Tag Archives: Facebook

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.)

FACEBOOK: Not One Big Page Please, But Lots of Little Ones

A few days ago I had something of a Eureka moment.

We were looking at how a leisure centre could best use Facebook. In the room with me was a colleague and the centre manager himself.

“Maybe we should just have the one Facebook page for leisure centres right across the borough.”

Hmmm. That didn’t feel right.

“Or how about one for a leisure centre?”

Better. Much better. But that still didn’t quite feel totally there. We spoke about the centre user and what they may want.

“So, what if someone loved zumba and didn’t want to be bothered with gym opening times?”

We searched for zumba and Walsall on Facebook. That’s the borough we were in. Just to see what is there.

We found an zumba instructor and a rather magnificent 1,400 people liking her page.

Wow.

Suddenly, it became quite clear.

Would a zumba enthusiast be more likely to sign-up for zumba updates? Or zumba floating in amongst gym, badminton, squash, swimming, weight lifting and judo?

Or to ask another question, when you look for information on a council website, would you want it straight away or would you want to have to go through six other services before you got the lollipop?

That’s a simple question. You want the one. 

So, maybe, what we need is not just one big Facebook page. Or even an oligarchy of pages based on services. What we need are lots of little ones for each class, group or community.

Look at New York City. They have 5,000 people liking their City Council Facebook page and a similar number on Twitter. But they have 400,000 following @metmuseum as well as 1,300 liking an AIDS initiative.

Or look at the Scottish Island of Orkney. On Twitter 2,000 follow the council, 4,000 like their library, 400 the story telling festival and 80 sign-up for the jobs feed. So in other words, twice as many like things the council does rather than the council itself.

Look even at Walsall Council. 4,000 like the council Twitter while 800 sign up for @walsallwildlife a countryside ranger’s tweets about bats, birds and wildlife and 160 getting environmental health updates.

So, it’s not about having one medium size official presence jealously guarded by a comms person.

It’s actually about having scores of engaged little ones that together add up to a better connected, better informed population.

The Public Sector Forum and Comms2point0 Facebook for the Public Sector takes place on March 14 at Birmingham City Football Club. You can find out more here and do come over and say hello.

First posted on Comms2point0.

Photocredit

Mark Zuckerburg: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MarkZuckerberg.jpg

New York skyline: http://www.flickr.com/photos/29624656@N08/3735314426/sizes/l/in/photostream/

JAM TODAY: Social media expressed as doughnuts

Sometimes you come across something in your timeline that nails something. In a picture.

This image tweeted by Ian Morton-Jones (@iamjones on Twitter) is one of those marvellous things that does just that.

Fun as well as educational it sums up social media through the medium of doughnuts.

Mind you, I’ve had to put the ‘u’ back for a UK audience.

Twitter: I am eating a #doughnut.

Facebook: I like doughnuts.

Foursquare:  This is where I eat doughnuts.

Instagram:  Here’s a vintage photo of my doughnut.

Youtube: Here I am eating a doughnut.

LinkedIn: My skills include eating a doughnut.

Pinterest: My skills include eating a doughnut.

LastFM: Now listening to “doughnuts.”

G+: I’m a Google employee eating doughnuts.

Hats off to douglaswray who posted this image to instagram.

CLICK INSPIRE: 20 golden links from 2011

If links are the web’s currency of inspiration then some shine as bright as a gold coin on a summer’s day.

Vivid and memorable as wild flowers they can sow seeds that bloom into bright ideas.

Some challenge while some crysyallise half thoughts.

They can be blog writing, tweets, news stories or images.

Over the past 12-months I’ve read thousands. Mainly in spare moments. As December trudged towards Christmas in downtime I’ve reflected on those that have shaped my outlook.

I’ve not gone online to remind myself but instead racked my brains for writing that has stayed with me.

There are scores of good writing. Many of them can be found on the pages of the blogroll on the right of this webpage.

A couple of them are mine. Mitigation for this is that they capture collaborative working.

Using Twitter to Stop Riots. As rioting spread and London police hip shootingly spoke of switching off the internet Wolverhampton shone. Superintendent Mark Payne used Twitter to shoot down rumours circulating online and off. Blogs such as WV11.co.uk and Tettenhall.co.uk plugged into this to retweet and shout via Facebook. Public I did a useful study.

The Icelandic Facebook page. With the country in financial tatters the Icelandic government started a root and branch review. The constitution which dates from 1944 was being re-drafted. Rather than whack up a 500 page pdf they broke down proposals into bite sized chunks and crowdsourced it. More than 2,500 Icelanders took part. In a country of 250,000 that’s astounding. You can read how here.

Twelve commandments for council news. Adrian Short isn’t a comms person. But his insight into how news online should be presented really needs reading by comms people.

Changing how council news is done. In a second post Adrian points out the folly of presenting press releases verbatim on a different medium. It needs reading if you care about local government and what it does. Read it here.

Birmingham City Council Civic dashboard. Critics say open data stands more effective in theory than in practice. This website starts to answer that and stands as a landmark.

Trust me I’m a follower. Scotland has some amazing people in the public sector. Carolyn Mitchell’s piece on the changing landscape is essential. As a former print journalist she has an eye for a line. That a senior police officer spoke of how he trusts his officers with a baton so why wouldn’t he trust them with a Twitter account is one of them.

Stop being irrelevant. Explains why I think comms people need to see their changing landscape and evolve to stay relevant. It drove my thinking throughout the year.

Localgovcamp. The event in Birmingham in June brought together creative thinking, ideas and inspiration. The posterous here captures blogs that emerged from it.

Brewcamp. I’m proud to be involved in this. It’s a platform for like minded people to come together, share ideas and drink tea. You can read it here.

@walsallwildlife on Twitter. That a countryside officer can attract 800 followers by tweeting about her day job of bats, ponds and newts astounds me. It shows what can happen when bright people share the sweets.

Joplin Facebook. Thousands of homes were destroyed and hundreds killed when a tornado levelled the town. It was residents who self-organised with sites like these. This shows the power of community sites.

Queensland Police Facebook. Thousands of homes were destroyed and hundreds killed when flooding struck. 200,000 signed up. This shows the power of official sites when given a flow of regular information.

Look how not on fire this is. When the shadow of rioting overshadowed Walsall in the summer rumour the town police station was burning was dismissed in real time by a police officer with a phone camera and a dry wit. PC Rich Stanley’s image had more than 2,000 hits.

The Walsall Flickr group. There are more than 9,000 images here from 130 members.  This shows the power of community sites and the good things that can be achieved when local government can work with them as equals as we did on this town centre empty shop scheme.

The Dominic Campbell youtube. I love the idea of ‘militant optimists’ pressing for change in unlikely corners of local government. It strikes a chord. This is a good 15 minutes to invest.

Twicket. Because John Popham and others live streaming a village cricket match is a good idea and shows good tech is less about the tech and more about fun and community. The big picture stuff sorts itself out. Read it here.

The end of crisis communications. Jim Garrow is a US emergency planner. It’s called emergency management over there. He writes with foresight. Not least this piece on why real time social media is replacing the set piece emergency planning approach. I’m proud he talks about one of my projects but this wider piece crystalises why real time events work.

Comms2point0. I’ll blog about this more at a later date. But this is a place where comms people can share best practice and best ideas. It’s largely Darren Caveney’s idea. It’s brilliant and so is the photographic style guide.

Digital advent calender Number 1. Many say  the media is dying. David Higgerson, of Trinity Mirror, proves that there is a home for good journalism on the web. His collection of writing is a directory of excellent tools of gems.

Digital advent calender number 2. Steph Gray steers Helpful Technology and helps people understand that technology is an opportunity not a minefield. He is that rare thing. A geek who can communicate with non-geek by speaking human. His advent calender will be pulled out and consulted far into 2012 like a Playfair Cricket annual is to a summer game enthusiast sat on the boundary at Worcester.

Creative commons credits

Yellow flowers http://www.flickr.com/photos/doug88888/2808827891/sizes/o/in/photostream/

Iceland http://www.flickr.com/photos/stignygaard/3830938078/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Police officers http://www.flickr.com/photos/glamlife/4098397848/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Stickers http://www.flickr.com/photos/theclosedcircle/3624357645/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Localgovcampers http://www.flickr.com/photos/arunmarsh/3656742460/in/set-72157620328138849

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.


EMERGENCY COMMS: ‘Whatever you do, put social media in your emergency plan.’

Fire, storm, pestilence or just a burst water main, in an emergency local government can swing into action.

In the UK it’s known as emergency planning and in the US emergency management. Whichever part of the world you are in it’s the part of the public sector that has plans for every eventuality.

For a comms person, it’s often only when there’s a problem you’ll speak to the emergency planners. Don’t let that happe  n. Make a pact with yourself.  Go and speak to them as soon as you can and sort out what to do with social media. Here is why.

At localgovcamp in Birmingham this year Ben Proctor, who runs the Like A Word consultancy, ran an excellent session on emergency planning and the social web. It’s something he writes about well too. His blog is well worth a look.

Catherine Howe, who does things with Public I, made the closing but clear point: “Whatever you do put social media in your emergency plan.”

Of course, I reflected smugly, my council has. There’s 3,000 people following the our corporate Twitter stream. What could go wrong?

Overnight there had been a minor incident that I’d missed on my Blackberry which had ran flat. Thankfully, it wasn’t more serious. But it showed very clearly where we’re blindsided.

If only comms people have the keys to the Facebook and Twitter things can easily fall down. What’s the answer? Go to where the audience is. Give them access to the corporate account. They’re generally very sensible people and know what to say. If the situation develops you can always step in.

So, what sort of role does social media play in an emergency?

In a true disaster the web falls down before SMS. But people are instinctively running to it.

A tornado in Joplin – In in the Mid West US town when a milewide tornado struck, the community rallied by building their own space on the web. At first this was to search for missing people and then as the disaster turned to recovery it charted that phase too. The moral? People have the tools like this or this community Facebook page to build things for themselves. They’re not waiting for the council to do it. They just will.

The EDL in Birmingham – When the far right English Defence League first rallied they used Twitter to spread misinformation. The police monitored by were powerless.  Third time they came they had an officer monitoring Twitter, Mark Payne checking each claim and then re-butting within minutes point by point.

Facebook in Queensland – When floods struck 3,000 comments a day were posted on the Queensland Police site. It took a 24-hour effort to monitor, explain and rebuff wild rumour.

The report into the Queendsland event singled out social media as part of a range of channels to take action with. Ben Proctor has blogged on it here. A key finding is to talk, prepare and practice. That’s as just as much relevant to comms people as anyone.

An interim report into the Queensland flood made a series of comments and recommendations. On social media it stated:

“As it may be possible for the public to post information directly to an official social media site there are concerns that a member of the public may post false information. For example, inaccurate information was posted on the Western Downs Regional Facebook page. However, where there are enough staff to monitor content social media can be a useful tool to respond to rumours in the community.”

Seven things comms people need to know

1. Share the keys – Give emergency planning an awareness of what social media is, encourage them to monitor and respond and give them the keys to the corporate feeds.

2. You can’t control the message – As if the main message of our times is needed to be repeated.

3. There’s a shorter turn around time to respond – Speed may be of the essence.

4. It’s not just about social media – It’s one channel of several. Important and growing but don’t think that everyone will be on Facebook.

5. It’s good for combating rumours – As a comms person that can save yourself time.

6. Journalists will follow and like – You can save time and effort by creating channels of communications.

7. If the balloon goes up it’ll take resources – Social media is free is a bit of a myth. The platform is free. The time spent to manage it, listen and update isn’t. The lessons of Queensland are that it can take up resources. But you do get valuable return on investment for doing so. Regular monitoring when there is a crisis is absolutely critical. Don’t link to a press release and forget about it.

Creative commons

Fire http://www.flickr.com/photos/danieldslee/5075758029/sizes/m/in/photostream/

SOCIAL TOWN: Using social media to tell a town centre’s story

With Walsall 24 we told the story of what a council did across a borough in 24 hours.

With Walsall Town Centre 100 we’re looking to go a step further and tell a different story.

We want to tell a hundred things about the life of a town centre across seven days from May 17 to 23 2011.

It’s not just about litter getting collected this time. It’s the faces on the market, the people in the shops and what gets done to keep people safe and protect law and order.

In effect it’s the council, the police, businesses and other partners joining forces to tell people what they do. It’s also about letting residents speak with Q&A sessions for key people.

All these factors make up the life of a town centre.

In many ways, Walsall is a typical town. It competes against bigger neighbours in Birmingham and the Merry Hill Shoping Centre in Dudley 14 miles away.

There’s three indoor shopping centres, 400 shops, an 800-year-old market, a circa 1905 Council House, a New Art Gallery, two museums and a 35-acre Arboretum giving a splash of green on the edge of the town centre.

It’s a town with civic pride built on the leather industry and one that was once known as the town of a hundred trades – hence the name of this experiment.

What are the channels?

We’re looking to use the council website walsall.gov.uk, the Walsall police web pages, Twitter, flag up some locations on Foursquare and also keep people informed via Facebook. There’s even geocaching too and a Flickr group to celebrate the beauty of the town.

The purpose is not to use a whole load of web tools just for the sake of it.

It’s to talk to people on a platform they might want to use.

How can you follow it?

You can take a look at three main Twitter accounts as well as the #walsall100 hashtag.

@walsallcouncil from the council.

@walsallpolice from the town’s police force.

@walsalltown from the town centre management team.

There’s also historic updates from @walsalllhcentre.

There’s a web page on it to tell you all about it here.

Why more than one organisation?

Because what happens in an area isn’t just down to one. It’s down to several.

Why use social media?

Because it’s a good platform to communicate and listen.

What will it look like?

If you’ve seen Walsall 24, that was a barrage of information in real time. This is slightly different. There may be a background noise of tweets with more focussed on events this time.

For example, We’re live tweeting a pubwatch meeting, a day on the market and a Friday night with the police on patrol. All this is part of what makes a town centre tick.

What else?

There’s a Peregrine Watch staged by countryside officers, RSPB Walsall and the West Midlands Bird Club, a walk in the Arboretum and other things.

There will also be a chance to ask questions with Q&A sessions.

The full list is here.

Why seven days?

To show all parts of the town centre from Saturday morning shopping to a Friday night on the town to a regular weekday morning.

This is what linked social is about. It’s a range of voices from a range of places with input from residents and shoppers too.

Will there be resources from it?

With Twitter being the live action, we’ll look to pull together Match of the Day-style  highlights with storify.com.

Hats off to the following for their role: Kate Goodall, Jon Burnett, Jo Hunt, Gina Lycett, Darren Caveney, Morgan Bowers, Helen Kindon, Kevin Clements and Stuart Williams.

Pictures:

Peregrine Falcon on Tameway Tower http://yfrog.com/hs90k9j

Walsall images from my Flickr stream http://www.flickr.com/photos/danieldslee/

SOCIAL NEWTWORKING: A case study on how to use social media to promote countryside

Some things work better on social media than others.

Parking wardens and council tax collectors struggle.

Libraries, parks and countryside can work brilliantly. Why? Because people love them.

There’s several good librarians using social media. Not least the excellent @orkneylibrary.

But  there isn’t many examples of good countryside and park use I’ve seen.

Until now that is.

Countryside ranger Morgan Bowers  is doing some truly great things at Walsall Council. She works for the same authority as I do. But I’d be saying it whichever authority she was working for.

Morgan has set up @walsallwildlife on Twitter and tweets as an real person.

She is leading a team of volunteers recording wildlife across Walsall.   I don’t get newts. But her enthusiasm for her subject I do get.

She tweets about her subject and celebrates a newt find in the same way a football supporter celebrate a 93rd minute winner.

She also talks to people. How refreshing is that?

Rather wonderfully, it works across several platforms. She has also set-up a Facebook page to share her work and also has a lively Flickr stream.

All three are really good examples on how to use each platform. Morgan isn’t alone in Walsall Council’s countryside team in using social media.

Countryside manager Kevin Clements is gradually taking a more active role with Twitter too as @countrysidekev.

Their approach is similar in many ways to @hotelalpha9, the tweeting police officer in North Yorkshire.

A personal face and real time updates that are conservational. It’s a blend that seems to work.

Often, people who work in the public sector think their day-to-day job isn’t that interesting to people.

The fact is any job that you don’t do yourself is interesting to people.  And in 2011, in the public sector why not fly the flag for what you are doing?

Here’s why I think this approach works:

Twitter

A human voice helps put a human face on an organisation.

A niche Twitter stream can appeal to a cross-section of the population.

Responding and listening are good things for an organisation to do. It can drive traffic to other web pages.

It can work in real time.

Facebook

It can connect with people who use Facebook and no other network.

Because half the population are on Facebook in the UK.

It’s good to post pictures here as people can connect with a strong images

Flickr

It’s a good way to showcase images and connect with a wider community. Remember, there’s five billion images on Flickr.

It’s a good way to keep a record of images of what a project has discovered.

It  can can act as a bulletin board to the group and a wider community.

It’s a good way to map the changing of the seasons in an accessible way.

There are a few things that can work in parks and countryside and it’s fascinating to watch innovation in a corner of local government that people have a real connection with.

Pic credits: (c) Morgan Bowers.

CASE STUDIES: The place of social media in the marketing mix

Traditional comms is as dead as the boozy lunch with the Town Hall reporter.

Back in the old days a few beers with the right person may have been enough.

Not in 2011 it isn’t.

Not just because that reporter may now be based in an industrial estate 20 miles away.

The changing face of communications is something I’ve blogged about before.

There’s a whole list of things a press officer needs to do.

For some nice people at LG Comms Scotland I distilled much of this thinking into a presentation.

At their seminar in Dalkeith it was good to see people realising times have changed.

There were some excellent resources posted afterwards to the Communities of Practice site – log in is required.

Here’s my presentation too.

Basically, it covers the following ground:

  • Basic principles – What is social media? How does it work. Some basics.
  • Creating your media map – to see how things have changed on your patch. So you can work out where to put your resources. Not least a cunning way to get stats from Facebook.
  • Some case studies – What works in Twitter, Flickr and Foursquare and Facebook.

It’s not about abandoning the traditional approach that puts print journalists first. More it’s a long overdue re-calibration.

Social media should be part of everything that we do and the last thing it should be is an obstacle.

Or a bit scary.

It should be part of everything that we do.

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