DeJa Vu – A lesson for social media

A colleague and friend of mine Martin Howitt has just started blogging outside the comfort of our team blog, where he was the most active blogger. I should blog more over there and will do in the coming weeks about IT/Business Alignment and the benefits of Enterprise Business Architecture in reducing the “lost in translation” effect that often happens when business folk talk to IT and vice versa. I am current fascinated by this issue as it can also help explain some of the issues and negative perceptions that people have about social media.

Anyway, Martin has provided an excellent post on the ROI potential of Social Media and had provided some great seeds for others to hopefully expand  and build on.

Martin states:

it’s probably time someone tried to start mapping out the benefits of SM right across the piece so that a full business case can be made by those who are trying to make the change in their own organisations.

via The social media ROI braindump « Martin Howitt’s blog.

This is the DeJa Vu aspect of the post – haven’t we been here before, with email and council websites and online services?

What we need to remember here though in all this conversation around Social Media ROI is that it wasn’t that long ago, that some councils didn’t even have websites and that officers within councils had to construct a business case for email (yes really a business case for email) – but don’t we all have one ( or even more) now and don’t we all believe even the doubters of social media that email, is a tool that if switched off would have a detrimental effect on how businesses run and function.

The shift and progress around local council websites was helped by the now infamous eGovernment agenda, but credit also needs to go to Socitm who year on year publish Better Connected (whether you like it or not, it provides a snapshot of what is happening) – eGov also did many good things but in my humble opinion failed to address the real issues in technology innovation – again a topic which i will touch on in my IT/Business Alignment post. But we also need to remember that a number of councils had websites before this and were doing some great innovative work on them including online services.

My council (Devon County Council) has had a website (as well as a basic intranet) since around 1998 and it grew organically much like other websites, starting with a strong tourism and visitor information presence into other council services and information resources. I wasn’t involved in the web at that time but i can imagine the type of discussions that were had about developing a County Council website, were quite similar to what people are saying now about social media sites. What is the benefit, how many people will use it, it won’t and doesn’t reach everyone yet….and so on. The key message is, you HAVE to start somewhere and you HAVE to be patient, even more so with social media as we are dealing with relationships and connections with real people, not transaction or visitor statistics.

We (local government) were given targets and timescales to get our websites up to date and up to speed with a set of basic requirements plus a sprinkle of transactions. The ROI that is being used and promoted is that the cost of interacting with people over the web is cheaper and more cost-effective, well it can be if your services are connected to your back office and people are not having to intervene in the process.

BUT where eGovernment failed in my opinion is that instead of focusing on developing online transactions that people actually wanted to use and demonstrated a high volume potential (based on local need and preference) we were mandated to deliver all of them in one way or another. So for most people eGovernment became one very large technology project and it lost the support of people in the business due to the amount of time available.  Plus with so many services developed, the marketing message became diluted with so many services that not many people used. We could be in danger of doing this again unless we start to connect people in the business to the opportunities and technologies out there, whether this is social media tools or not.

OK, so this is where Martin’s post for me gets really interesting. It starts to connect business terms with outputs and opportunities of Social media   – Martin picks out 9 areas, here are a three of them:

Infrastructure (administrative management of eg buildings) -> need maintenance and planning (and even strategy) -> SM can streamline maintenance processes, alerts, and educate people in how to get the best out of their investments.

technology -> Social media can reduce email, provide mashups, enhance remote, mobile and flexible working. This is a big topic in itself.

HR management -> social media tools can be used to provide early warnings of things that are bothering the workforce, ways to access employee resources (like workplace counselling or learning and development); conversely the blocking of social media sites can be demotivating for employees

What WE and i mean everyone who is currently able to work on this stuff proactively, needs to start looking at the metrics and agreeing some consistent ways in which we can demonstrate effectiveness and cost savings. We also need to really start looking at the business issues which our employers have and be flexible enough in our approaches to accept that social media won’t work everywhere.

I think we need to start with opportunities where there is a desire and opportunity to demonstrate value. It sounds obvious but i often here people talking just about twitter or facebook without linking that to a specific business objective. It seems to be more about demonstrating twitter and facebook can work instead of demonstrating that we can improve business outcomes by using a new set of technologies and tools. It is only then we will actually start seeing the ROI of these tools, but it will always become complicated because it will in nearly all cases be part of a wider provision including face to face, telephone, web etc.

For me, all of the tools provide exciting opportunities but that is all they are until i can connect them to a business problem in my council. The new skill for social media people won’t be about the tools but will be about understanding business (people) problems. Which is afterall one of the key features of anything “social”.

 

 

One week after #likeminds

Last friday i attended the inaugral likeminds event in Exeter, where i was also a a panel speaker. It was full of very interesting people and the event itself demonstrated the power and potential of social media tools to bring people together to talk about a common purpose, in this case it was “Social Media ROI”. There were about 200 people who attended and over 560 who watched it live on the internet.

During friday and over the last week the conversation has continued at such a rate on twitter that it got me thinking about the event itself again and has driven me to write this post about. What is quite amazing is the amount of conversation this event generated check out the website for what other people are saying.

On the whole it was a fascinating experience to be part of such a ground breaking event in the South West and in particular for Exeter. Most of the time i hear about or follow innovative events that are happening in London or Birmingham to be honest everywhere else BUT Exeter. So for me on that front it was such a good change not to travel a whole day to get to something and i could still be home in time to read my kids a story at bedtime.

It was great to hear from speakers who had travelled all the way across the pond and then down to good old Devon to speak about Social Media.  Speakers and panelists included:

Trey Pennington, Olivier Blanchard, Daren Forsyth and Maz Nadjm, who were all sharing invaluable experiences and insights. Plus the panelists who were Andrew Davies, Vanessa Warwick, Laura Whitehead, James Barisic, Rick Waghorn, and Matt Waring. A special mention also needs to go to Nick Tadd, who not only took the prize for “coolest person on the day” but who also featured alot in the live twitterfall for having the best haircut. I was even surprised that my shirt was even mentioned on the twitterfall, perhaps a future sponsorship deal could be negotiated for space on my shirt – or perhaps not!!

So what did i get from the day other than meeting great people, some i had never met in any sense of the word, offline or online and some who previously were only ever twitter id’s and only ever shared 140 characters or less of insights and advice on a range of topics not just social media. It was certainly refreshing to have a more free-flowing conversation with real people. For that alone the event rates highly for me.

Now a week on and i start to think more about what value i got personally i start to think more about the next event and how that could be better, bigger, more contextual, more practical, more engaging for attendees. To be honest a bit more “unconference” or “barcamp” like. But that is only my opinion.

During the event there were some interesting views and comments about the event failing to deliver what it promised which was to demonstrate the ROI on social media. I thought this was answered by the very first speaker Trey Pennington, his answer was quite simple “it depends” on what you want to get out of it, what outcomes you are driving. BUT even more i thought some people left with a sour taste in their mouths about the event and for that i think the next one should try and address the self learning and personal responsibility aspect that a “barcamp” for example gives to the attendee.

So it would be great to have a longer day, more sessions, practical learning from people as well as the “keynote” slots which are always valuable and thought-provoking.

We all actually know quite a bit about social media now – the gap for most if not all of us is how can people actually use it. I think the people who attended were interested more in the examples of where, how and what impact it had and was the reason behind some of the negative comments.

On reflection i think we should have had a final slot on the event itself, which was a perfect testimony for social media ROI – Scott Gould posted on how the event took shape and how those who attended which included me all proved social media works – this post could have been a great ending to the event. But would it have been possible to write this before the event. Or even during?

One last thought – We should stop focusing on the tools and technologies that are easy to get stuck into and start to focus on what matters which is relationships, conversations and people. After all without that where would anyone be?

Hands Up for Fairer School Funding

Earlier this week Devon schools launched a campaign called Hands Up to Fairer School Funding to persuade government to tackle the inequalities in the funding system for schools and end the post-code lottery that affects young people, not just in Devon but all across the country.

The aims of the campaign are simple:

A fairer Government funding system that:

• recognises every child matters equally
• ends the postcode lottery of education funding in this country.

As a father of two young boys (3 and 5) who are both at the same school, (Nursery and Year 1 as of writing this) it does cause me a great deal of concern that just because we choose to live in a particular location we and i really mean my children are effectively penalized and the school they attend receives less funding then other schools around the country.

According to the campaign website key facts page – a primary school in Devon with approximately 200 pupils are effectively losing £75,000 a year due to the current school funding system.

Now i don’t know what your local school is like, but i’m very proud of the school my kids attend and i know the teachers and all the staff do an excellent job and deliver good quality if not excellent levels of Education already. So why should i really concern myself with this – because to me this just isn’t fair. Now i’m sure every parent could come up with a list of things they would like their school to do which would effectively cost more money. More teachers, more teaching assistants, smaller classes, more and or better equipment, more ICT, a laptop for every child, the list could go on and on. But the point of this is that unless we look to change the funding system, those things we would all like our schools to do or buy will only ever remain on a list of “things we like to have”.

The most important thing to remember is if you are a parent and your children are in school then this DOES impact on you and your children.

I am going to support this campaign because i feel passionately about the future of my children. If you feel the same then why don’t you get involved or pledge your support – Speak to your local school and find out what they are doing to support this, whatever you feel you can do, don’t you feel it will be worth it.

Getting my head around Digital Engagement

I have been thinking for some time now what digital engagement could actually look like, so i thought about creating an approach to firstly help me understand what i actually go on about most of the time in real practical terms, plus allow others to see how it could work and what things people would need to think about the way in terms of skills and equipment etc.

Now before i start, this is not rocket science, this isn’t revolutionary, it is one of many approaches and i have created some visuals around it to help explain this further to my colleagues.

I am starting from a point which assumes that a given organisation is already planning an “offline event” of some kind, as this tends to be my first entry point with colleagues. This approach merely adds value and potentially increases the chances of involvement, participation and most importantly feedback and opinions (well i believe it would anyway).

The following diagram illustrates (simply as it is) the steps involved and i will explain it as well just to add some additional context.

(If you click on the image it should go full size)

Now the reason i needed to create this very simple diagram is to help me explain the steps or stages and the process involved in adding value to existing events or even community events.

1: The Offline Event
This could be anything, the key challenge is to create an environment which allows people to talk and have conversations. The biggest change though is to proactively encourage social reporters to video, take photos, live blog etc about the vent itself and then publish those online either via sites like YouTube, Vimeo, twitter, Facebook, Flickr, WordPress etc.  If you are unsure what a social reporter is or does then take a look at David Wilcox’s Blog who does excellent stuff in this area.

Another key aspect to this bit is promoting discussions through the use of hash tags (e.g. #theevent), promoting the reuse of the content that had been created and encouraging people to talk, discuss and devise opinions around it in their own online networks. This may require some council staff to join new groups as individuals to listen and or feedback relevant information (based on a social contract with the group).

2: Online Communities
This isn’t about the council or a particular organisation creating new online spaces for conversations to happen, this is about allowing people to have the discussion wherever they feel comfortable.  Their own online Ning networks, or Facebook groups or local NetMums forum. It really doesn’t matter providing they can access and reuse the content from the event. Now the challenge is listening and collecting this conversations that happen across the web. There are many ways in which this can happen and i’m not going to cover the details in this post, but using RSS, google alerts, Facebook search etc can support this task.

3: Social Media Sites
Providing content via the social media tools and sites that exist will allow others to reuse it, discuss it, provide feedback on it and encourage their friends to do the same.

This approach is about adding value to existing offline activities and or events. I would recommend that once your organisation develops good practice and learning around online engagement and you build a relationship with communities online you can start to reduce offline activity or perhaps get to a point where you can stop doing it for some engagement altogether.

Why do you participate with Social Media?

I came across an interesting presentation on why people participate in social media. Do you agree with it?

I’ll share my reasons on the different tools i use.

My reason for blogging was explicit from day one, to capture my thoughts and to share my learning. If others benefit as well then great, hopefully you might contribute your thoughts as well. I recently got an iphone and the wordpress application is useful in allowing me to capture my thoughts and save as local drafts. I’ve also started to use evernote for a similar purpose online and via the iphone.

My reason for using twitter was initially to receive insights from others, but i quickly found that it allowed me to connect with people in a simple way. I still use it for information filtering and to ask broad questions. I believe your experience of twitter with vary on your network. I tend to keep twitter stuff to work related stuff as very few of my “out of work friends” are on twitter.

I use facebook because it allows me to connect with friends and colleagues. I changed my approach to Facebook as soon as i started to connect to people at work and those i work with, i stopped posting nonsense (well others may take a different view ) ). I do still tend to use it for more casual life events and for posting photos etc.

I use Linked-in simply as a more formal version of Facebook, with a particular focus on building work related networks and connections.

I use flickr to store my family photos, i upgraded to a pro account and find it an excellent way to store and filter my photos. It also allows me to share among friends and family.

All of the above can be used via the iPhone which means that i can continually participate with these networks regardless of where i am and for me that adds to the value of the network.

I don’t see any problem connecting with people on any of the networks or tools above providing that it fits with my purpose for using that tool.

Here is the presentation, why do you use social media? What do you use?