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For a while now the line between digital and boundaries have been blurring.

Job descriptions we used to have don’t hold up anymore. There used to be a dedicated customer services team but as Eddie Coates-Madden has said on many occasions we’re all now customer services now.

Why? Because once you start to use digital channels you open a door to anew world. It’s one where people can talk back to you, ask questions, be snarky, be nice and to ask why haven’t the bins gone out.

Customer services on Twitter really fascinates me. For the first 18 months using @walsallcouncil I was it. When I asked for Christmas Day dinner to be postponed for 10 minutes because we were going out gritting and I had to tweet it I kind of new I was probably in too deep.

There is a rather fascinating new Twitter that has sprung out of leftfield. It’s called @whs_carpet and it tweets pictures of carpets in WH Smiths branches across the country.

How niche! I hear you say. You’d be right. But what this does is actually shine a light on the customer services and priorities of this High Street and train station shop for newspapers, books, pens and bars of chocolate for a pound.

It’s also really quite fascinating.

What it says in a very subtle way is say that if the shop can’t be bothered about the state of the floor, what does it say about how it treats its staff and its customers?

Or more directly, the impression you get from the stream is (parental advisory required)

But Dan, this is supposed to be a blog about comms and social media? Yes, it is. But we’re all customer services now, remember? Besides, I’d love to see how the WM Smiths comms team – and customer service – address it. Right now, it’s an elephant in the room and no-one from the organisation, as they say, has been available to talk about the biscuit crumbs in Brighton, the worn vinyl in Hitchin or the growing stain on the company’s reputation.

EDIT:

You can also read Stefan Czerniawski’s post on poorly handled online customer service complaints here.

Creative commons credit

WH Smith http://www.flickr.com/photos/markhillary/3488574676/sizes/l/

If you really want to irritate someone and show them how far from the curve they actually are point them at ‘The Cluetrain Manifesto.’

Published in 1999 as the product of a web forum the 95 points sketches out how the social web will work and what the future will look like.

It’s bold stuff. The old way of doing things are dead. Thanks to the web people can organise themselves far faster than organisations. The organisation  that fails to realise all this will be left behind.

Not all of the points have come true. But enough have to make a closer reading of the original 95-points part of your reading list. The 10 year anniversary paperback with essays around the subject is worth a punt. But the original list will do just fine.

For those on the bow wave of innovation this will be nothing new. But to comms people coming to terms with the changing landscape it’s good advice.

For me, the thing that shines through really clearly is the importance of using the human voice.

On the social web, the streams that, in the wise words of blogger Adrian Short ‘speak human’ are the ones that connect best and in times of stress have some social capital to fall back on. Social capital, by the way, is the indefinable sense of appreciation when someone talks to you like a human and even helps you out on a thing or two.

Just to whet your appetite here are 16 of them comms people need to know right here:

• Markets are conversations.
• Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
• Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
• Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.
• The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.
• In just a few more years, the current homogenized “voice” of business—the sound of mission statements and brochures—will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.
• Companies need to lighten up and take themselves less seriously. They need to get a sense of humor.
• Getting a sense of humor does not mean putting some jokes on the corporate web site. Rather, it requires big values, a little humility, straight talk, and a genuine point of view.
• Companies need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to the people with whom they hope to create relationships.
• Public Relations does not relate to the public. Companies are deeply afraid of their markets.
• To speak with a human voice, companies must share the concerns of their communities.
• You’re invited, but it’s our world. Take your shoes off at the door. If you want to barter with us, get down off that camel!
• We want you to take 50 million of us as seriously as you take one reporter from The Wall Street Journal.
• We know some people from your company. They’re pretty cool online. Do you have any more like that you’re hiding? Can they come out and play?
• Our allegiance is to ourselves—our friends, our new allies and acquaintances.
• We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching. But we are not waiting.

Creative commons credits:

Soviet soldier http://www.flickr.com/photos/36919288@N08/3891685167/sizes/m/

Soviet badge http://www.flickr.com/photos/hugosimmelink/1468059580/sizes/l/

This is more of a post about a town being digitally connected rather than about digital communications.

But it’s the landscape of change that all comms people need to understand.

There are some wonderful things happening in some unexpected places in Britain. In towns and villages people are using the internet to connect and build things. I’ve long thought that the best grassroots innovation is happening outside of London. That can be a remote Scottish library using Twitter brilliantly, a Welsh town converting folk knowledge to Wikipedia or local government countryside ranger building an online community. All these things play a part in their communities.

What also strikes me is that scratching the surface of a community and you’ll find the web used in imaganitive ways.

Take the borough of Telford & Wrekin, for example. It has 170,000 people and a surprisingly high number of roundabouts. It has a small town distrust of its neighbours but a pride in the communities that make up the place.

Just recently there was a brewcamp staged there. This was an informal meet-up at a café that has been staged elsewhere in the wider West Midlands. Around 20 people came. The debate was good but the ideas that emerged were as arrestingly good as the cake.

A connected town

1. Letting a blogger live stream a council meeting and use a bingo card to liven it up

A resident from the Lightmoor Life blog used an iPhone to stream a council meeting to show democracy in action. They made a note of when the items were so people could go back and see the items for themselves. You can see that here.

Marvellously, there was a bingo card where viewers were encouraged to take a drink when key politicians mentioned idiosyncratic phrases. That’s lovely.

2. Using football as a way to talk about dementia.

Telford United as a community-run club have good links with its fans. Pete Jackson and others used the idea of football to encourage people to learn more about that issue.

For the most part a football fan’s recollections are not of the goals but of the crowd, the terraces, who you went with or the long drive home from that away game.

You can see a YouTube clip that tells more about the project here.

3. Connecting people through civic pride

Telford has large parts of it built as new town built in the Sixties and Seventies.

It doesn’t always have the heritage or roots of other places but there is a pride and nostalgia for that early vision of how Telford was going to be.

Telford Live posted scanned pictures from a scrapbook that recorded those early visions.

4. A museum that tweets

Coalbrookdale is a world heritage site and deservedly so. It’s where the industrial revolution truly started. They have a Twitter stream that’s engaging and informative.

5. A campaign to save a cinema using the web

Bright residents have a vision to return the Clifton cinema in Wellington back to use as just that. A cinema. They are organising in real life but have a web resource to tell people what is happening. 

6. Wellington soup

The brilliant Wellington soup website aims to celebrate the good things and stir up some extra ones. It’s a central place where people can organise, seek help and bounce ideas. It’s brilliant and it’s here.  

As the site says:

What are the ingredients that make a town interesting; that make it bubble with activity? And whose job is it to find those ingredients and throw them into the pot? Councils and governments spend millions trying to make places work, economically, socially and culturally, and rightly so. But they can’t do it all. The small local projects that bring neighbours together; the little shops that brighten up a street; the fetes and festivals, markets and fairs, plays and concerts – most of them start a long way from council offices.

7. If you are born in Lightmoor you get a tree planted in an orchard.

Which is such a cracking idea.

That’s Telford and that’s all a bit great. If that’s happening that’s off the beaten track just imagine what’s happening elsewhere.

I’m sure that the communities of Telford and Wrekin have pockets of connectivity and areas that just aren’t on line. But they’re making broad brushes on a canvas that are connecting and informing.

As a comms person that’s a fascinating landscape.

Creative commons credit 

Cow http://www.flickr.com/photos/welshdan/3167600838/sizes/l/

A couple of months ago I had barbed exchange with a former colleague.

We’d talked about the old days when we were both reporters at a daily newspaper and we smiled as we reminisced at old war stories.

Then our talk turned to the future for newspapers and a dark cloud drifted over our chat.

I spoke of how newspapers needed to be digital first and think of the web ahead of print.

I spoke of how bloggers shouldn’t always be seen as the enemy but people to work with when you can.

I talked of how the bright newspaper should link back, attribute and ask for permission before using content.

I mentioned how annoyed bloggers get when their content is lifted.

“But this has always happened,” my former colleague angrily said.

“They should just stop being precious. Think about when you lifted a story from another newspaper.”

The reporter was right. In the dog-eat-dog battle between papers we’d never dream of attributing a tale to a rival paper.

But this is just the point.

Blogs are not newspapers nor do they want to be.

They’re put together often by community spirited residents. Some are good. Some are bad. Some are awful.

But treating bloggers as the enemy all the time is missing the point.

The way newspapers should deal with bloggers is the same as how they’ve always dealt with contributors whether they be the village contributor from Gnosall for the Stafford Newsletter or the U13 match report writer for the Stourbridge News.

They’re relationships to nurture and encourage.

Then a rather wonderful thing happened today which made me think of this conversation.

A Walsall Advertiser reporter Helen Draycott asked a blogger via Twitter for permission to re-use images from the Walsall night market in the Walsall Advertiser.

The blogger, Brownhills Bob, agreed for a £10 donation to charity.

That’s how we should all look to engage with residents whether they be bloggers or someone who has taken a good image that you’d like to add to your corporate website.

Ask.

Work with.

Respect.

If the answer is ‘no’ don’t take it personally.

Creative commons credit 

Placard http://www.flickr.com/photos/34817626236@N01/13407603/

John Peel used to say that punk was great because of the DIY ethic.

All you had to do was knock over a phone box, sell your brother’s motorbike and you had enough to record and release a 7″ single.

So, here they are. To continue the list meme things that struck me after commscamp an unconference for pr and comms people.

I wish there was more of these.

I hope that some people who came to commscamp left as  inspired as I did when I left localgovcamp in 2009.

I wish there was more time to stop and chat with more who came.

I hope people left for London with an inkling of why the West Midlands is good at this unconference stuff. It’s three c’s: cake, curry and conversation.

I wish that I’d have got those ‘stuff your press release’ stickers made in time.

I hope that our team meetings in future also run peer training which sees colleagues show others how they did something.

I wish that not just local government and central government share ideas better but fire, police, NHS and voluntary sectors too.

I hope that other events bring people from outside the comfort zone too with the confidence to point out things like that no, we’re not brands we’re people to a room full of comms people.

I wish Mike Rawlins could have been around for the punch up on press releases. What larks would have followed.

I hope that Kate Bentham knows how much I was grateful to her for being Official Cake Monitor. She was brilliant.

I wish to accept 1/135th of credit for the good things said about the  event and deflect the rest to the other 135 who came. I’m pretty sure that Ann Kempster and Darren Caveney would say similar.

I hope that there is a localgovcamp in Brum again this year.

I wish good things to volunteers Alex, Kate, Pauline, Si, Kelly, Emma and Laura.

I hope the sponsors know how appreciative we are that the organisers don’t have to sell their cars to pay for it to Govdelivery, FutureGov, dxw, comms2point0, The Social Simulator, Claremont, NLGN, Improvement and Delivery West Midlands, PSCSF, Public i and LGA.

I wish that when people see spam on a hashtag they’ll react calmly and not click on the boob links rather than suggest we abandon the hashtag.

I hope that everyone who came did a little thing to change or innovate before they switch on their inbox every day.

I wish that people would stop thinking about traditional and digital and just think of comms.

I hope we have more people who become the organisation’s digital comms sweet sharer who scans the horizon, tries things out and encourages other less keen colleagues to come on in.

I wish people outside the sector could see that there’s real value in sessions that are about meat and potato issues. Not just horizon scanning.

I hope to do other things in the future with Ann Kempster.

I wish every event had a facilitator as good as Lloyd Davis and that I took pictures that make you smile as well as Paul Clarke.

Creative commons credits.

Microphone http://www.flickr.com/photos/paul_clarke/8510151932/sizes/l/in/photostream/

It is said that the average newspaper has the intelligence of a hillbilly evangelist and the taste of a designer of celluloid valentines. I’m not so sure about that. I rather love them.

So, clearly for the third HyperWM unconference we thought we’d have a crack at producing our own.

What a jolly wheeze we thought. We’d collaborate to turn some blog posts into a newspaper using the Newspaper Club website. What larks. You use their website to produce a newspaper and they use spare capacity on presses to send you the printed thing.

A newspaper. We’d get people not used to the blogs reading blogs. After all, isn’t it a good idea to give information in the format that people would like?

A quick disclaimer. I spent 12 years on newspapers starting in the early days of the internet and ending the year after Facebook was invented. For others it was their first experience of a newspaper.

Myself, Si Whitehouse and Liz O’Nions worked to produce the finished edition.

Here’s some things that struck me.

Bloggers were a bit phased by it all. People seem mildly tickled to see their name in print. But they got a bit irked when their work was edited to fit the space available. They also hated he idea of deadlines and in some cases had to be pushed and threatened to come up with the goods. In some cases no goods were come up with at all. There’s something about aiming for a deadline that some people not used to deadlines struggle with.

Editing I’m reminded that having to write for a specific space is irritating. I’m also struck by how clunky and basic the basic Newspaper Club editing tools are. You can only add your content in sequential order. Oh, and edit something on page two and you push everything on pages three to eight off kilter. Thankfully, you can upload your own work via a pdf which may well be the best way to tackle things. Phew.

Newspapers make me swear. I’m reminded – how could I forget? – that newspapers are only produced by lots of swearing with an undertow of threats. On his first day on a daily newspaper a former colleague had his first proudly written story returned with the words ‘SHIT’ written on the top by his news editor. He re-wrote and re-sent. It was sent back with the morale-boosting message ‘STILL SHIT’ on it followed by a phone call in which the news editor treated his new charge to a lecture with a wider array of swear words. That in a nutshell is the approach to management on many newspapers. Besides, a newsroom without swearing I just don’t feel is a newsroom. Looking back on my career there was a lot of swearing. Not all threatening ranging from the soft curse to the humorous aside punctuated by Anglo-Saxon to the red faced abuse. During the process of the HyperWM newspaper I swore a lot and I’m struck by how I’m actually incapable of producing one without it.

Reporters’ war stories can only be understood by other reporters. You can have a pride of lions, a gaggle of geese, a whinge of newspaper photographers and an anecdote of reporters. After Hyper WM we went to an Indian restaurant. I regaled the story of how I was on calls duty when I got a tip-off that it had collapsed killing three people and had 30 minutes to write the frontpage. It turned out it was only one person killed. People seemed aghast that reporters then track down where the deceased lived with the aim of securing a picture and an interview with the grieving family. Actually, it is quite shocking. But people need to know how their family newspaper is produced.

Newspapers give an illusion of permanence. Holding something in your hand is real. You’ve made something. Not just a line of code. Reading some print is something that millions of people still like to do and I’m one of them. But as the saying goes they’re also fish and chip wrappers. You can’t Google print. Now the dust has settled I’m thinking of how to put the text online too.

Newspapers are great. When  was a reporter and I had a few minutes spare I’d walk down to the Press Hall past the towering presses humming with noise just to pick up one of the first copies after it came off the line.   The spectacle of this impressed me on my last day just as much as it had on my first. Those presses have close now and production has been moved. This is life.

It takes time and money to produce a piece of print. In hard stats it took two days of work to put the newspaper together and we waited for days for it to arrive. We produced 200 copies. The contributors could have reached ten times that at no cost on Twitter. But – and this is the main point – they may not have reached the 200 who picked up the newspaper. Sometimes you can spend too much time focussing on the one channel and forget about the others. But you need to work out the cost in reaching them.

You can read the newspaper here:

Big thank you to the Interreg-funded Cross Innovation EU project from Birmingham City University for helping to sponsor and to fellow contributors Andy Mabbett, Si Whitehouse, Liz O’Nions, Jan Britton, Alexa Torlo, Ben Procter, Caroline Beavon and Geoff Coleman.

Creative commons credits

Print blocks http://www.flickr.com/photos/sumlin/4876153524/sizes/l/in/faves-danieldslee/

Tony http://www.flickr.com/photos/danieldslee/8202414734/sizes/o/in/photostream/