Towards a Social Media Strategy

Following on from the development of our broad social media and online participation policy -  this was essentially about staff accessing sites through the corporate network and the rules associated with that access. We now need to develop the next layer. How do we use if for our services and how we do manage the many and potentially far reaching profiles that could exist if left un-managed and un-coordinated

So i am now working on pulling together a broad framework (Social Media Strategy) to allow council services to enter this space in a way which helps with managing our online reputation, increases our communication and marketing, develops our customer service and adds value to our participation and engagement work.

The strategy so far (in my head at least) is looking like this!

Social Media Strategy

• Using Social Media
  • This would include the 1 rule and six steps to embracing social media in local government post i wrote as well as include some additional stuff like:
    • be clear about your goals and objectives (these can be different for different tools) this is not the purpose of the framework, metrics should be specific to the service area.
    • develop a set of measures and metrics to monitor success or failure
    • be honest, accountable and professional.
    • Think conversational
• Business Opportunities and Drivers
  • officer champion – chief executive
  • managing online reputation
  • communication and marketing – also includes emergency communications
  • engagement and participation – also includes consultation and feedback
    • hear by right
    • real people real power
  • customer service
• Awareness, training and development
  • internal social networks
  • staff and member awareness
  • online facilitation – building on internal social network engagement
  • using new tools – multimedia, editing, video, writing for the web etc
  • access to equipment
  • risk assessment
  • social media forum – sharing and developing internal best practice
• Policy and guidance
  • social media and online participation policy and supplementary guidance
  • risk assessment (young people and youth participation)
    • youth participation work via Katie Bacon’s blog on Youth Participation and Engagement
  • co-ordination and management of online presence
• Which social media tools
  I see this section as something which evolves over time as best practice emerges and is shared across the internet.
  • accessing the landscape
    • statistics and understanding your audience reach (e.g. Facebook stats for Devon and Humanizing Social Networks by Brian Solis at PR2.0)
  • examples of product based approaches / strategies
    • Why local authorities should use Facebook – expanding on a presentation by Dave Briggs
    • (Template Twitter Strategy by Neil Williams at MissionCreep

The question i keep asking myself is “am i missing anything obvious?”

I will share a draft version when i have one available. I don’t intend on creating something which is pages and pages think, i want to create something which gives context, overview and purpose to people’s plans to using social media.

The ‘hidden’ value of Local Government websites

An excellent post by Peter Barton, Head of Lincolnshire’s Web and Information Services Team (WAIST) over at the Waistline Blog on the value of Corporate Web Sites.

Now i’m not directly involved in our website anymore (only from a strategy perspective) but the issues and the points that Peter highlights are hitting the nail so perfectly on the head that i just hope that this kind of approach could be adopted in the next Socitm Better Connected Survey.

I suspect and i can’t talk for Peter but it may well have been triggered by webthrift site which is trying to surface the true cost of council websites – Peter writes:

It’s not just about cost per user. It’s about value to the user and savings to the council.

What i think is great about the post is that it demonstrates to me how the council website has become such a business critical tool over the last few years that i don’t think we have really appreciated the value it delivers into the organisation or even delivers for the customers.  BUT if it no longer existed then we would certainly see huge increases in contact in the other channels and that would naturally increase the pressure on front line and back office staff to meet those requests.

I say ‘hidden’ value only because the stats that Peter quotes are exactly the same kind of stats that we and i suspect most councils identified back in 2004/2005 when eGovernment was at its peak. This is exactly what we were aiming for – so did we ever celebrate our success – NOPE!!

So what happened? Why have we got in a position where we are questioning the value of council websites. Well i suspect it is because the web has moved on considerably and even more so our customers/residents.

The way information is created and shared and validated has changed. BUT the information is still so perfectly valid. If councils are getting the same or proportionately the same costs then we can happily say YES council websites do offer huge value. BUT we have a different path to take now, the services that were once on our sites accessed by a specific type of person can now be accessed by anyone anywhere because we have a new approach -  an open data and web services approach.

I quote some of the information from Peter’s post as an example of the simplicity of presenting the information in this way:

NB: The following information is quoted directly from the Waistline blog and the statistics relate to Lincolnshire County Council only.

• No booking library books on line. – Around 4844 a month books are booked on line ( May 2009 figures) This figure is about a third of the volume of all bookings.
  If this service were not available we would incur an extra cost of around £15,000 to £30,000 per month and a reduction in service quality due to increased phone or face to face activity.
• We would not be able to provide access to pdf downloads currently running at some 44,000 per month (May 2009 figures).
  Imagine if we had to send only a small part (say around 10%) of that number by post at around £3.00 – £5.00 each in postage and staff time. We would incur £12,000 to £15,000 per month extra cost. And a reduction in service quality.
  
• No applying on line for jobs ( this is the largest single used area of most local government sites).
  In June 2009 473 job applications were made on line. At an average cost of applying by paper and post, which must be running at approximately £10.00 per application. This would mean an extra cost of around £5,000 per month and a reduction in service quality if this service were to be removed.

I would recommend to any web manager who reads this to do the same as Peter has and create a “what if” scenario and try and cost it? This will provide excellent evidence for a web strategy and development plan as well as surface the importance of the channel as a key service delivery tool and as a foundation or a platform for wider web service deployment.

This does mean that we need to rethink our approach to council web service delivery. But we can also acknowledge that we can do that in the context of huge cost saving and benefit to the organisation and our residents.

Enterprise Social Software in the Public Sector

Since we started our internal social networking pilot earlier this year i have been asked three main questions:

1. Why are you using Enterprise Social Software in Local Government
2. What value does it offer your organisation?
3. Where next?

I have posted on this before, albeit briefly and based around a presentation i did at LocalGovCamp in Birmingham but i didn’t really go into too much detail at the time.

Let me take this three questions one at a time to help provide some context and my thinking as to why, what and where i see this type of functionality benefiting local government and potentially the wider public sector.

Why?

Okay, for me, social media and social networking is already and will become even more pervasive in the lives of the public and this will impact and influence how public services are delivered, developed and used.

With the increasingly use of mobile applications linked with the social connectedness of these tools, people are becoming more and more aware of what is around them, who is around them and how they can access information and services around them. Local today means much more than it did when even i was a little boy back in the early 80’s.

However with all this usage in people’s daily lives it isn’t often we use such tools in a professional capacity as an employee of an organisation, granted many people participate in environments like Communities of Practice, but these situations are not the mainstream approach. What people do use practically everyday is email and that is something which for most still lacks a professional approach by most. But i guess that depends on why you are using it.

For me however piloting the use of social networking enables people in an organisation to experience what most people only experience in sites like facebook in a professional environment. It will in my opinion help people (staff) grasp the concept of engaging people in online environments far easier than trying to explain and demonstrate how it can be done in more mainstream sites like facebook.

What is the value?

There are huge pressures on the public sector to engage with people and to involve people in the design and development of services. Without using new technologies in innovative ways we will never be in a position to truly engage people and more importantly enough people in that process to demonstrate appropriate engagement.

The lessons learned from using such tools internally will enable us to better understand the challenges faced with external engagement and online participation.

If organisations can learn how to effective engage with people online in internal environments we will all appreciate the benefits and pitfalls in managing such an approach.

In our pilot we have experienced a number of challenges as well as opening up new opportunities just by using the software first hand. Now i have used facebook for sometime now and it would have been hard for to have seen the kind of opportunities available without putting myself in that professional context of an internal social networking environment. Some examples of some of the potential uses of an internal social software platform.

• Staff directory – people finder, by subject, skill, interest etc
• Workforce data – qualifications and skills gaps
• Internal project management
• Alternative to email (refocuses email on more formal internal communications and allows conversations to be surfaced and searched – supports Freedom of Information)
• Internal helpdesk (ICT, HR etc – enables staff to self support and generates and more effective user community)
• Ideas development
• Collaboration with colleagues and partners
• Keeping staff informed (enables managers to keep up to date with what there staff are doing in remote or home based team environments
• Reduces the need for face to face contact and when required adds value to face to face contact/meetings
• elearning and peer to peer support
• Plus many more…..

We have identified a wide range of opportunities just by actually being able to use such a product internally and without fear of making a mistake in the public domain.

There are of course still people who are sceptical of such tools but the purpose of such as pilot is two fold. One is to demonstrate some of the benefits identified early on and secondly to allow people to experience a tool first hand.

Where next?

The biggest question really, where next, well in my opinion bringing these types of tools into an organisation especially local government will provide a number of strategic benefits and the challenge is whether or not we are prepared to take that leap and do it.

Traditionally and my council is no different, the age profile of the organisation is top heavy, by that i mean we have a large proportion of people expected to retire without having enough younger people coming in.  The reality is that younger people are already expecting to communicate in new innovative ways and if we don’t provide them with the types of communications tools that they expect we will face a challenge to keep these people engaged and motivated in the workforce.

We also have huge pressures as mentioned before to engage with people, i believe internal social networks can provide an effective “learning” environment for external online engagement and participation.

New roles around online community managers, which is a blend of project management and facilitation to some degree but in an online context, something which is completely new and requires new skills.

I think the immediate next step is to increase people’s access to and usage of these tools to enable people locally to understand how these tools can be used and how they can be deployed as part of their wider service delivery framework.

Ideally i’d love to continue the internal learning and enable the organisation to foster a new culture of learning and ideas as well as complimenting existing communications channels.

I previously posted this video but it makes more sense to post it in this post then it did in the last one. It is an interview of myself and Rob Gray (Blue Ocean IQ) by David Wilcox at LocalGovCamp talking about the pilot we have done here in Devon.

Facebook In Devon – Statistics

Whilst raising awareness of social networking and the possibilities that it offers local government, something which i am always asked is “So how many people are we really talking about then?”

Well i thought i would find out, so I used the facebook “advertising” option and this is the results based on facebook’s Estimates.

All the following statistics are based on these search criteria:

who live in the United Kingdom
who live within 25 miles of Exeter, Barnstaple, Torquay, Newton Abbot, Tiverton or Plymouth
Age range

• Under 25 – 66,560 people
• 26- 40 – 56,380 people
• 41 – 55 – 23,300 people
• 56 plus – 5,240 people
• Men – 73,780 people
• Women – 79,180 people

What I find interesting about these statistics is that for most groups we are talking about the size of a small/medium town, so it would seem to add value to the argument that we really need to listen and communicate/engage these people somehow to find out what we can do to improve services locally for them.

The bigger question though for me and i’m not 100% sure of the answer although i’d guess at No is:

• Are these people likely to be engaged already in Shaping Local Services?

Now facebook isn’t the only tool, but it does provide a good example of the level of people locally who you could reach, and who are likely to have not been reached before. Surely that can only be good for local democracy and service improvement.

1 rule and 6 steps to embracing Social Media in Local Government

I thought it would be useful to share my thoughts about how local government can start to embrace Social Media.

Rule Number One:

Don’t focus on the technology, technology itself doesn’t do anything, their is a saying that we use in my council “there is no such thing as an IT project, their are only business projects”. The key message here is YOU need to focus on business problems and issues and if social media tools are part of the solution then great. But don’t force social media where it isn’t needed or wanted. To put it another way, try using a social media tool that offers you no value for me something like friendfeed is that tool, i don’t get it or understand it, so i don’t use it, at this point in time it doesn’t solve any problem i have.

Step One: Listen:

A simple but yet fundamental concept in social media terms and one which is often overlooked, but in my opinion should be the first thing on any ones list of social media steps.

There are many tools you can use for this, Twitter, Google Alerts, RSS etc, find one that fits your need and use it and start listening to the conversations that are happening about your organisation right now.

Step Two: Identify:

In my opinion why try to reinvent communities online that already exist. One of the benefits of listening is that you can start to identify communities which exist that are related or talking about your organisation.

It is important to try and ascertain what the group or communities purpose is and why your role might be, if any at all..The main benefit is that you have now identified a new or multiple communities of interest.

Step Three: Participate:

Starting to participate to one step that requires some thought and should not be approached without have a clear purpose as to why you would want to participate in a community. What value will you add and or will your approach just be to understand how you can develop a relationship with the new community.

Step Four: Empower:

This is something that local government needs to understand and appreciate that this requires letting go, relinquishing control to communities to create or co-create content with you as an organisation. It is also about allowing staff across organisations to manage the relationships with the communities they link with. After all they understand what the issues are and how the organisation might be able to help solve those problems

Step Five: Engage:

It my view this is the the step most people focus on and this is the step that disengages people in the organisation as it is scary. This requires real thought and a clear focus on what you want to achieve and how the online approach will fit into the existing channels of engagement. Again look at Rule One – focus on the problem and understand what people need to do, then you’ll understand locally how these tools can support your approach.

Step Six: Nurture:

This is less about social media and more about culture and leadership, but is in my opinion the most important step.  As local authorities we need to be able support, encourage, recognise and acknowledge that communities will come together on their own, but we can do more to support this. We can nurture communities to use tools (resources of all kinds) to support the development of their own relationships and we can provide recognition that these communities are valued and acknowledged in our business planning processes.

We want to avoid online town councils and nurture online community cafe’s where people discuss local issues.

We need to be able to allow our communities to gain a true sense of ownership, after all they pay for us.