LINK LOVE: 16 blog posts that have inspired me in 2012
Posted: December 31, 2012 Filed under: blogging | Tags: al smith, Ann Kempster, Ben Proctor, birmingham, campaign, campaigns, Cannock Chase District Council, comms, communications, Dan Harris, digital communications, janet davis, Jim Garrow, Jo Smith, john kirriemuir wordshore, Matt Murray, new street, new street station, PC Rich Stanley, Phil Jewitt, podnosh, PR, Public Relations, steph jennings, Tom Foremski, weekly blog club, West Midlands Police 3 Comments »
Back in the day my glittering media career was launched with a review of the year in the Stafford Newsletter.
Two days I spent going through old editions of the paper in the corner of the aircraft hanger of a newsroom.
Proudly I picked up the next edition to read a double page spread with my name on. What do I recall of that? Very little. There was a nun who got charged with drink driving and the Holstein prices at Uttoxeter were especially high in March that year.
Over this past year I’ve read scores of blog posts and news pieces links. At times I’ve been stopped in my tracks by a turn of phrase, a perceptive argument or just a good piece of writing. Here are 14 from 2012 that I’ve rated particularly highly.
CAMPAIGNS ARE DEAD: Nobody has done more than Jim Garrow in 2012 to challenge my thinking. He has a skill of turning a vague idea you may have had into a compelling argument engagingly written. He also asks questions of things people take for granted. Jim does public health emergency planning in Philadelphia in the US. He’s brilliant. His blog is worth subscribing to and there’s plenty of good ones to choose. This one here on the death to the campaign is particularly good. Comms people love campaigns. It makes them feel as though they’ve changed things. No they haven’t he argues. You can read it here.
WEEKLY BLOG CLUB: If no one single blogger has done more to challenge than Jim then the Weekly Blog Club is the website has been the best collective source of writing and inspiration. The idea is simple. You blog something once a week and post it on Twitter using the #weeklyblogclub hashtag where it finds a ready audience and will be collated into aweekly round-up. Janet Davis has taken this idea, polished it, showered it with love and made it something that brightens my timeline. You can read it here.
RAILWAY INSPIRATION: Good blogs shouldn’t just be about your corner of the world. John Kirriemuir is a librarian who often writes creatively. This carefully observed piece on a fellow traveller in Birmingham New Street Station is powerful. All too often we can pass through without looking at who we’re travelling with. John does. You can read it here:
RE-SHAPING PRESS TEAMS: Ben Proctor is a digital specialist who has experience in local government and working as a consultant. His modest proposal to get rid of press offices suggests that change is inevitable and gives a few ideas on what this may look like. You can read it here.
FUTURE COMMS: The Cabinet Office’s Ann Kempster sparked a creative and much-needed debate on the future of press teams and digital teams with this cracking post which generated a cracking set of comments that show the vibrancy of debate in the public sector in 2012. You can read it here.
FACEBOOK IS DEAD: A former colleague Matt Murray is now doing great things in local government in Queensland, Australia. For a while I’d been wondering uneasily about the turn that Facebook had taken when Matt wrote a post that spelt out why it is no longer the go-to platform. You can read it here.
DIE PRESS RELEASE: This is actually from 2006 but I’d only chanced upon Tom Foremski’s Die Press Release, Die! Die! post earlier in 2012. It spells out why the traditional press release is dated and what the thing that should replace it should look like. You can read it here.
CASE STUDY: Hackney Council’s Al Smith doesn’t blog enough. This post from his time at Cannock Chase District Council shows why he should and spells out the steps he took tio help crack down on domestic violence one Christmas.It’s imaginative and effective stuff. You can read it here.
GOOD WRITING: Tom Sprints‘ post about a chance encounter in the shadow of a mountain was lovely writing. If you missed it you can read it here.
DIGITAL STATS: Emer Coleman of the Government Digital Service wrote this cracking piece on the measurement of social media and what we should be looking out for. For anyone looking to get a handle on the changing landscape it’s essential. You can read it here.
A GOOD REMINDER: Sometimes we can spend too much time online. Sometimes we can spend too much time not doing the important things. This short post from Phil Jewitt asks us to re-assess and think of those around us who matter most to us. You can read it here.
FRONTLINE BLOG: People on the frontline should be given access to social media. Comms people are often resistent. Walsall police officer PC Rich Stanley is a case study of why access should be opened-up and the sweets shared. You can read one of his posts on his day job here.
OLYMPICS GAMESMAKER: Jo Smith founded Vindicat PR in what has been a difficult year for her. She spent time as a London 2012 Gamesmaker and saw close-up how the city fell for the 
games. Volunteers like her were part of the secret. How did they manage it? Good internal comms. You can read it here.
DAN HARRIS: If London 2012 was joyous then the memory of seeing BBC News 24 carry pictures of medal triumph with the confirmation of Dan Harris‘ death on the ticker was a bitter memory. I’d met him a few times and corresponded often. His death devastated those who knew him far better. He’d agreed to write for comms2point0 a website I help with and had written this fine post a few weeks before. You can read it here.
GANG MEMBER: Digital can bring people together and can share stories. Steph Jennings of Podnosh’s account of meeting a former gang member at a social media surgery was arresting. You can read it here.
ANOTHER LONDON: Gillian Hudson of 10 Downing Street’s digital team wrote a cracking blog to capture some of the work she had been involved with over the Olympics. It spoke about comms with a human face and it was cracking. You can read it here.
GO LEARN: The Excellent Digital Engagement Guide
Posted: April 10, 2012 Filed under: communications | Tags: al smith, case studies, comms, digital, digital engagement guide, engagement, Greenfinch, guide, Helpful Technology, learning, local government, PR, Steph Gray 1 Comment »
There’s a famous quote about the value of something being doubled if it’s shared.
That’s something that runs through Helpful Technology’s excellent Digital Engagement Guide like a golden thread.
It’s basically a rather wonderful collection of practical guides, strategies and case studies that are a treasure trove of ideas. Best of all these are ideas based in battle-hardened reality.
Steph Gray, who built it, deserves immense credit for putting it together. Based in the South East, a former head of digital communications at BIS he has done a lot of good work across Central Government. For my part, I was rather honoured to add a smidge of local government content along with Al Smith of Greenfinch and a man who I rate terrifically highly.
But digital engagement? How does that affect comms people? Isn’t that a bit of a touchy-feely way of saying consultation? Frankly, as web 2.0 develops boundaries are being blurred ever more often and the strict distinction between many job titles is starting to look obsolete. Besides, if you are looking to use social media as a comms channel it just won’t work unless it’s a listening channel too. For the press officer used to firing out press releases into the ether that’s a big change. But an exciting one.
Here are five belters from the Digital Engagement Guide
Department for International Development Bloggers - This shows how many authors to a single blog can work for an organisation. With stories from around the globe this works because it is written by individuals about human problems.
The US Army Social Media Guide - Few large organisations do social media as well as the US Army. Millions follow their Marines Facebook page alone. But how do they do it? Aren’t there security risks? This link to the guide itself sets out how new channels are used successfully. If the US military can use social media why can’t your organisation?
BBC English Regions Social Media Guidelines - You can almost substitute the word ‘BBC’ with ‘local government’ and it’s a good foundation for how officers should use digital channels. This is excellent. Always post different content to Facebook than to Twitter. Don’t use txtspk. You’ll find yourself nodding like one of those dogs in the back of cars.
New York City Council’s Customer Use Policy - Much gets written on how officers should use social media. There’s not too much about how customers should use it. These public guidelines from New York are an excellent starting point.
Gangway collapse at HMS Belfast - Ben Proctor from the likeaword consultancy is brilliant at crisis comms. He’s also really good at piecing together case studies. In this one he shows how official Twitter accounts working together build a picture and fill the information vacuum that takes place when something goes wrong.
There are dozens more good examples at the Digital Engagement Guide website.
Creative commons credits:
US Army http://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/5842521308/sizes/o/in/photostream/
Go http://www.flickr.com/photos/danieldslee/6914500212/in/photostream
GETTING OUT: Why we need to get out of the Facebook page comfort zone
Posted: October 28, 2011 Filed under: communications, Facebook, government, local government, social media | Tags: al smith, Alastair Smith, bognor regis, civic engagement, communications, criticism, Facebook, julia burns, local government, newcastle city council, online, public sector, sussex police 9 Comments »
Like it or not the public sector can’t say it’s truly got social media until it’s got Facebook right.
Right now it hasn’t. All too often it’s a tumbleweed corporate page shovelling out press releases and a handful of brave people following. Often it’s nothing at all.
That’s as social as standing outside the Town Hall waiting for someone to emerge from a window with a megaphone and then disappear. Now hear this? I’d rather not, if it’s all the same.
Since Facebook is the largest social media platform and, as the presentation cliche goes, if it were a country it would be the fourth largest in the world.
But the fact is most people just don’t want to ‘like’ the institution. It can be seen as social suicide. But if you provide interesting, targeted, social timely content they may. A page for a specific library may work. And yes, you can follow the excellent Coventry City Council route an de-brand your page so the barrier is as low as possible as a session at Hyper WM in Warwick heard directly from Ali Hook.
For instant followers, a crisis really works. The Queensland Police Facebook page saw numbers rocket when flooding struck the state.
But as Ben Proctor in the same session said:
“For me the reluctance of people to “Like” your Council’s web page is a signal that they don’t have a real relationship with your Council. Broadly Facebook is what people use to manage their real life relationships. I don’t think the solution to this is to be found within the Facebook environment.”
It’s an interesting point worth reflecting on. You can read his full round-up of Hyper WM here.
Should we pack up and go home?
Absolutely not.
I’ve written about things local government can do elsewhere. But what you do on your page is actually a really small part of the Facebook landscape. You’ve got 500 residents signed up to your corporate page? Fantastic. Think of it in terms of people coming to your meetings it’s huge. But in a borough of 300,000 they not even one per cent of it’s population.
If you believe that your reputation is what people are saying about you in the local paper, on the radio or online then this is a question you’re going to have to face.
The conclusion is actually simple. You need to go out to the big wide world and start to talking to people on Facebook itself. Not on your corporate page but actually on Facebook itself. On the Facebook group that has been set up as a protest but is actually shouting into a void.
You need to get out of the comparable safety of the corporate Facebook page.
That’s a deeply profound step to take.
So, how do we go out onto the wilds of Facebook?
1. You can don a tin hat and go on with your own profile. But that opens the whole grey area of personal and work profile and whether or not last summer’s holiday snaps from Magaluf really create that professional air.
2. You can create a work profile. Or rather you can’t. Facebook’s terms and conditions don’t allow you to and you run the risk of having the profile and maybe any page it may administer taking down.
3. You can use Facebook as your page. If you’re an admin you have the option to use Facebook as your page to comment on other pages. That’s a brilliant piece of functionality that I just never knew existed until the excellent Ben Proctor pointed it out to me.
4. And be sensible. You’re really unlikely to have a cogent debate on cultural diversity on a far right website populated by trolls. But the single issue pressure group that’s shouting about an issue the council may not be aware of is crying out to be listened to. The Citizenship Foundation’s Michael Grimes’ one page blogger engagement guide for organisations is just as important here as it is for bloggers themselves.
But has anyone actually done this?
Case studies are thin on the ground. Al Smith’s blog on how he engaged with the regulars of the Cooperage pub on Facebook using his own profile is a good starting point. You can read it here.
Far less well known is an example of Sussex Police venturing onto Facebook to talk to worried residents who joined the ‘Make Our Streets Safer Again in Bognor Regis’ Facebook group. Julia Burns, a Sussex Police communications officer, presented what she learned at a Local Government Improvement and Delivery event in Coventry a while back.
You can find the slides at the Communities of Practice site here (log in required).
In a nutshell, a Facebook group was launched by disaffected residents worried about their streets with more than 2,000 joining in three days. Advice from Julia was to engage on Facebook using a frontline officer’s profile. After overcoming some trepidation, fear and nervousness an officer did just that and got a positive response. The site’s admin became engaged offline with the police and her voice, and those of her group, started to get an audience.
This very necessary step all points yet again for the need for this to be properly resourced. Maybe, that means re-calibrating what you are doing as a comms team or as an organisation.
Which is another mountain to climb altogether.
Creative commons credits
Facebook logo http://www.flickr.com/photos/laughingsquid/986548379/sizes/o/in/photostream/
