[...]7 Keep up the wonderful piece of work, I read few blog posts on this website ct[...]…

I’m aware that this is a huge generalisation and that many people, particularly those in severe poverty or with specific disabilities, have access to neither mainstream services nor internet technology. However, there is a core group of disengaged people who do have access and 2we” are failing to reach them, when it would cost us nothing to do so.

Enter Walsall council’s Twitter account, which presumably spotted “Walsall” and “council” in the tweet. They replied, fixed the paving stone and converted a whinger into an engaged resident who realised that their neighbour parking on the pavement might actually be a better target for wrath.

By these small actions councils can recruit people to work with them, not against them. Or,as one council employee once said to me “Better to have them inside the tent pissing outwards….”.

However, council’s can’t use socmed as a sticking plaster over systems that don’t work. For example, my local council’s Highways department auto-responded to an emailed pothole report from me just after Christmas and I’ve heard nothing else since. They’ve managed to push me outside the tent by not having a culture of engaging with people and communicating effectively. They’ve set up an email account – job done.

The only way to battle this is for culture change, both in front line work, strategically and politically. I wonder if Cllr Tim (from Barnsley) has any comment to make on the political approach to allowing free comment?

Meanwhile, the “whingers” need to whinge. Social media is happening anyway, so why not attempt to be part of it? If you don’t, things happen like the recent example of a council refusing to allow a parent to put a teddy on their dead child’s grave. When it got onto facebook they had to backpeddle and got a lot of bad press (like this ) So the question is – do you wait for social media to involve you or involve yourself? I know I’m preaching to the converted here – but it’s what they need think about.

I’d love to know whether this is something specific to us, or whether it’s more common – I bet it’s just us.

More bottom up, less formalised news system is required with filters to seperate the relevant to the irrelevant.

Whilst I agree with the LA’s twitter being uptodate, on a weekend not may people will access a twitter account if it is for their work as many local authority offices are shut. Though during the week it should keep you upto date on council business.

Also what you must also consider is how many people are willing to use twitter, whilst there are the digitally included using the internet not many know how to use twitter or facebook.

Twitter should remain a service for bus and rail companies to post travel updates, whilst digital / Digi TV and teletext are a medium for informing if schools are closed along with website or a telephone service.

I hope my comments make sense.

I’ll look forward to your next one.

a) a quick method of announcing things to a grateful public

and/or

b) something to ‘have a go at’ and see what happens

The problem for Councils (and, in fact, any other large organisation) is that social media doesn’t fit into the departmental model that almost all organisations adopt. They have Highways, waste management, social services etc busily delivering the service. Customer contact is generally centralised and ‘public relations’ is entirely separate.

When the time comes to “do this Twitter thing”, the natural response for a Council is to employ someone to “look after it”. But that cannot work. It’s obvious to anyone that having an FTE in charge of “writing letters” or “phoning people” would be ridiculous, but that’s exactly what they are doing for Twitter.

In the last 5 years councils have spent large sums on centralising customer contact. This has partly been for “efficiency” and partly to offer a consistent and uniform customer face. Social media threatens to tear that apart. Customers are going to demand fast, 24/7 access to the people delivering their services, without a slick and regimented call centre in the way.

Legal and PR are going to hate it. Many council workers will fear it. Some will adopt it strongly and get into difficulties for saying too much, too soon or in the wrong way. It’s only a matter of time before a stressed-out council worker tells someone to “p**s off” via Twitter. The organisation needs to prepare itself for those things and recognise that social media is a culture, not a technology.