Facebook.

7. Use your school children. Encourage schools to send something home to tell their parents about the Facebook page.

8. Create a special event for Facebook people. For events and workshops create something special only for the very special people who will like your very special page. Like a craft table at a family event. Maybe use eventbrite to manage tickets.

9. Stage on offline competition. Get people to enter via Facebook. That’s just what Pepsi are doing with a ring pull competition. Send a text (25p) or add to the Pepsi Facebook page after you like it (FREE.)

SOCIAL SOUND: Can We Use Audioboo In Local Government?

Okay, so here’s an idea. You record a quick interview or a snippet of a festival and then you post it online.

Nothing revolutionary and I’m sure people have been doing it for years but for a few weeks I’ve been experimenting with Audioboo.

What’s Audioboo? It’s a way of posting online short recording clips of interviews, sounds, noise or perhaps even with permission live music.

You can download it for free through the app store or via the Android market and all you need is a smartphone or an iphone.

There are other platforms out there and SoundCloud has its followers too.

The dabbling I’ve done is centred around photocalls I’ve attended where some parties have been gathered together. With them all in one place it’s made sense to whip out the phone and make a quick recording. In less than five minutes you can have something posted to the web.

At a cold photocall with a few minutes to spare I made an Audioboo, posted it to the Walsall Council Facebook and Twitter and by the time it took to get back to the office there was an email: “One of the neighbours has listened to your recording and thinks this is a great project.” Beginners luck maybe, but it did get me thinking.

For some time I’ve been thinking about how to generate content for different places. This is another string to the bow of the comms person.

Intro to Audioboo from Mark Rock on Vimeo.

Why bother? Here’s NINE good reasons

  1. Because it’s a good way to post a recording straight onto the web.
  2. Because you’re offering different content on a different platform.
  3. Because it’s free.
  4. Because you don’t have to be a BBC-trained sound engineer to use it.
  5. Because you can record snippets from frontline staff and events.
  6. Because it’s simple.
  7. Because you can post it to Twitter, Facebook and embed on a website very easily.
  8. Because you can listen as a podcast.
  9. Because it makes your content more accessible to the visually impaired.

How do I do it?

Go to Audioboo and create an account.

Press record.

When you are happy post it to the web.

Add metadata (that’s things like the words ‘Walsall’, ‘regeneration’, ‘new homes bonus’, ‘housing’ if it’s a New Homes Bonus scheme done by the regeneration directorate in Walsall.)

It’s that simple.

How about some examples?

Here’s a Norfolk County Council social worker talking about why he does his job..
http://abfiles.s3.amazonaws.com/swf/fullsize_player.swf

Here’s Devon and Cornwall Police on setting the budget.
http://abfiles.s3.amazonaws.com/swf/fullsize_player.swf

Here’s a former postman recalling the Swansea docks posted by Swansea Council
http://abfiles.s3.amazonaws.com/swf/fullsize_player.swf

Here’s Walsall Town Centre Champions talking about plans to bid for Mary Portas cash
http://abfiles.s3.amazonaws.com/swf/fullsize_player.swf

Here’s Scottish pipers playing at the Godiva Festival posted by Coventry City Council
http://abfiles.s3.amazonaws.com/swf/fullsize_player.swf

So what’s next?

I’m sure there’s more possibilities but here’s three that struck me:

1. Broadcast journalist content. Nick Booth from Podnosh many years back spoke of creating clips along with a press release that could be downloaded by broadcast journalists. That’s a step in that direction.

2. Adding Audioboo links to press releases when they’re e-mailed out. Add a straight forward link.

3. Embedding Audioboo links to news stories or web pages. As a way to brighten up web content.

EPIC CHANGE: 12 predictions in digital in local government for 2012

“Inventions reached their limit long ago,” one important person once said, “And I see no hope for further development.”

Roman Emporer Julius Frontius made this bold comment in the 1st century. And he didn’t even have Google Plus to contend with. Bet he feels a bit silly now.

Tempting as it is to apply it to today you’d be similarly way off the money. Robot butlers and jet packs may top my own wish list but in practical terms what is likely to change?

If 2011 was a year of rapid change in local government then 2012 may see more of the same. Most of it is just a continuation of themes that started in the previous 12 months.

Here are 12 predictions for the year ahead from my perspective as a local government comms person. (Disclaimer: much of this probably won’t ever happen).

1. Comms will have a fight for control of social media. They’ll lose in the long term if they want to keep it all for themselves. They’ll win if the create an environment for others to innovate.

2. Data visualisation will boom. With the web prompting comms people to search for new platforms to tell a story data visualisation will expand. With free tools being available there will be innovation.

3. JFDI dies. As the mainstreaming of digital continues JFDI – or Just Flipping Do It – as a way of getting things done in an organisation will end. You can’t fly under the radar on Facebook if 29 million people in the UK are on it.

4. Digital customer services will expand. Just as calls centres emerged as the telephone matured as a way you can talk to people so too will a social presence for customer services people.

5. Someone will do summat reely stoopid and it won’t matter. In 2008, a rogue tweet could have closed down a council’s social media output. As it gets more embedded it’ll be more bullet proof.

6. Emergency planners will use Twitter as second nature. There’ll be more big incidents played out on social media. But best practice will be shared.

7. The local government social media star of 2012 will be someone doing a routine task in a place you’ve never visited. Step forward the local government worker who talks about his day job. There will be more like  @orkneylibrary and @ehodavid.

8. Linked social will grow. Linked social is different voices on different platforms growing across an organisation or across the public sector. It will be especially interesting to see how this develops in Scotland and the West Midlands.

9. Good conferences will have an unconference element. Or they’ll actually be unconferences. Some people don’t get unconferences. But they generally want to leave on the stroke of five o’clock and don’t do anything outside their JD. Bright ones do but will be happier if they’re wrapped up and presented like a ‘proper’ conference. But unconferences will be more diverse and targeted.

10. Newspapers will carry on dying. Bright comms people will carry on developing web 2.0 skills and use them in tandem with old media. Good Journalism will carry on adapting to the web. But this may take time to filter through to local newspapers who have been the bread and butter of local government press offices.    

11. Data journalism will grow. But not in local newspapers. Bloggers will uncover big stories that a print journalist doing the work of three doesn’t have time to look for.

12. Amazing things will happen in Scotland. Some of the brightest people in the public sector who are innocavating aren’t in London. They’re north of the border serving as police officers as well as in local government. It’ll be fascinating to see how this develops.

Creative commons credits

Geeks http://www.flickr.com/photos/duvalguillaume/2494520518/

Computer for the space shuttle programme http://www.flickr.com/photos/sdasmarchives/6521818485/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Twitter stream http://www.flickr.com/photos/danieldslee/5897611358/sizes/l/in/photostream/

LAST POST: My Reggie Kray story and the future of local news

Okay, so should we start to think of a world without local newspapers?

Or at any rate a place where local newspapers are no longer the only show in town?

Go to Cannock in Staffordshire and you’re closer than you think.

Gone or retreated in the past four years are the Rugeley Post, Cannock Mercury and the Rugeley Mercury.

Another of them, The Chase Post, closed this week as 45 jobs were cut from Midlands titles.

As a young man I spent some time on work experience on the Post learning the ropes.

Mike Lockley, its editor on closure,  was in charge when I was there and recently celebrated 25-years at the helm.

A dynamo of a man powered by his love of a news story he was capable of a generosity of spirit to those looking to find a start in the industry. A generation of staff and work experience people have him to thank. Me included.

So do the school children who saw pink custard back on the menu after some Mike Lockley-fired Chase Post campaigning.

I have him to thank for my first front page by-line. A piece on a Cannock musician whose speculative letter to Reggie Kray resulted in an offer of money from the gangland kingpin and an offer of unspecified ‘help.’

“I was a bit worried when Reggie Kray wrote to me and offered me money,” the musician told me.

“What if he wanted a favour doing? And have you seen his writing?”

He was right. The note handed me  looked like it had been written by a left handed 10-year-old and was signed chillingly ‘Your friend, Reggie Kray.’

Of course, Reggie only became ‘gangland kingpin’ in the stumbling copy that Mike re-wrote. My version was far more boring. But the cutting helped get me a job.

Mike was also an award winning columnist. His piece announcing closure is typical. Wry, amusing and self depracating.

In a piece written a few days before closure was announced Mike celebrated 25 years in charge by writing that ‘a town without a newspaper is a town without a heart.’

So what of the future of news?

The excellent Dave Briggs, who does things with the web in local government, once rolled his eyes at me on this subject.

“The thing is Dan,” he said. “There really is nothing in life as boring as the future of news debate.”

In a sense he’s right.

Because out in the real world it’s not really an issue.

Why?

Because people are finding their own ways of getting news whether its from across the web, Facebook, Twitter or a hyperlocal blog.

Think of the now dead Football Final. As a kid the paper shop was full of blokes at 5.30pm waiting for the Pink to be delivered because they’d missed James Alexander Gordon read the final scores on Grandstand on BBC1.

If football scores have been sorted then what of news?

I’m not sure there is a golden bullet answer. As Alastair Campbell told the Express & Star which still circulates in Cannock, the news agenda today is far more fractured.

Hyperlocal blogs like Connect Cannock are part of the future, there’s no doubt about that.

So are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn streams targeted at micro audiences around a library, a piece of open space or a service area.

So, what does this mean for local government comms teams?

Once again, the need to think about what you are doing and how much resource you point at the web.

Ex-journalists have often been hired in local government press offices because they know how to write and package information for newspapers.

Many of them are changing with the changing landscape.

But as the social web grows how long is it before a blogger gets hired by a local government comms team for their ability to communicate using WordPress, Facebook and Cover It Live?

Picture credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Krays.jpg

GUEST POST: How Norfolk used Twitter to show a human face

Norfolk County Council and its partners did a rather innovative thing using Twitter recently. They told the story of five different public servants. It put a human face on what they do. I rather liked the idea. And I really liked the way they made use of Storify and Audioboo so you can catch-up. So much so I asked Norfolk County Council’s Susie Lockwood to write a guest post on how it worked and what she learned. On Twitter she is @susieinnorfolk. Here it is:

I should start by saying I’m not Dan, I’m Susie. Dan has very kindly invited me to write a guest post about a Twitter event I helped to organise last week. 

I’m a media officer at Norfolk County Council and on Tuesday, 4 October we tweeted the working days of five very different frontline service areas under the hashtag #nccourday.

We took our lead from Walsall Council and other public sector tweeting pioneers and sought to increase understanding and make people feel closer to the council and its services. But we also wanted to do something a little different to what had gone before, initially because we knew we stood to get more attention for the project this way.

We decided to focus on trying to convey a day in the life of five specific teams or individuals who work for the council, all in one day, ‘Our Day’.

We felt this would give a human and engaging feel to the organisation and our tweets while also demonstrating the breadth of work we do and the different ways our employees support and serve the people of Norfolk.

Five seemed like a good number too – manageable to resource but still giving us enough scope to show how multi-faceted the council is.

So on that Tuesday, I was out in mid-Norfolk shadowing and tweeting about the working day of two of our highway rangers while some of my colleagues followed an adult social worker, a shift of fire-fighters, our biggest library and our customer service team.

I’d say this approach worked better than we could have imagined, in ways that we didn’t really consider when we decided on it, and I’ll explain why in a short while. First, so you can judge for yourself, we’ve preserved the #nccourday tweets on Storify, have a look here (and you’ll make us very happy!), you’ll find each of the five strands that we ran on Our Day separated out into individual stories. We’ve included some of the retweets, comments and questions we got – and ‘Storifying’ the tweets has made me realise just how much interaction and support we got.

So what worked well?

I think our ambition to give the council a human face, or more accurately several different human faces, really worked. We used first names of our staff where appropriate and because my colleagues and I were tweeting as observers it had the feel of being fly-on-the-wall, helped by the fact that we, the tweeters, were ‘visible’ as narrators – we thought it was important to make it clear whose perspective was being tweeted and this meant we could react and comment ourselves.

We also supplemented the ‘official’ tweets with ones from our personal accounts, still using the hashtag, and this was adopted by some other staff who were involved in or aware of the event.

You can see from Storify that we received a lot of warmth in the feedback, and we were surprised to get no negative feedback about #nccourday on Twitter whatsoever, and I think this was in no small part due to the obvious human touch that ran through it.

It was also great to run the event across three well-established Norfolk County Council Twitter accounts. @Norfolkfire tweeted the fire-fighters, @NorfolkLibs tweeted the library and @NorfolkCC tweeted the rest. This meant we could reach more people and reduce the potential for confusion and the risk of clogging up people’s feeds from one account. It also meant that members of the communications team, where I work, got the chance to work closely with those people in the fire service and library service who are responsible for their social media work, and it was brilliant to share our knowledge and work together, it’s knitted us together where before, although supportive of each other, we were pretty disparate.

We’re already talking about other ways we can continue to link up and hopefully get other partners involved too – and on this note I think holding the event engendered increased goodwill towards us on Twitter from some of our peers in Norfolk too.

One of the best outcomes of Our Day was the boost it seemed to give the staff we shadowed, and their wider teams.

We chose the five service areas because they were ‘customer-facing’ and for the breadth they demonstrated as a whole, but also because each in their own way can be misunderstood and have a bit of an image problem.

Without exception we found the teams were really pleased that their roles were considered interesting and important enough to be featured in the event. And it did the profile of the communications team and our work the world of good internally.

By the end of my day with the highway rangers they were suggesting that I should come out on a gritter with them and do something similar again while in the customer service centre some of the team have expressed an interest in shadowing members of the communications team for a day too.

It’s also worth mentioning that we got really good traditional media coverage locally for the event, which of course helped to prove its worth.

We all think we probably could have got more coverage in fact but we were on a tight deadline because we wanted to run the event to coincide with Customer Service Week, for internal rather than external communications purposes, and really only had two weeks to plan the whole event from start to finish.

But of course you can always do more and having to get on with it and not having the chance to second guess and doubt our approach too much was no bad thing in this instance.

And this brings me to the final benefit – Our Day invigorated us!

It made us believe that we can ‘do’ social media and not to be afraid of it. We had played it pretty safe up till that point and I would heartily recommend doing something along these lines if you think your council’s social media endeavours could do with a bit of a kick start. I think the success of the event, for all the reasons listed above, has given us confidence, will make us ‘think bigger’ in the future and potentially be bolder in our choices.

Would we change anything if we had our time again? Well, not much. There were minor technical problems at stages but none were catastrophic, although perhaps we would have a clearer back-up plan in place next time. There were benefits and drawbacks to tweeting three strands from the @NorfolkCC account, and at times it was probably a bit confusing to follow (this feedback from within the communications team rather than from a resident or on Twitter) so we might reconsider this approach if doing something as broad again, perhaps using more – and even personal – accounts. And it would be nice to think of a way to involve other members of staff in a future event.

One employee tweeted us to congratulate us on Our Day and said he hoped he might be allowed to tweet his working day at some point – the challenge will be not letting Twitter interfere, or appear to interfere, with the important work done by our staff but it’s definitely something we’d bear in mind.

I’ll leave you with some stats, if I may. In the week when Our Day happened the @NorfolkCC account gained about 100 followers, which is more than usual (my estimate would be 20-30 on an average week). The #nccourday hashtag was used more than 550 times, with fewer than half of these coming from the three official accounts.

Do feel free to comment below (she says, making herself at home on Dan’s blog!) with any feedback or queries, or DM me @SusieinNorfolk or ‘me and others’ on the @NorfolkCC account if you want to get in touch.

Links:

Storify highlights of library staff’s day: http://storify.com/norfolkcc/httpyfrogcomkjbkmwcj

Storify highlights of Norfolk Fire and Rescue’s day: http://storify.com/norfolkcc/nccourday-day-in-the-life-of-norfolks-fire-and-res

Storify highlights of a social worker’s day: http://storify.com/norfolkcc/our-day-2

Storify highlights of customer services staff’s day:  http://storify.com/norfolkcc/nccourday-day-in-the-life-of-customer-services

Storify highlights of highway ranger’s day: http://storify.com/norfolkcc/nccourday-day-in-the-life-of

Overall event highlights: http://storify.com/norfolkcc/our-day

Audioboo on how Toby became a social worker: http://audioboo.fm/boos/492638

Clare from Picture Norfolk on Audioboo: http://audioboo.fm/boos/492424-picture-norfolk-with-clare-everitt

CHANNEL SHIFT: Picking the right voice to tell the council news story

You know the good thing about listening to different voices? Sometimes you get a different perspective.

That’s certainly true of Adrian Short, a web developer, who has written two excellent posts that comms people really do need to read. The first How to Fix Council News you can read here. It deals with a frustration that very few councils do council news on the web terribly well.

At best it’s a cut and pasted press release.

The second piece from Adrian is a 12 commandments for council news. It’s good thought provoking stuff and like the first post I don’t agree with all of it there’s enough there to think and reflect about.

Here are a few extracts:

Too long, too dull and far too pleased with itself. Little more than an exercise in vanity publishing. Irrelevant to the vast majority of people.

What’s this? 400 words on a benefit fraud case that didn’t even result in a prison sentence, complete with lengthy quotations from the magistrate and the lead councillor.

Now here’s 700 words on an upgrade to the council’s IT system that won’t be noticed by a single resident.

Sadly this useful information is presented, like the rest, in a turgid press release style. Residents are asked to plough through a huge slab of words that’s hard to scan for the essential details. The text is laden with contrived quotations from people no-one knows that rarely do anything more than state the obvious. It finishes without a call to action. It’s a wonder that anyone bothers at all.

There’s more points in the second blog post of commandments:

News is for residents. Press releases are for journalists. Thou shalt mark the distinction and honour it in all thy labours.

Thy reader is not an Editor and does not require his Notes. Likewise, his news shalt end when it ends, not when he espies “ENDS”.

Every comms person should read this stuff. Even if you don’t agree with all of it, it’ll make you think.

What is true is that council news is often steeped in the traditions of print. Many press officers a drawn from newspapers which makes sense as for decades newspapers and the council newsletter have been a prime source of information. The press release is tailored for the newspaper. It has a snappy intro, a quote from the relevant elected member and notes for editors. For newspapers it works. For the web, less so.

What’s needed is one approach for print, a different approach for the web and a different approach for each social media platform.

News is print + web + social media. Each of these needs a different voice.

Trying to bolt one format onto each of those doesn’t work.

So, how long before someone gets hired for their Twitter skills alone rather than their ability to write a press release?

Creative Commons credits

Reading newspaper http://www.flickr.com/photos/garryknight/4659576761/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Newspaper iphone http://www.flickr.com/photos/yjv/4123045194/

FACING UP: Twelve ways local government can use Facebook

Amazingly, there are two and a half times as many people in the UK registered on Facebook than buy a daily paper. 

That’s a 29 million versus 12 million split. Even more astonishing is how poor local government is at connecting with its residents and what meagre resources it devotes to it.It’s an after thought when it should be part of what we do.

Look around for really good case studies and you start to struggle. Yes, there’s Coventry City Council’s logo-free Facebook pagewith 19,000 followers. That aside it’s slim pickings.

Should local government use Facebook?

Absolutely. I’ve blogged before on how to see how many Facebook-registered people there are in your area. You can read it here. Using Facebook is a way of sending relevant contentinto people’s streams. They may not buy a newspaper. A regular Facebook user may check the site two or three times a day to see what’s new.

Why wouldn’t you want to make contact like this?

1. Because lots of people use it.
2. Because Facebook is the world’s 4th largest site in the world.
3. Because if that’s people’s platform of choice then we should stop thinking it’s still 1985 and talk to people right there.

There’s two ways to use it.

One is to build things and hope people come. The other is to go out and talk to people on Facebook pages and groups they’ve created themselves. That’s something that the public sector is astonishingly bad at.

Aside from Al Smith’s poston how he used his own profile to talk to people campaigning to save the Cooperage pub in Newcastle-upon-Tyne there’s not much out there.

How do you get started?

Organisations are generally driven by carrot and stick to take out a Facebook page. You’ll need a personal profile to do this. That’s simple to create. Once you’ve create the page you can invite your friends and colleagues to ‘like’ it. Once they do that you can selectively grant admin rights to other specific individuals. The stick? If you don’t create a page and create a profile instead you run the risk of getting shut down for violating terms and conditions.

That’s never good.

The carrot? As an admin they’ll give you a barrage of stats on how many page impressions you’ll have, how many people you have ‘liking’ it, where they are from. It’s all good stuff. But it’s the easiest thing in the world to take out a Facebook page. It’s much harderto use it constructively. Poor use and you’ll do damage to your reputation.

There are three things you’ll need to remember creating a Facebook page

1. Create several admins so you can share the burden.
2. Update two or three times a day and no more. People get a bit fed-up of lots of noise.
3. If people post a question or a comment, try get back as quickly as possible.Within 24 hours at most. Live with criticism. Don’t delete it but do so if people shout and swear.

But that’s the brass tacks. What about the ways to use Facebook? Should you look outside the public sector for what works? Definitely.

Should there just be one Facebook page in your organisation?

It’s a regular question and often posed by comms people more keen on keeping control of the message than actually communicating.

Please don’t do this. Please.

There are 700 services provided by local government. People are busy. Think about you. Do you want to hear about all of them? Probably not. When you are looking for a leisure event do you google it? Probably. So do so with Facebook. Yes, have a central page. But also have one for a library. Or for a museum too. Or a festival.

TWELVE ways to use Facebook

1. The Tumbleweed Anti-Social Broadcast Page.

You think Facebook is important. You don’t know why. You create something, put the logo on your website and flyers and then every now and then you post a link to a press release. You’ll ignore comments. Then you sit back and wonder why it’s not working. We’ve all seen it. Don’t do it.

Think about how you’ll make it work before you create anything.

2. The Good Corporate Page.

Ally Hook at Coventry City Council wrote the rule book on this. She created a Facebook page called simply ‘Coventry’ with a nice picture of the city. Why? Because people would be happier signing up to the place where they live over the institution that governs it.

It’s the model we shamelessly copied at Walsall Council for Our Walsall which you can see here.

Worcester City Council have 4,000 likes and follow the Coventry model. It’s really rather good.The content is lively too. A picture taken from the Cathedral spire the day before was posted generating 34 comments. That’s good stuff.

The City of Manor, Texas takes a more formal approach but images, warnings, links and the freedom for people to post on the wall makes this an engaging place.

Size does not matter. Shrewsbury Town Council has a Facebook page with regular content.

But let’s not just look at local government. Whatever you may think of global politics, the US Marines have 1.5 million people liking their page. Bite size updates make it work. They make use of YouTube content really well. You can find their page here.

3. The Page Where They Want You To Just Connect

Coca Cola plough massive resources into social media. Their Facebook page is ‘liked’ by 33.6 million people. They don’t bombard people with messages to buy the stuff. They allow people to talk about the stuff. It was actually created by fans and became the official page when Coke woke up to its success.

On the HP Sauce page , the discussion is brown sauce or not on a sausage sandwich. They just want to connect for fun and from that more interesting things can happen .

4. The Page That Consults People

When Iceland decided to re-write their constitution they turned to Facebook. They could have posted a link to a huge downloadable document that only policy wonks would have read. They didn’t. Instead they asked simple bite size questions so people could spare a few minutes to answer. More than 4,400 have signed up to give feedback. In a country of 250,000 that’s good going. You can follow it here. You can read more here.

5. The Page For a Venue

Walsall in the West Midlands has a 200-year-old heritage of leather working. The Queen’s saddles are made there and dozens of companies can still be found that rely on it. There is a community of people who follow We Love Walsall Leather Museum and the Facebook page targets them specifically. Pictures, events and other chatty updates are posted.

The Library of Birmingham from Birmingham City Council have an engaging Facebook presence with YouTube clips and other content. All the more impressive is that it doesn’t open until 2013.

Tintagel Castle, an English Heritage property, shows how a venue can work on Facebook. More than 700 like it and get updates on what is going on. They also ran a Facebook-only competition to allow people to post ideas on what they’d like to do with private access. The most likes won the access.

6. The Page For Countryside

National Parks across Britain are excellent at this. For example, the I Love the Lake District National Park site sends you updates on what to look out for and user generated shots. It has a human touch and content that appeals. Especially when you’ve just been stuck in commuter traffic.

Stirling Council have adopted this tack too. Their page highlights work they do on their patch

7. The Page For A Service Area

Museums, countryside and libraries can pull this off. Just about. Otherwise the danger can be a watered down thing. There are more than 500 following Derbyshire libraries 

In the US in Virginia, Fairfax County’s Public Schools have a whopping 20,000 people liking it. That’s an immense number. This is the equivalent of an education department having a Facebook profile. It works too. There are daily updates and – get this – updates in the holidays too. You can see it here.

8. The Page That’s Actually A Corporate Website

The Mayor of Takeo got fed-up at people leaving anonymous feedback. So fed-up he moved his council’s entire website to Facebook.

Naoyuki Miyaguchi, a city spokesman, said: “There were some doubts at first when we were thinking of changing to Facebook because it could only be accessed by those who had an account. For this reason, there was some opposition as it would limit access to city information for some citizens. But since we were considering the shift, Facebook changed its rules to make pages viewable to anybody, and from that point on it was a go.”

Over 6,500 people like the page from 50,000 residents. US local government blogger Ari Herzog has written a fine post on it here. 

Is that a bit extreme? Darn right. You’re at risk of Facebook taking down your site and losing piles of data. But it’ll be interesting to see how it goes.

9. The Page To Report Stuff

Lothian and Borders police want to use the popularity of Facebook to encourage people to report crime via an ad. Anonymously if they so wish.
In the US, an app is being used in Burleson, Texas where residents can report non-emergency issues. It’ll be interesting to see how this develops.

10. The Page Designed Around the User (Not the Service Area)

Lots of web presences are built around the service area. Not the user. That can be daft. Who wants to ‘like’ Street Scene?

This is the thinking behind Shropshire Family Info from Shropshire County Council. Put updates in the one place for parents and carers. It really is that simple and hats off to them. You can see it here.

As an experiment in this area myself and one of our marketing officers at Walsall Council Ian Morton-Jones have started the page We Love Walsall Children’s Events. This is to be a place for parents to follow to get updates that can help keep their children busy in the holidays. It may be museums, libraries, events or countryside. If there is relevant information it gets posted here. That’s the theory, anyway. It’s here.

11. The Page For An Individual

Walsall Council countryside ranger Morgan Bowers has been updating Facebook alongside Twitter and Flickr for more than six months. It’s a way of putting a human face on a service.

12. The Page For An Event

The one-off event can work well. Stirling Council’s Off The Page Festival celebrates their sixth annual event..

An extension of this is a Facebook page for events as a whole. This is what Gedling Borough Council do. They’re from Nottinghamshire.

So what does it all mean?

The good thing about all this is that we’ve only just started and the really useful ways to use Facebook are emerging from bright people within service areas themselves. That’s only something that should be encouraged.

Big thank you to the following who suggested pages for this blog: Corrine Douglas, Kim Stephens, James Hall, Justin Griggs, Kate Bentham, Peter Cruickshank, Steph Thorpe and Asset Transfer Unit.


CIVIC SOCIAL: How digital tools can help connect a Mayor

Mayors in Walsall go back to the 13th century. Yes, children it’s safe to say that even pre-dates Friends Reunited.

What helped spread the word then was probably a Town Crier with the useful profile of having a loud voice in the marketplace where people gathered.

Today, the landscape has changed. But a voice in the place where people gather is still important.

Since May when Cllr Garry Perry was appointed to the post he’s been successfully experimenting with digital channels. As a 33-year-old he’s the borough’s youngest ever appointment. As a Facebook native and as at home there as in the Council Chamber it made sense for him to experiment using the channel.

He’s also used Twitter and connected with the Walsall Flickr group. Jokingly, Cllr Perry has spoken about creating the Mayor’s Parlour as a location on Foursquare so he can become Mayor of that too.

But is this just a gimmick? Or have lessons been learned?

Facebook

A Facebook page was created for the Mayor of Walsall. The idea was to allow the Mayor to post updates and pictures from his phone when out and about. The aim was conversational. It also helps give an idea of where the Mayor had been and the people he’d met. It’s not a dusty civic position. It’s carried out by a person. For an organisation for people.

The stats speak for themselves. More than 160 people have signed up in about six weeks. There has been more than 8,000 page views in a four week period and people have responded posting enthusiastic comments. It’s clear that successful events also draw-in enthusiasm from residents.

The events functionality also allows a good way to flag up fundraisers.

As the Mayor of Walsall Cllr Perry says: “It’s been brilliant for getting feedback from people and for connecting with them. When you’re at an event you can post that you’ve been there with a picture. There’s still a tremendous respect for the office of Mayor and it’s good to be able to meet people. Using things like Facebook, Twitter and Flickr have really helped reach a different audience.”

Twitter

More than 180 people and organisations have signed-up with updates of visits and fundraising. Cllr Perry’s sporadic previous account was re-named @mayorofwalsall.

Flickr 

A Flickr meet was staged where members of the excellent Walsall Flickr group  came along to the Mayor’s Parlour and Council House one Saturday morning.

More than 200 shots were posted by six photographers to a specially created group to capture shots for the day. It was a chance for Walsall people to visit the 1905 building and meet the Mayor. As a visit it was a success. Those who came took some excellent pictures and Cllr Perry’s – and the Mayoress’ – easy going and informal approach saw the council giving a good account of itself. Staging a Flickr meet at a council venue is something I’ve blogged about before.

As a spin-off, and by no means the purpose of the event, the photographers were happy for the authority to re-use the posted pics for the website or for other marketing. That’s a good thing whichever way you look at it. You can see the pictures here.

Press releases

Yes, we’ll do the traditional things too for old media too. That’s part of the repertoire.

Lessons to learn

1. It can put a human face on an organisation. As Pc Rich Stanley does for West Midlands Police in Walsall so Cllr Perry does for Walsall Council. They use social media to put a human face on the organisation that can sometimes be seen as remote.

2. It depends on the individual. A social mayor who is at home with the channels or willing to learn will prosper. A remote character with few social graces and mistrust of technology won’t.

3. Little and often works. Updates on the routine day-to-day tasks work really well. Don’t think you need to crack the front page of the local paper with every update.

4. It works best if the Mayor writes it. A voice can be unique and despite being a fairly politically neutral post it’s not for council officers to update on people’s behalf.

5. Be prepared to JFDI.  Not everything with social media has a 100-year-old record to it. That’s a given. So just try things out.

Pic credit: Swissrolli (c) http://www.flickr.com/photos/swissrolli/5989959370/in/photostream