GUEST POST: Live tweeting to tell a human frontline story
Posted: May 22, 2012 Filed under: local government, Public Relations, social media, twitter | Tags: @whocareswalsall, becky robinson, care, carers, community, frontline, live tweet, local government, social care, social media, tina faulkner, twitter, walsall, Walsall Council 4 Comments »Sometimes a press release just isn’t enough to tell a story. Living day-to-day as a carer can be tough. To give a flavour of just how tough Walsall Council comms team members Tina Faulkner and Becky Robinson live tweeted four hours to show – with sensitivity – how dementia affects the life of one couple Sheila and Ron. You can follow it here and you can also read their story here. But this one powerful story is just part of a wider drive to highlight often unseen work carried out in social care in Walsall. Tina explains the background to the innovative campaign which uses a mix of old and new media:
If I could wear a t-shirt that best describes how I feel about work right now it would bear the slogan “I heart Social Care”.
Sheila and Ron Haynes. Sheila gives round-the-clock care to husband Ron.
I can see some of you now, exchanging a knowing look with your laptop or iphone and thinking, “Yep, she’s a social worker.”
Not a bit of it. In fact I’d be a rubbish social worker. I’d just want to scoop everybody up and take them home with me and we just haven’t got the room. Plus the retired greyhound would have something to say about that. He’s very set in his ways.
No, I heart social care as a press and pr officer who is working to try and dispel some of the myths about this area of work and highlight some of the innovative things that are going on. The things that are making a real difference to people’s lives and should be shouted about.
I have been working with my colleague Becky Robinson, a public information officer, to run week-long multi-media “events” called Who Cares? (see what we did there!) to show a side to social care that’s not picked up on.
The first one we did was last November and we featured the story of a paraplegic man who left residential care after 27 years to live independently, with support.
We Tweeted the calls coming into our social work teams which ranged from adult safeguarding tip-offs to families and carers wondering how to make life easier for loved ones leaving hospital.
We also showcased the stuff done by the community social work scheme which can sometimes be a simple as helping someone find a friendship club in their community to get them out of the house a few times a week.
And our Neighbourhood Community Officers got a look-in too as they go into some seemingly hopeless situations and bring about a sea change.
All in all it was a great week and we know it made some people sit up and take notice.
So it seemed only right to do it all again. And make some more people sit up and take notice.
This time round we’re tweeting from the home of a lady who cares for her husband with dementia to try and convey the relentless demands and challenges that this role brings and to try and make us all a bit more aware of dementia and mental health issues.
We’re tweeting from a carers’ consultation session too and featuring the partnership work being done in our communities to offer people of all ages, something to do and somewhere to go.
And we’re looking at people with learning and physical disabilities who were sent out of the borough for care many years ago, away from their families and communities, who are being supported to come back.
If we can achieve this in social care with all of its perceived “barriers” we can achieve it anywhere.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned from all this it’s “Don’t assume people won’t want to speak about their experiences.”
In our experience they have no problem with speaking up – it’s getting people to listen that’s the key.
You can follow the tweets from @whocareswalsall on Twitter or via this link on CoveritLive:
Links:
A social care blog: The Who Cares Walsall blog
A tweeting social worker: @ermintrude2
Shirley Ayres: Why social media is important to social care: challenges and opportunities by Shirley Ayres
The Guardian: Walsall uses Twitter to ask who cares about social care
The Guardian: Social care and social media live discussion round-up
Community Care: Time for social work to embrace social media
Creative commons credit:
Flowers: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alijava/6210239598/sizes/l/in/photostream/
SOCIAL SOUND: Can We Use Audioboo In Local Government?
Posted: February 27, 2012 Filed under: communications, government, local government, Public Relations, social media | Tags: audioboo, comms, local government, PR, Public Relations, recording, social media, sound, soundcloud, Walsall Council 8 Comments »
Okay, so here’s an idea. You record a quick interview or a snippet of a festival and then you post it online.
Nothing revolutionary and I’m sure people have been doing it for years but for a few weeks I’ve been experimenting with Audioboo.
What’s Audioboo? It’s a way of posting online short recording clips of interviews, sounds, noise or perhaps even with permission live music.
You can download it for free through the app store or via the Android market and all you need is a smartphone or an iphone.
There are other platforms out there and SoundCloud has its followers too.
The dabbling I’ve done is centred around photocalls I’ve attended where some parties have been gathered together. With them all in one place it’s made sense to whip out the phone and make a quick recording. In less than five minutes you can have something posted to the web.
At a cold photocall with a few minutes to spare I made an Audioboo, posted it to the Walsall Council Facebook and Twitter and by the time it took to get back to the office there was an email: “One of the neighbours has listened to your recording and thinks this is a great project.” Beginners luck maybe, but it did get me thinking.
For some time I’ve been thinking about how to generate content for different places. This is another string to the bow of the comms person.
Intro to Audioboo from Mark Rock on Vimeo.
Why bother? Here’s NINE good reasons
- Because it’s a good way to post a recording straight onto the web.
- Because you’re offering different content on a different platform.
- Because it’s free.
- Because you don’t have to be a BBC-trained sound engineer to use it.
- Because you can record snippets from frontline staff and events.
- Because it’s simple.
- Because you can post it to Twitter, Facebook and embed on a website very easily.
- Because you can listen as a podcast.
- Because it makes your content more accessible to the visually impaired.
How do I do it?
Go to Audioboo and create an account.
Press record.
When you are happy post it to the web.
Add metadata (that’s things like the words ‘Walsall’, ‘regeneration’, ‘new homes bonus’, ‘housing’ if it’s a New Homes Bonus scheme done by the regeneration directorate in Walsall.)
It’s that simple.
How about some examples?
Here’s a Norfolk County Council social worker talking about why he does his job..
http://abfiles.s3.amazonaws.com/swf/fullsize_player.swf
Here’s Devon and Cornwall Police on setting the budget.
http://abfiles.s3.amazonaws.com/swf/fullsize_player.swf
Here’s a former postman recalling the Swansea docks posted by Swansea Council
http://abfiles.s3.amazonaws.com/swf/fullsize_player.swf
Here’s Walsall Town Centre Champions talking about plans to bid for Mary Portas cash
http://abfiles.s3.amazonaws.com/swf/fullsize_player.swf
Here’s Scottish pipers playing at the Godiva Festival posted by Coventry City Council
http://abfiles.s3.amazonaws.com/swf/fullsize_player.swf
So what’s next?
I’m sure there’s more possibilities but here’s three that struck me:
1. Broadcast journalist content. Nick Booth from Podnosh many years back spoke of creating clips along with a press release that could be downloaded by broadcast journalists. That’s a step in that direction.
2. Adding Audioboo links to press releases when they’re e-mailed out. Add a straight forward link.
3. Embedding Audioboo links to news stories or web pages. As a way to brighten up web content.
PHOTO SHOP: How Flickr made a difference to an empty shop
Posted: October 18, 2011 Filed under: flickr, local government, social media | Tags: community engagement, digital, flickr, group, jon burnett, lee jordan, local government, walsall, Walsall Council 10 Comments »
Sometimes good things come to those who wait.
Worth waiting for has been an informal project between the Walsall Flickr group and Walsall Council.
Faced with an empty Tesco supermarket in the centre of town a debate was started on how to fill it.
A chance comment from a Flickr member Lee Jordan made some time ago came to the fore. He is @reelgonekid on Twitter.
Wouldn’t it be great, he said, some time before if shots of Walsall taken and posted to Flickr were displayed in an empty shop window?
Wouldn’t that be better than having an empty shop?
So, that’s just what we did.
Walsall Council’s regeneration town centre team have Jon Burnett working to improvce the town centre. He came up with the funding and picked up the ball. The landlord was agreeable. Jon helps run @walsalltown on Twitter, by the way.
I helped Jon ask the wider Walsall Flickr group if they’d like to take part and were pleasantly surprised at the response. You can see the original conversation thread here.
More than half a dozen members submitted more than 30 shots and our print and design team who then pulled together a design with some town centre information.
We added a picture credit and a link back to the photographer’s Flickr stream. That was important.
There’s plans to redevelop the site and Primark and The Co-Operative are lined up to move in some months down the track.
When that happens the vinyl images will be taken down. But until then bright, creative people of Walsall have a chance to celebrate their work and their town.
According to a Local Data Company report there are more than 28,000 empty shops. That’s about 14 per cent of all the 202,000 shops in England, Scotland and Wales.
This isn’t an answer to all any town centre’s problems. It’s just a good thing to do to ask local people to display their work and brighten up empty shops.
LINKS
A slide show of the Walsall town centre Flickr window by Stuart Williams can be seen here.
Lee Jordan, whose inital idea it was, took a set of pics including this one.
CIVIC SOCIAL: How digital tools can help connect a Mayor
Posted: August 1, 2011 Filed under: Facebook, flickr, government, local government, Public Relations, twitter, Uncategorized | Tags: civic, council house, flickr, Flickr meet, local givernment, mayor, mayors parlour, social media, town hall, walsall, Walsall Council 2 Comments »
Mayors in Walsall go back to the 13th century. Yes, children it’s safe to say that even pre-dates Friends Reunited.
What helped spread the word then was probably a Town Crier with the useful profile of having a loud voice in the marketplace where people gathered.
Today, the landscape has changed. But a voice in the place where people gather is still important.
Since May when Cllr Garry Perry was appointed to the post he’s been successfully experimenting with digital channels. As a 33-year-old he’s the borough’s youngest ever appointment. As a Facebook native and as at home there as in the Council Chamber it made sense for him to experiment using the channel.
He’s also used Twitter and connected with the Walsall Flickr group. Jokingly, Cllr Perry has spoken about creating the Mayor’s Parlour as a location on Foursquare so he can become Mayor of that too.
But is this just a gimmick? Or have lessons been learned?
A Facebook page was created for the Mayor of Walsall. The idea was to allow the Mayor to post updates and pictures from his phone when out and about. The aim was conversational. It also helps give an idea of where the Mayor had been and the people he’d met. It’s not a dusty civic position. It’s carried out by a person. For an organisation for people.
The stats speak for themselves. More than 160 people have signed up in about six weeks. There has been more than 8,000 page views in a four week period and people have responded posting enthusiastic comments. It’s clear that successful events also draw-in enthusiasm from residents.
The events functionality also allows a good way to flag up fundraisers.
As the Mayor of Walsall Cllr Perry says: “It’s been brilliant for getting feedback from people and for connecting with them. When you’re at an event you can post that you’ve been there with a picture. There’s still a tremendous respect for the office of Mayor and it’s good to be able to meet people. Using things like Facebook, Twitter and Flickr have really helped reach a different audience.”
More than 180 people and organisations have signed-up with updates of visits and fundraising. Cllr Perry’s sporadic previous account was re-named @mayorofwalsall.
Flickr
A Flickr meet was staged where members of the excellent Walsall Flickr group came along to the Mayor’s Parlour and Council House one Saturday morning.
More than 200 shots were posted by six photographers to a specially created group to capture shots for the day. It was a chance for Walsall people to visit the 1905 building and meet the Mayor. As a visit it was a success. Those who came took some excellent pictures and Cllr Perry’s – and the Mayoress’ – easy going and informal approach saw the council giving a good account of itself. Staging a Flickr meet at a council venue is something I’ve blogged about before.
As a spin-off, and by no means the purpose of the event, the photographers were happy for the authority to re-use the posted pics for the website or for other marketing. That’s a good thing whichever way you look at it. You can see the pictures here.
Press releases
Yes, we’ll do the traditional things too for old media too. That’s part of the repertoire.
Lessons to learn
1. It can put a human face on an organisation. As Pc Rich Stanley does for West Midlands Police in Walsall so Cllr Perry does for Walsall Council. They use social media to put a human face on the organisation that can sometimes be seen as remote.
2. It depends on the individual. A social mayor who is at home with the channels or willing to learn will prosper. A remote character with few social graces and mistrust of technology won’t.
3. Little and often works. Updates on the routine day-to-day tasks work really well. Don’t think you need to crack the front page of the local paper with every update.
4. It works best if the Mayor writes it. A voice can be unique and despite being a fairly politically neutral post it’s not for council officers to update on people’s behalf.
5. Be prepared to JFDI. Not everything with social media has a 100-year-old record to it. That’s a given. So just try things out.
Pic credit: Swissrolli (c) http://www.flickr.com/photos/swissrolli/5989959370/in/photostream
SOCIAL TOWN: Using social media to tell a town centre’s story
Posted: May 17, 2011 Filed under: local government, social media | Tags: council, Facebook, flickr, Foursquare, geocaching, market, police, social media, town centre, twitter, walsall, walsall 100, walsall 24, Walsall Council, walsall police, West Midlands 12 Comments »
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.
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/
SOCIAL NEWTWORKING: A case study on how to use social media to promote countryside
Posted: April 13, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: @countrysidekev, @hotelalpha9, countryside, Facebook, flickr, local government, morgan bowers, social media, twitter, walsall, Walsall Council, walsallwildlife 1 Comment »
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:
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.
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.
ICE INNOVATION: Ten case studies and ideas to innovate in the winter
Posted: October 26, 2010 Filed under: open data, social media, Uncategorized | Tags: big society, email, Facebook, geo-tagging, grit, gritting, ice, local government, Mappa Mercia, maps, open data, QR codes, SMS, snow, socitm, Text, twitter, Walsall Council, web 2.0, web 3.0, winter, winter service plan 7 Comments »
Oh, the weather outside is frightful but the idea of doing cool things is always delightful.
Last year, the idea of tweeting when your gritters was going out was revolutionary.
Around half a dozen councils were leftfield enough to do it and the idea spread.
Public sector web standards organisation SOCITM picked up on it making it mainstream with their report for subscribers.
Is that enough?
Can we stand still now?
The fact is local government needs to innovate like never before.
Someone famous once said when you innovate, you’ve got to be prepared for everyone telling you you’re nuts.
So, where’s the innovation this year? Here’s some ideas and pointers on how straight forward they are…
1. MAP YOUR GRIT ROUTES
In the West Midlands, there’s some amazing innovation from mapping geeks.
Bright people from Mappa Mercia including the excellent Andy Mabbett last year built a grit map on Open Street Map to show grit routes in Birmingham. They dug out the routes from pdfs on the council website.
Now, they’re adding Solihull and Walsall too ready for the winter onslaught.
Birmingham City Council have linked to it from their transport pages and we at Walsall Council are tweeting it when the weather gets bad.
That’s a good example of working with a talented and community-minded online community.
Advantage: Community engagement.
Disadvantage: You need mapping geeks to be grit geeks too.
2. TWITTER GRITTER
Everytime you go out you tweet the fact. If you’re not doing it you should. It’s not enough to provide a service at 2am. You need to tell people. Why? Because they won’t 
know your council tax is being spent in such a way and they may well ring your harrassed staff at a time when they are thinly stretched.
It’s something I blogged about last year with a case study mapping more than 70 tweets.
Advantage: Community engagement. Cuts down unneccesary contact.
Disadvantage: You’ll need some kind of rota or it’ll all fall on one person’s shoulders.
3. YOUTUBE
A short clip to explain what the gritting service is all about. Shot on a Flip video It’s a good way of communicating what is being done.
Embedding the video in the service’s pages should be straight forward. Linking to YouTube and posting via Twitter and Facebook is easy. Tweet the link when you’re 
team are hitting the road
Advantage: Creates blog-friendly web 2.0 video content.
Disadvantage: You need a Flip video. The process isn’t instant.
4. MAP GRIT BIN LOCATIONS
Publish grit routes as open data? Why not.
But beware the perils of derived data that quicksand argument that means anything based on Ordnance Survey is mired in dispute.
Advantage: Publishing open data increases transparency
Disadvantages: It can’t be based on OS maps.
5 FACEBOOK
As local government Facebook sites mature and grow there’s more reason to post grit updates there too.
Drawbacks? Not all phones will allow you to post to fan pages and you may have to log on at a PC or a laptop.
Advantage: You reach the massive Facebook demographic.
Disadvantage: Your Facebook fanpage is harder to update than a profile.
6. LIVE TWEET
A trip around the borough in a gritter with a camera phone geo-tagging your tweets. It works as a one off and builds a direct connection.
At Walsall, we tweeted the testing of the gritters in a dry-run for winter including geotagged shots from the cab itself as it trundled around the streets.
Advantage: A service from a different perspective.
Disadvantage: Labour and time intensive.
7. TEXT AND EMAIL ALERTS
Sometimes we can be so struck by new gadgets that we can forget the platforms your Dad and mother-in-law have.
Simply speaking, there are more mobile phones in the UK than people.
Many councils are charged around 8p a text to issue an SMS. That’s a cost that has to be picked up from somewhere. But using the standard costs per enquiry of around £7 face-to-face and £5 over the phone the 8p charge starts to look viable.
Advantage: You can reach large numbers of people and cut down potentially on unavoidable contact.
Disadvantage: It costs.
8. BIG SOCIETY TWITTER GRITTER
Not every council has the resources to tweet its gritting. In Cumbria, the community of Alsthom high in the dales regularly gets cut off in the snow. Fed-up with the council response the town clubbed together to buy their own gritter.
Community and digital innovator John Popham floated the interesting idea of the community stepping in to tweet gritting activity. In effect, a Big Society Twitter Gritter It’s a fascinating idea, would share the burden and may fill the gap where a council doesn’t have the digital skills or the staff.
Advantage: If there are residents willing it’s a good partnership potentially.
Disadvantage: It’s dependent on volunteer power.
9. QR CODES
What are they? Funny square things that your mobile phone can identify and can download some information about. I don’t pretend to fully understand them and I’m not sure if they’ve reached a tipping point in society just yet. However, Sarah Lay of Derbyshire County Council is looking at adding QR codes to grit bins to allow people to report problems. It’s a fascinating idea that needs looking at.
Advantages: Tech-savvy citizens can use them to pinpoint problems.
Disadvantages: A format that is still finding traction amongst the rest of the population.
10. OPEN DATA
What can you publish as open data? Wrack your brains and consult the winter service plan. There’s grit routes themselves. There’s the amount of grit stockpiled. There’s the amount of grit spread day-by-day.
Advantage: Open data is good for transparency.
Disadvantages: Day-by-day updating could be tricky as engineers are snowed under. If you’ll forgive the pun.
Links:
Creative commons:
Walsall grit pile Dan Slee http://www.flickr.com/photos/danieldslee/5087392858/
Four Seasons bridge http://www.flickr.com/photos/fourseasonsgarden/2340923499/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Twitter gritter Dan Slee http://www.flickr.com/photos/danieldslee/5115786276/
Road m4tik http://www.flickr.com/photos/m4tik/4259599913/sizes/o/in/photostream/
BIG PICTURE: Case study: How Flickr can work on a local government website
Posted: August 24, 2010 Filed under: flickr, government, local government, social media | Tags: community, flickr, Flickr meet, local government, photography, pictures, public sector website, user generated content, Walsall Council, website, websites 13 Comments »
Good pictures leap from a page to celebrate, amaze and tantilise.
Poor pictures shout loudly. But not in a way you’d like.
One source of good pictures is the website Flickr which has more than four billion images. It’s something I’ve blogged about before.
What’s on there? Think about any subject and there will be pictures. A whole heap of them. And Flickr groups too. It’s the civilised corner of the web where people are constructive and are happy to licence their images through a Creative Commons licence.
Residents have self-organised and are daily taking an avalanche of brilliant pictures.
It can be a community around a love of countryside. Or of cats. Or a geographical community brought together by an area.
In Walsall, a borough of 250,000 near Birmingham in the UK that’s expecially the case. There are more than 100 members, 5,000 images and a vibrant Flickr group.
People like Steph Jennings, Lee Jordan, Stuart Williams, Beasty, Tony M, Nathan Johnstone and others do brilliant things.
At Walsall Council, we looked at their shots we wondered aloud how good it would be to showcase their shots on the council website. After all, people taking pictures of the place they live and seeing them showcased on their council’s website HAS to be a good idea.
Our head of communications Darren Caveney and web manager Kevin Dwyer picked the ball up and ran with it.
As part of a web refresh, Kev designed a Flickr friendly header that woud apply across all pages.
Next the pictures. A comment was posted on the Walsall Flickr pages to flag up what we were looking to do. We asked people to add the tag ‘walsallweb’ to each individual picture if they wanted the shot to be considered.
We were staggered to get more than 400 shots tagged for consideration in three days. An amazing response that showed the community support.
The postbox shape of the header ruled out scores of images. We also steered clear of people shots because of any problems with permissions.
The first shot was a canalside image. By linking back from the council site to the original Flickr image we embraced the web 2.0 approach of sharing.
The image got more than 150 hits in just over two weeks.
This is the revamped Walsall Council website that celebrates our residents’ work.
SIXTEEN THINGS WE LEARNED…
1. Ask permission. Photographic copyright by default lies with the photographer. Even if there is a creative commons licence available I’d still ask. Just to be on the safeside.
2. Ask permission to name and link back to the original picture too. For some people photography is a hobby they don’t want publicity for.
3. Rotate images. Try and use pictures from around the borough. Not just the photogenic park.
4. Rotate photographers. Share the love around.
5. Use freelance pictures too. But ask permission. The licence you may have originally negotiated may only be for print use, for example.
6. Be seasonal. A cornfield in summer sun looks great in August. It may not be so at Christmas.
7. Change the shot regularly. Two or three weeks is enough to freshen up the site.
8. Stage a competition to encourage participation. Post a topic.
9. Use Flickr images across the site. A cracking shot of a park would work well on the park pages, for example.
10. Be aware of your policies towards people. Do you need to get permission forms signed in order to use the image for publicity.
11. Join Flickr. Contributing to the Flickr community is a good way to build bridges and understand how it works.
12. Acknowledge using a shot via a comment under the picture from the council Flickr account. Comments are a social part of Flickr and a way to give praise.
13. Create a gallery. A page on the council website to gather the header screenshots.
14. Stage a Flickr meet. Generate content and allow residents to take shots of their landmarks and building.
15. Showcase your area. It’s a chance to really show off.
16. Skill up. Make sure there is the skills base for several team members to add content.
LINKS:
bccdiy.com - A website for Birmingham put together by bloggers that uses Flickr images brilliantly.
Lichfield District Council – Some lovely shots of the Staffordshire city of Lichfield using Flickr.
San Fransisco’s District Attorney’s Office – Great blog on how a US office is now using photo sharing.
LGEO Research - Good blog by Liz Azyan on how Lichfield used user generated content.
Coventry – How Coventry City Council use Facebook to showcase official images.
