Facilitating a Social Media Strategy

Updated: included wordle graphic

I’ve had quite a number of conversations  about social media strategy at the council recently,  as well as with a number of people via twitter and other networks.

So I thought I’d share my thinking on this and also share the strategy (co-developed by Martin Howitt) which I use to help others as well as a framework to developing a Social Media Action/Implementation Plan.

This is intended to be a reusable framework and strategy – as the detail and local variations will come in your own action plan.

To put this into context the council has already made significant progress around Social Media – In January 2010 the Council introduced a Social Media Policy and Guidelines which states:

Devon County Council is committed to making the best use of all available technology and innovation to improve the way we do business. This includes using all reasonable and cost-effective means to improve the way we communicate, reach out and interact with the different communities we serve.

It includes guidance around personal and professional responsibilities, using social media in different scenarios and key things to consider.

We don’t yet have a formal Social Media Strategy (yet), but the following is what I am personally using and promoting internally as a method and approach to adopting social media within our business operations.

The Strategy:
We will maximise the positive impact of our use of social media in support of the councils business aims and social objectives.

Principles:

1. The use of social media, like anything else the organisation does, must be informed by business strategy and social objectives.
2. Social technology does nothing on its own. To create value from social media, it is people and processes that must change.
3. Becoming a truly social organisation will yield benefits in terms of sustainability, responsiveness, reputation, lower operating costs, and higher social impact.
4. Social media can in theory pervade every part of the organisation’s value chain. But it should only do so if there are defined and (where possible) measurable positive business impacts.
5. There is no such thing as a social media project: there are only business projects that utilise social media tools to some extent to achieve their objectives.
6. A social media capability must therefore be built or adopted specifically to serve the objectives and current projects of the organisation.

Tactics:

1. Identify which organisational processes / service areas which might use social software or social media tools
2. For each process / service area – state the key objectives and outcomes
3. List the available tools and their best-value use cases
4. For each process/service area identified in (1), identify the most useful tools from (3) and map the potential benefits to objectives/outcomes in (2)
5. Consolidate the list in (4) by channel and/or by organisational role.
6. For each role identified in (5), evaluate the cost, benefits, and risks
7. Create a prioritised portfolio of projects, expected benefits, and Key Performance Indicators based on the outputs of (6)

I appreciate that this may sound easier than it actually is, but to be honest if it were that easy everyone would be doing it and no one would have trouble justifying its use. If you can build this approach into the service business planning cycle you (as facilitator) and the service area will yield higher results in terms of potential Social Media projects supporting and delivering business outcomes – that is the theory anyway 🙂

As a starting point I’d recommend that you look at your own service area as well as highlighting or at least acknowledging other “high value” organisational processes which could benefit from this exercise, so that you can get familiar with the process and the level of understanding you will need around some of the tools and best value use cases.

It is worth trying to separate the cross cutting processes from the actual service areas for example “community engagement” might be a service area in your organisation as well as it being a cross cutting activity. In my opinion you are likely to identify a better value proposition looking at the cross cutting process of community engagement then the service itself.

In my Council a sample list might look something like this:

Process / Activity Areas

• Community Engagement
• Customer Service
• Staff Engagement
• Community Consultations
• Staff Consultations
• Personal and Self Directed Learning
• Knowledge Sharing
• Policy Development
• Service Planning
• Emergency Communications
• Press and PR Relations

I’ve separated the activities of engagement and consultation on purpose as different social value can be created depending on your approach.  By tackling a cross cutting process or activity you can influence and impact a greater number and range of people who can add value when you start looking at this on a service perspective.

Service Areas

• Trading Standards
• Libraries
• Road Safety
• Highways (roads and traffic)
• Waste Services
• Registration Services

The reality here is I could have included a list of nearly all services, but you really need to stay focused and work on a service by service basis sometimes.

I envisage that the best approach would be a twin track approach –  During the prioritisation process outlined in stage 7 – try selecting one activity area alongside a service area to increase the organisational learning opportunities.

Hope this is helpful –  and I wish you luck….I’d be very keen to hear your stories on how this works or doesn’t for you.

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Developing a Social Networking usage policy

I have been getting involved in discussions in my council about the legitimate use of social networking sites for business purposes, the pilot project with our Youth Service is one example of what we are trying to do around exploring the possibilities, but what this has done is raised the issue about staff access to sites during work time and whether or not staff should or should have access.

I am pleased to say that the current thinking in my authority is not to “ban” access altogether, although we did get close to doing that, but to better understand how it can be used and to also provide a policy which protects the council and all of the staff, should something go wrong as well as raise awareness of digital footprint and guidelines for online participation, very much like the one the UK civil service have got.

My personal views are very much of the opinion that we need to start thinking very seriously about how we move this forward because with the increasing take-up of free social media tools, our brand will be talked about even more and unless we understand how this happens and how we can engage we will face an increasingly up hill battle to regain reputation and positive customer feedback

I have now started working with a colleague on researching and pulling together a framework for us to start writing a policy and guidance for staff. What has been interesting is that it has close links with existing work around our current “employee code of conduct” which does not refer to any online participation or engagement activity and is written in such a classic and traditional policy way that is it very hard to read and understand.

It is also in my humble opinion and important part of developing our employer brand for staff. What has complicated this whole area is the push and drives to increase mobile and flexible working patterns and ensure that we are offering a good work/life balance for staff. What this is doing is blurring the lines even more between work and home and this is where online participation in social networking sites becomes a tricky area to manage.

This morning i spoke to Jeremy Gould from the Ministry of Justice, others may know him as “whitehallwebby” about this very subject and he signposted me to some excellent links which the BBC have published on their website. He also signposted the Digital People – Communitities in Practice Group, which also has some good stuff in there around this subject.

What i am starting to realise is that what we really need to do is focus away from the technology and look at how we can better equip our staff to make appropriate decisions in different channels of communications, participation and engagement. This is where the code of conduct comes in and links to employer brand. But this also links with work that Emma Mulqueeny has highlighted around a social media toolkit.

For now i continue the research and i will be developing my understanding further in order to ensure that my council and all the staff have a clear framework and policy which reflects a modern forward thinking council.