Tag Archives: social media

STOP BEING IRRELEVANT: Here’s five things every comms person should know

It’s amazing communications people are walking towards irrelevance but have not yet woken up.

In 2011 people get their information through a range of places.

Twitter broke the news of Osama bin Laden’s death. For some peoplem, it was Gary Neville’s Twitter stream that did it.

Closer to home, for the first time I found out the reason for a blocked road near my house via social media. That’s a personal tipping point.

But what of communications units?

They’re tackling the 21st century media landscape with a 20th century set-up. They’re geared to print when the world is turning to digital. It’s still what the local paper says that drives the agenda despite the paper being read by a minority. They’re a voice. But they’re one of several.

It’s now about doing both. Really well and getting to that point really, really quickly.

Here’s a quick history lesson.

Typesetters were once the kings of their craft using hard won skills to play a key role in delivering the news.

Computers came along and soon it was easy to replicate what they did.

Almost overnight generations of hard learned skills were irrelevant.

Once, having the skills to deal with media queries and to shape messages for print were all important.

But the media landscape has changed.

  • Newspaper sales are collapsing around us. People who read at least one a day fell from 26.7 million to 21.7 million from 1992 to 2006.
  • Best estimates  in 2011 are that 12 million local and national newspapers are sold every day. A further three million like the Metro are given away every day in the UK.
  • In April 2011, not a single national newspaper recorded growth.

And digital? Here are some random stats:

  • How many people are on Facebook in the UK? There’s 29 million. About half the population.
  • Facebook is  the fourth biggest website in the world for news.
  • By 2013, smartphones are predicted to be the first point of contact with the internet overtaking PCs.
  • 85 per cent of the UK population in summer 2010 was online.
  • Of those, 29 million had visited a social site in ther past month.
  • If you’re starting out there’s a great YouTube clip from Simply Zesty that’s a good starting point. The link is here.

Stop and think.

Where are people getting their information? Where do you get your information?

Then think how much time do traditional communications units and press offices devote to print media.

How much time is spent on digital platforms?

Are we really spending time going out onto Facebook to tackle issues where they arise? Or are we – at best – waiting for them to come to our corporate page? If we have one, that is.

Too many communications units have got the balance wrong putting scarce resources into print with little if any for digital.

But by doing so they’re becoming more irrelevant with every passing day and comms people with them.

This isn’t an argument for stopping writing press releases overnight. It’s more about recalibrating and getting the balance right.

Right now, it’s the press release, the photocall – where news photographers or photography budgets – AND the digital channels too.

My grandpa was a headteacher in the Lake District. He refused to have a telephone in the house because people he didn’t have the time to answer it. Many comms units are backing off from truly embracing digital for the same reason. They think they’ll be inundated, that the world will end and they don’t know where to start.

But digital is the one thing that will keep them relevant.

A couple of times recently I’ve been at events where trad comms people have been in the majority. You could almost touch the fear of change. The digital disasters and ‘what if scenarios’ were being trotted out. You could practically see the wagon train forming a circle.

It’s fine to keep the trad comms skills for the while. But press officers and marketing people need to learn new skills too if they’re not to become the typesetters of their generation.

A transport officer recently asked me if comms people would be irrelevant in 10 years time when we all have Facebook streams and officer Twitter accounts or presences on platforms that have yet to be even start-ups.

It’s a fair question.

As things stand, yes.

But as professionals who can help deliver a message through different channels, not at all if we evolve to meet them. That means new skills but most important of all the time and space to deploy them.

Here are five things a trad comms person needs to know:

Without learning new skills you’re unemployable. Interviewing skills, drawing-up a release, a campaign and dealing with the old media are still good basics to have. But without the digital strings to your bow how are you going to talk to the Facebook generation? Social media is not a silver bullet. But it’s a bullet you’ll need in your next job.

It’s not scary. Honest. The fact that you can deliver a message via print and radio means you are halfway there. Surely, you’d like to reach as many people as possible? Once you grasp the basics the door will open and you’ll find whole new vistas of possibility opening up.

It’s easy to get started. Do things under your own steam first to learn how platforms work. The lessons you’ll learn blogging about cake will come in handy further down the track. There’s also a wealth of learning out there on blogs, at mashable,com and places like the LGiD’s Communities of Practice forum.

There’s no such thing as a social media expert. We’re all learning. All of us. Every day is a school day and chances are the things you’ll do will be pioneering because social media hasn’t been around that long.

It’s web 2.0, baby. It’s a new way of doing things. People expect a two way conversation not someone broadcasting at them.

All these things so many people are already taking for granted.

Are you?

And have your comms team?

Creative commons credits

Facebook http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajc1/503165914/sizes/o/in/photostream/#

Phone full http://www.flickr.com/photos/djenan/468459784/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Smiles http://www.flickr.com/photos/walker_ep/5771324633/sizes/m/in/pool-26241990@N00/

Turn out the lights http://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/4272463964/sizes/l/in/photostream/

SLIDESHARE: Case studies on connecting people using social media


Once upon a time clip art was once cutting edge.

No, really. It was.

Back in 1997, the first Walsall Council website sported a dancing light bulb.

No, really. It did.

There’s also a notice telling people that the website was under construction (it’s slide number two on the presentation embedded in this post.) If you’re on a mobile device the embed may not be showing. If that’s the case the link is here.

We need to evolve, learn and innovate. Nothing demonstrates that better than the late 90s webpage frozen in time showing Billy the Bulb and one giant leap for a council website. Time has moved on and we need to too.

At the Socitm Learning from Better Connected event at Manchester there was plenty of examples of innovation.

Not least the forward-thinking webteam who ripped up the rule book and re-designed the liverpool.gov.uk website based on what people want rather than what officers think people want.

Here’s my preasentation that I’ve posted to Slideshare.

Included on it are:

Some stats on internet use.

Some stats on the mobile web.

A quick map of the Walsall media landscape 2011 and 2005.

A quick case study on engaging with the community through Flickr.

A quick case study on two hyperlocal sites: WV11.co.uk and Pelsall Common People.

How a countryside ranger can tweet from the sharp end.

Some stats on Walsall 24 which saw us live tweet for 24 hours in real time.

All good stuff for 2011, but you can bet your bottom dollar in 13 years time when we’ll All have robot butlers it’ll seem a bit tame and dancing lightbulbesque.

Quite right, too.

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/

LINKED SOCIAL: Eight steps of social media evolution in local government

It’s clear there’s been a quiet revolution. It’s not if we use social media, it’s how.

Old media is still here. But they’re now part of the landscape they used to dominate.

In the UK, 28 million are registered on Facebook, more than 5 million on Twitter and a village as small as Beer in Devon has 6,000 images of it on Flickr.

We’ve come a long way, baby.

But where are we going next?

I’ve thought a lot of late on the path we’ve taken and where we’re headed.

A few pieces I’ve read helped crystalise my thinking.

Firstly, an excellent, witty and well thought out piece in The Guardian on SXSWi the annual event that sees cutting edge geeks talk to other geeks and pitch for funding.

They took a wry pinch of salt to the current hot terms. It’s all gamification, apparently.

A conclusion? The internet is over. Well, sort of.

The internet where you actively go to do things will be. The web which is unthinkingly enmeshed in day-to-day lives is where we’re headed.

You call a friend because you saw they were having a bad time from a Facebook update you saw after you booked tickets online. All on your phone. That’s day-to-day. Twenty years ago it would be sci-fi.

But don’t let’s any of us fall into the trap that we’re all on the innovation curve frantically trying to gamify the wastebin experience. We’re simply not.

I’ve been reminded recently that so many in local government are still on the starting blocks or filled with fear at the task ahead.

It’s fine to be worried about the Himalayan range of technology ahead of you. Everyone starts at the bottom of the hill. Just relax a bit. Do it a bit at a time. Chris Bonnington started small and got bigger. He didn’t start ice climbing. Maybe all you need to do is stroll up a hill rather than Everest.

We’re all learning. You don’t need a chartered qualification or a session with a socmed guru to start climbing the curve.

So where does this all leave local government and the web?

The public sector local government is beginning to actively put out a stream of information on digital channels.

Yes, there’s open data. This will grow but this has some distance to travel before it becomes an enmeshed part of my Dad’s life.

Look at the real time experiments. Greater Manchester Police’s ground breaking live tweeting of calls to it is one.

Our own Walsall 24 is another that I’m really proud of.

Southampton University hospital’s live tweeting of a shift in the children’s heart unit took it to another level by putting a human face on what they do.

Live tweeting and streaming a village cricket match is another fun example of real time updates. The Twicket experiment in the Lancashire village of Wray drew a worldwide audience.

A Philadelphia local government blogger Jim Garrow talked this when he described how things like this are changing communications.

If we communicate so much more what we do through social media will there be a need for crisis communications? .

Here’s a scenario to consider.

Imagine a situation in local government where each department and each office had a social feed. That it would be as common as a telephone or an email address. That you could pick and choose the streams you wanted to tune into.

That an organisation could tap into those streams to tell people what it’s doing. That’s – for want of a better phrase – as linked social. As the number of smart phones in our pockets grow that’s where we’re headed in the long term. I’m sure of it.

Here’s what the local government social media evolution curve looks like to me. Because I’m fond of lists it’s in a list form and there’s eight steps.

The eight stages of local government social media evolution

1. Ignorance: We may have heard of the social web. Just. But we’ve never really heard of Facebook or if we have, we’ve not seen the film. We heard a caller to Nicky Cambell’s phone in saying it’s the worst thing ever invented. We agree with the Daily Mail. It gives you cancer.

2. Fear: We – or our boss – think we need to use it. We don’t know how to get started.

3. JFDI: The Dave Briggs rule of Just F***ing Do It. We’re experimenting. We’re not really asking much in the way of permission. It may grow into something bigger. We’re experimenting and innovating. In Dave’s axis, there’s a trade off between JFDI and being boring. You’ll get more done by JFDI but it’s far less sustainable.

4. Boring: It’s getting bigger. We need a social media strategy like this one from Wolverhampton Homes. It keeps people higher up happy. That makes people lower down happy too. We’re starting to mainstream things. Slooowly.

5. Lone social. We have a single Twitter account for the organisation. We have a single Facebook page. We’ve not heard of Flickr. Or Foursquare.

6. Chattering social. We’ve let others use digital platforms too. So long as they stick to the basic common sense advice. We have different voices talking about different things.

7. Linked social. We’re now talking on one offs about the same issue from a different perspective. Like Walsall 24. We’ve got something bigger than the sum of the parts.

8. Mainstream linked social: We’re doing this as routine. We have a stream on what the countryside ranger is doing at a nature reserve. And what the litter hit squad are doing at the same site. We’re using the same hashtag. Some of this is automated. For example, there’s an RSS feed linked to bin wagons. Ten days a year in the snow it really comes into it’s own.

That’s my map of where we’ve been and where we’re going. Feel free to disagree.

Creative commons credits:

Smiling man and woman http://www.flickr.com/photos/cyberuly/4742800632/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Smile http://www.flickr.com/photos/dahlstroms/4707142552/

Matterhorn http://www.flickr.com/photos/pave_m/283503710/

Twicket by Mike Ashton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:John_Popham_and_umpire_at_Twicket.jpg

The JFDI versus Boring axis by Dave Briggs.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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.

CASE STUDY: How Yammer can help local government innovate

“Yammer?” a colleague once asked, “isn’t that a Black Country word?”

Actually, no. It’s a web-based platform to allow people from the same organisation to talk to each other.

Used by 80,000 comanies as of Septrember 2010, it’s a way of sharing ideas, links to useful websites and for asking for help to crack a problem.

You need your organisation’s email address to access it so it’s a walled garden to allow discussion that cuts across directorates and teams.

The best thing of all?

It’s free.

It’s been used at Walsall Council since October last year when members of the communications team Kev Dwyer and Mel Lee came across it at the Hyperlocal Govcamp held in Walsall. Our head of communications Darren Caveney saw the value in it straight away.

In the first five months more than 600 people have signed up from around 8,000 employees.

Isn’t this just a glorified water cooler where people talk about last night’s telly?

Actually, no.

There’s a string of useful discussions.

  • Webteam members asking for feedback on how our website header should look like.
  • Transport asking what people thought of bus lanes.
  • A link to a Guardian Society piece on what hyperlocal blogs are.
  • A link to a blog written by a Cambridgeshire County Council officer on localism.
  • A thread on heavy imminent snow and best routes out Walsall.
  • A discussion on what planning pages should look like.

STATS ON HOW YAMMER IS WORKING…

We took a snapshot of 27 days of Yammer activity at Walsall Council from December 2010 and January 2011.

What we found were people busily innovating. Of the sample of 188 posts and comments:

82 per cent were work related

17 per cent were non-work.

Of the non-work posts, a third were about snow, information they’d seen in the staff e-mail Weekly Bulletin, on the intranet or were New Year greetings.

Not one was about Saturday night TV. Not one.

That compares favourably to the amount of time spent off-topic in some meetings.

Of all activity:

37 per cent were posts

63 per cent were comments.

What were the work-related topics about?

61 per cent were about proposed policy ideas.

For example, how a new operating model should look or what should happen to a new initiative should look.

Some were happy to ask for input while others were an update on what their team were working on.

22 per cent were on actual policy.

Such as an update on new sickness arrangements.

10 per cent were posting links.

A useful website, page on the council website or blog, such as a news story on how smart phones are having an impact.

0 per cent were abusive.

Not a single post on any subject was intemperate or even remotely threatening the code of conduct. That’s important to know and shoots down an early worry.

The regular cry ‘we need to be better at communicating with each other’ has never been louder.

Yammer is proving one way to do it. It won’t do it on it’s own but it is a powerful tool.

Links:

Yammer on Wikipedia.

Why Yammer failed at my organisation.

A Yammer experiment in local government.

LGC Comms Yammer thread with an account of the Kent County Council Yammer network.

CASE STUDY: ‘I’m showing two colleagues Twitter. They say they don’t get it…’

It’s always good to show people Twitter when they don’t use it themselves.

Isn’t Twitter Stephen Fry talking about his tea? Isn’t it a load of noise? Isn’t it a waste of time?

I was sat with two people who don’t get Twitter.

Instead of explaining, I asked Twitter a question. It’s sometimes amazing the response you get.

I posted the following question:

Then several people started to chip in with what they thought.

@Mike_Rawlins posted something daft about #brewcamp. This is an event I’m looking to do with Mike and a few others.

Then @adrielhampton posted. It can amplify what matters to you. When I showed them his Twitter profile they started to get interested.

“He’s from America,” one said. “How do you know him?”

Through Twitter I told them.

“So who is Will Perrin?” they ask.

“Oh, he created the e-petition platform at 10 Downing Street. He does Talk About Local. They support hyperlocal blogs.”

I show them some hyperlocal sites they’ve not seen before.

I talk about Pits n Pots in Stoke-on-Trent and a few others.

We talked about how we could use the platform for the council.

Minutes passed.

I log back onto Twitter and there were a stack more replies waiting.

“Are they interested in anything?” one posted. “Find experts in that. Fast. Find their friends. Find themselves.”

It’s all good stuff.

Their faces change from confusion to awe.

“I’m starting to see the point now,” one said.

I show them hashtags. I show them how I can find out what’s happening at Stoke City, in local government and I show them the UK Govcamp hashtag #ukgc11.

I show them #xfactor because that’s a TV show that one likes.

I tell them that you can watch TV and get a real time running commentary on the programme you are watching via Twitter.

That gypsy wessing fly-on-the-wall programme they were talking about. I heard all that on Twitter and I hadn’t even got the telly on.

I navigate back to Twitter.

US people who specialise in emergency planning had started to contribute.

“Situational awareness, direct connectivity to public, better engagement,” one tweeted.

“Wow,” my colleague said.

One tweeter reminded me of the @savebenno campaign on Twitter.

What was that?

That was a campaign to highlight the unfair dismissal of a 2nd XI village cricket skipper.

It ended up with the team I was playing for playing a Save Benno XI.

“Wow,” my other colleague said.

“It’s starting to make sense now.”

TWELVE STEPS: Twelve lessons for using Twitter in local government


It’s now not why local government uses Twitter but how.

More than a hundred UK councils are on the micro-blogging platform.
That’s progress.

Since late 2008 we’ve been using Twitter at Walsall Council to inform and engage.

We’re fortunate our head of communications Darren Caveney and head of press and PR Kim Neville were quick to spot the potential.

More than 6,000 tweets on and there are a series of lessons we’ve learned.

In one of the first blogs I ever wrote I talked of the 27 things that work on a local government Twitter stream.

For a presentation at LG Comms in Nottingham I boiled that down to 12 key lessons.

The slides are available on slideshare (click the link above).

#12 LESSONS FOR USING TWITTER IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT

#1: Realise that the landscape has changed (and your skills need to too.) You know that a few years ago that writing a press release and booking a photo call was enough? That’s still a great skill. But you need other things too.

#2: The channels of communication have changed. In the old days there was the newspapers. Maybe the radio. Every now and then TV would show up and it would be a really big thing. They’re still there. In some cases just or not at all. It’s just that people get their news in different ways now. Remember, Facebook is the fourth biggest news site on the internet.

#3: Learn the language of the platform first (by messing about with it yourself.) When you start to use Twitter – or any other platform – you’ll notice that there is a different way of talking to people. It’s a lot more relaxed and conversational. Get to know how things work under your own name. Once you build some confidence up you’ll be up to speed on how to use it for your organisation.

#4: You can’t control the message. It’s a big one for press officers this. In the old days there may have been key messages. There’s still things you want to say. Just realise that this stuff works as a conversation. So be conversational.

#5: It’s okay to be a human voice. What works best on Twitter is a relaxed tone. It’s not about linking to an RSS feed and tweeting the first 140 characters of a press release. That’s just shouting. A police officer once told me that as a beat officer he would start conversations with people. Then he’d slip in some information he thought may be of help. That’s what Twitter does. It’s probably why many police officers are very good at it.

#6: Link. Share. Retweet. Be web 2.0. It’s okay to retweet. So long as it’s third sector or public sector. Spotted a police witness appeal on Twitter? Link to it. Charity car wash in your borough? Link. Share. Earn social capital. Be a responsible council. Share interesting content.

#7: Take the argument offline. It’s never a good idea to have a row in public. Point people to the place where they can get information that can help. Most non-trolls are fine with this.

#8: Take the re-buttal online. Is your local paper circulating via Twitter a link you have a major issue with? Have they failed to include your statement adequately? Post the statement online. Link to it. Tweet it to them – and your followers.

#9: Service areas work well on Twitter (so be prepared to share). It’s fine for comms to use it. Others can too. There’s no-one better at knowing what’s popular with libraries than librarians. So if your library want to use it, let them. Give them some pointers first.

#10: Have a simple to understand social media policy. A hundred pages won’t work. Something that fits into a screen does. Make it simple.

#11:  Make sure it connects with other channels of communications. Write the press release. Send it. But also send it via your other channels too.

#12: Cut, past and send your positive feedback to off-line officers. It’s amazing how effective this is at breaking down barriers to social media. If you are doing something residents approve of they will thank you for it.

Hat tip: Nick Booth who first told us about Twitter and what it could do.

TRUE GRIT: A localgov winter social media case study

Every mile is two in winter, the Elizabethan poet George Herbert wisely said.

True words then and true today and he never had to drive a Vauxhall Astra on the M6 in minus five degree weather.

In local government its worth going the extra mile in wintry weather.

Get things right in sub zero weather and you’re laughing.

Get it wrong and you’re not. Just ask the Scottish transport minister who resigned after scathing criticism.

For the past two weeks Walsall Council – the council I work for –  has been using social media as a key way to keep people updated on wintry weather.

It’s not the first time. Last year, we were one of a small number to use social media. We used Twitter to flag up gritting and service disruption.

This time, we expanded a touch. During the icy period of November 26 to December 11 2010 we used the council website, Twitter, Facebook and Flickr.

What did we do this year?

Staff were primed to email the communications unit, members of the team by 8am every day as well as individuals. When the gritters went out the engineers e-mailed and even called to flag up what they were up to.

Council website www.walsall.gov.uk

With new digital channels taking all the attention you’d be forgiven for overlooking your website. Don’t. It’s where a lot of your content can go.

We used one page on the website as a links directory to more than half a dozen potential service areas so people didn’t have to search around the website.

It’s where most people will go first.

Twitter @walsallcouncil

Stats: 2,200 followers (a five per cent rise in two weeks)

261 tweets at almost 19 a day.

Content: Updates on gritting, school closures, service disruption.
Links to council gritting pages, school closure page organised by education provider Serco.

Links to winter shots taken by residents and posted on Twitpic and Flickr.

Links to BBC weather.

Link to the @mappamercia grit map.

Did we RT?: Of course. Social media is supposed to be social. We retweeted the Met Office weather forecasts, neighbouring authority grit updates and advice on

Facebook: Our Walsall fan page

Stats: 345 likes (up 10 per cent in two weeks)

Daily post views up 3,105 or 82 per cent.

Updates: 27

Each status update received between 159 and 783 page impressions.

Content: Three to four updates a day with links to a general page.

Flickr and Twitpic

Stats: 6 pics posted on Flickr and 12 pics crowdsourced and retweeted on Twitter to provide content from residents themselves. Shots varied from the amateur twitpic to the almost professional here.

A set of pics were posted of the gritters in action at a training event in late autumn designed to test out the routes. These were posted to Flickr but the best pics came from residents themselves. In the spirit of web 2.0 we posted links to good shots.

One pic was crowdsourced for the council website header shot.

Content: snowy scenes taken by residents as well as shots of gritters posted by the press office.

Open data

It’s one of the great jobs of this winter to see a mapping project really take off in Walsall. The Mappa Mercia group are people I’ce blogged about previously. Last winter they drew-up a grit map on open street map for Birmingham. You can take a look here. They spotted the grit routes for Walsall and Solihull too and quietly added them. So, when winter came we were quite happy to link to their map. It shows residents spotting a need and doing it themselves.

Content: grit routes.

EIGHT things we’d suggest:

  • Get service areas to tell you what they are doing.
  • Communicate to residents in good time.
  • Monitor, respond and communicate every four hours. Have a rota to do this.
  • Put the same message across different channels. But in the language of the platform. Don’t RSS it across everything. It won’t work.
  • You can crowdsource good picture content.
  • Have an idea what the frequently asked questions are and think about the answers before you are asked.
  • Take a screen shot of the positive and negative comments from Facebook and Twitter. It gives the service areas an idea of what is being said if you email it to them. The positive stuff will go down very well and make them more supportive of what you are doing.
  • You can reply to negative comments. But if people swear or are sarcastic think twice. You may not have a constructive conversation.
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