• Should social media accounts be personal, professional or corporate?  Should they be a mixture of all three?  If they are a mix, can this distort the message?
• If people use personal accounts, is there a danger of contacts leaving with the staff or people misrepresenting the company?
• Who, in a public sector organisation, engages with twitter on an official basis?  The comms team?  The managers?  The frontline workers?
• For Twitter or facebook engagement to truly take place the conversation is important.  Can this conversation take place with a comms team, rather than a subject specialist?

However, the first comment here was from LouLouK at Blackburn & Darwen Council, just up the road from me, who pointed out that some councils have got it right.

I need to be clear that a lot of good work is going on and that, especially in these times, it can be really hard to get people motivated to try things.  Where this stuff is going on, it needs to be shared.  Maybe it is being, and I’m out the loop.  When you’ve read my post, stick to my action plan….or just skip past it and read LouLou’s comments….what they are doing there seems to be better than any action plan I can produce!

–

It’s getting cold out there.

I don’t know who reads this blog in terms of location. I’d like to think we have a readership in exotic places like Hawaii, California and Walton-on-the-Naze. Those people may well not be aware that we’re approaching winter and have snow heading our way, apparently before the end of the week. If or when the snow does come, we’ll inevitably ignore the fact that this happens every year and, in a wild panic, close the schools, shut down the shops and make worried calls about whether we should attempt the journey into work.

Last year, this joke wasn’t even as unfunny as it is now. A heavy covering all over the country left everyone frozen to the spot and local government, schools, colleges, public transport and every other public body scrambled to find the resources to cope. In the mess, everyone realised there was a lot to gain from social media in a crisis and many of the commentators had got it right in predicting this.

In the wake of snow, there was much reflection. Some great examples of the use of technology emerged, some lessons in how not to use technology were learned. Alastair Smith, then a comms man at Newcastle Council, ran a workshop about this at last years UKGOVCAMP and I followed that up with another at LocalGovCamp YH. The details were compiled in my “Told you Snow” post.

So, as the snow approaches again, it’s interesting to see more people on board than last year. Just the other day, Leeds City Council announced that they would be running a feed similar to Kirklees Councils’ “Kirklees Winter” feed (dubbed The Gritter Twitter), giving out information about the closures. It’s fantastic that more councils are looking to social media now and they are right to do so; I certainly use Twitter and Facebook more than ever in emergency situations, and we’ve seen some great examples of Twitter’s use in crisis since then.

What’s disappointing, though, is that many of the lessons have not been taken on board. Again, Twitter is being used like an RSS Reader to roll out news releases that could be on a website.

In many council approaches, the conversations element, where people can ask questions and get responses via twitter extremely quickly is missing. Isolated, cold, damp and fed up people don’t need to know details about every school closure.  They do need cheering up.  A bit of conversation, when time allows, is as valuable as those road closed details.

The strategy for incorporating information into general twitter feeds and facebook pages is missing. This is particularly worrying if an inexperienced person has to update all the social media because management can’t get in.

The social media mashup element, where tweets can be placed on a google map to chart disruption hasn’t materialised. The lessons about wider access to open / mobile working to prepare staff for working from home have, amazingly in a time of austerity, been ignored.

There were some great Twitter stories last time. Newcastle Council’s Twitter worked with Sky News while Sarah Lay got Derbyshire Council working with volunteer 4×4 drivers through social networking. Part of the reason this worked was because, rather than inventing their own hashtags, they used existing conventions like #uksnow. It wasn’t just social media either. A huge percentage of people accessing school closure information did so using games consoles or television compatible browsers…how many councils test their web space with those?

It seems that, as the cold returns, councils are just rolling out the Twitter gritter with the traditional ones and no one is listening to the innovators who tried this last time round. So, what should local authorities do?

• Look at whether they need a separate Twitter feed for the winter or whether their existing feed with a hashtag can cover the job
• Find out existing hashtags and conventions for Twitter (so for snow use #uksnow followed by a postcode followed by any information or a number out of ten to rate severity of snow fall eg. #uksnow bd22 Hebden Road closed or #uksnow bd22 9/10
• Put together a communications plan.  Ensure that the social network tools are accessible from the office and from home, that people know the passwords, how to use them and conventions for using them
• Make sure that as fewer updates as possible are needed.  For example, updating a page with an RSS feed can automatically update twitter (using something like HootSuite), a facebook page and a website at the same time.
• Check that your website updates don’t rely on flash, java or other technicalities that could make it unusable from some smart phones and games consoles.  If it has to rely on these, make sure there’s a link to something that doesn’t
• Think big – this isn’t just a tool for you to roll out news releases, it’s a tool for people to report things to you, for people who’re stuck to talk to you, for the media to keep in touch with what you’re doing.  The feed isn’t just about you locally, it could be used nationally to paint the picture
• Use the right hashtags on Twitter.  Use you own by all means, but make sure you use the nationally trending ones, so that others can pick up on your feeds
• Have a plan – if you need to rope in emergency services, volunteers, community wardens etc, can you get information from them onto social media quickly?  How?  Maybe they have their own feeds you can re-tweet or share on facebook.  If not, is there a comms number/email accessible outside the office to keep the information up to date.
• Above all, make sure if you start this, you finish it.  There’s nothing worse than a twitter feed that shuts down at five when the snow starts at 4.  Make sure you don’t use the feed one day and not the next.  If using separate feeds, don’t neglect your original feeds. Have plans in place for how to do this.

With the right thought processes, another snow crisis could mean some real innovation in local authorities….I just hope it’s not a snowman that melts with the thaw, but one that stays with local government for a while, because, let’s be honest, it’s getting cold out there.

Recently, I took part in a debate on LinkedIn about public consultation.  The original question was around what one could do with the “I don’t know brigade”, the people who never answer the question.  The resulting dialogue left he original questioner in no doubt that a simple survey as a consultation simply isn’t the modern way.

But what is the modern way?   There are many councils doing consultations all the time and there are a number of intrinsic problems with them.  The first one, without a doubt, is that many citizens simply don’t trust them.  They believe, often rightly, that the council have made up their mind prior to a consultation taking place, or that they are given a choice of two evils to pick from.  The second one is the “don’t understand” problem.  If you’re regenerating an area, it’s easy to argue that residents know best.  After all, they live and possibly work there.  However, there are many thoughts and theories around regeneration that may not have entered residents minds.  The planners are, after all, the theory experts.  The solution to this appears to be to rate residents as stupid and impose on them the great expertise of the planners who do not live in the community, do not understand its politics or mechanisms and, more often than not, would not want to.

A great illustration of this exists in Telford, a new town created in the 1970s.  The planners used (in my opinion) flawed models in designing much of the town and there is a great deal I could write on this, but one example sums it up perfectly.  When building an estate for the “overspill”, the working class people of the Black Country who were out of work as opportunities began to dry up, an estate of close packed houses, pubs and a local centre were built.  To make way for this, countless farm houses and traditional green spaces were demolished, however, in the centre one old manor house remained.  Planners decided that this could be converted to a stable, where the overspill could keep horses.  They figured that many would have an interest in doing this and those who didn’t already have horses (probably around 99.9% of them) would feel more valued because they had a stable in their community.

The theory behind this is a good one.  Andrew Mawson, in his book on the social entrepreneurial approach to community development, notes that cheaply built and furnished community buildings lead to a feeling of not being valued in the community.  The flaw, however, is that the planners completely misunderstood that horses were not seen as prestigious by the people coming to the estate and a stables was not something that added value.  This was because planners failed to understand the residents needs, thought processes or culture.    The theory was right.  The practice was wrong.  That’s why theory can’t be left to chance and residents involvement is crucial.

The word involvement brings up an interesting point here though.  Why should councils be “involving” people in things they are doing?  Surely it should be the community that “involve” the council in their regeneration?    It’s because this often isn’t the approach that planners often resort to trying to “posh up” an area and bring in money, while involving residents in superficial focus groups around their ideas.  Mike Chitty called the latter “Economic Cleansing” and wrote an excellent blog post on the subject.

So, enough of the waffle.  How does technology come into this?

On a very superficial level, it’s about understanding different ways of thinking.  Local Government commentator Emma Langman recently posted a tweet asking if there were more right-of-centre people she could follow to try and maintain a balance.  An excellent idea.  In the more locked down areas of my facebook, I regularly ask provoking questions because I know that within my friends there are tory and labour activists, Trotskyists and Christian Rightwingers.  There are Americans, Kiwis, Germans, English, Scottish and Welsh people.  This melting pot leads to many interesting and, often, heated debates.  These debates rarely achieve anything in terms of putting new points forward or changing anyones mind.  What they do do, for me at least, is create an awareness of other arguments and view points.  Facebook pages are ideal ground for this, however local government often shy away from allowing debate to take place.  On several occasions I have been told, or have heard of council comms people telling others, that having negative comments on a facebook wall is a reason to avoid facebook.  On the contrary, I think council officers and elected members would do well to read, provoke and encourage debate among residents….it’s the first step in all parties understanding the differing views on offer.

This path offers an opportunity for more formal consultation too.  All too often, Twitter or facebook are used to link residents to an online survey which pretends to be a method of discovering what they think.  In fact, the medium itself is a melting pot which would often eliminate the need for a survey of any kind.

Of course, all of these still suggest the council asking the residents questions on a given topic.  In fact, I think consultation could be more organic.  On an ongoing basis, the council could be asking its residents all their views on everything and then drilling down into the debate to find their views on a given topic.  As part of this, they could be giving their own views and letting people scrutinise them.

One approach to this, which has sadly become a buzzword, is crowd sourcing.  Not too long ago, I attended a presentation by a company doing this, Hubbub Ideas.  They recruit what they call “Solvers” and create a huge online think tank, where people constantly post, debate, rate and review ideas.  Could these platforms not become ideal melting pots for residents’ ideas?

When I did my teaching qualification, we did a little experiment.  We did three presentations around different approaches to teaching.  The first group looked at teaching in the traditional “all sat in rows” style, the second on a non-facilitated self-discovery model and the third on a hybrid of the two.  I was in the second group.  We presented a powerpoint introduction slide, with action buttons to take people to different slides, then sat down and drank coffee.  Our classmates and teacher were a bit perplexed.  Was this our presentation?  About five minutes in, one of us eventually pointed out that there were action buttons so they could run the presentation how they wanted to themselves.  Thee point was proven that, with no facilitation at all, the classroom had failed.  However, with that small amount of facilitation the group had grown organically and run the presentation as they saw fit, in a way that met their needs.

The same could easily be said about consultation.  To go back to the LinkedIn debate, it shouldn’t just be that Yes, No, Don’t Know are the options.  It should be that online communities, reflecting or contributing offline communities routinely engage in “consultation”  where, with a little facilitation from officers, the issues are explored.  Debate is a healthy thing and the rough needs to be taken with the smooth.  The LinkedIn question asked what we should do with the “I Don’t Know” brigade.  In fact, that brigade shouldn’t exist.  When the question isn’t “what do you think about” but instead is “Talk to me please”, then “I don’t know” ceases to become an option.  That’s when we know we’re asking the right questions.

This post is being published on Scott Hibberson‘s “eLearning Library” and Kevin Campbell-Wrights “Wesenwille” at the same time.

Before you think of these points, it’s always worth considering what the purpose of your blog is and who your audience are.  Blogs are read by a wide variety of people, many of whom will not be your target audience – but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a type of person in mind.

Some bloggers use their page as a diary, reflecting on events and conversations of the day.  Some blogs provide a commentary and analysis of current thinking and situations.  Others provide guides and inspiration to those working in a particular area or sector.  All blogs stray between these areas, but it’s worth thinking of a primary purpose to target your posts.

1. Bookmark Your Posts

There’s a growing amount of research reporting a rise in the use of social bookmarking tools, so it makes sense to make it as easy as possible for your visitors to favourite your posts. One way in which you could do this is to add social bookmarking buttons to the end of each blog post. Here’s a step-by-step guide on Youtube telling you how to do this:

2. Search Engines & Technorati

If you want people to read your blog, people have got to be able to find it.  One way that blog posts differ greatly from newspaper articles is that they don’t have to be time bound – a blog post today might still be relevant in five years time and still needs to be locatable.

There are different ways people search.  The layman will search for a topic using Google and, possibly, Google blog search.  These primarily work on keywords from the title, body and tags of the text.  Therefore, if your blogging platform allows tags, it’s important to include them and make sure that, where possible, keywords are also in the title and first paragraph.

The other search engine for blogs, normally used by the blogging elite (if such a group exists) is  Technorati.com.  You need to register for technorati and put code into your post to verify it is your own.  Technorati then puts it in a directory (searchable by catagories and tags) as well as making your blog findable via a search engine.  The Technorati top 100 is to blogging what the FTSE 100 is to finance – you’ll only find the cream of the crop there.  The chances of your blog getting on that are similar to those of you winning the lottery, however all is not lost;  there is also the technorati front page.  Different blogs are featured there daily and can, reportedly, raise your traffic by 1000%, at least for a day or so.

3. Mutual Blogging

Blogging differs from the traditional practices of writing journal articles and papers in various ways, but one key difference is that blogs are conversational tools, part of social networking.

Unlike in some disciplines, bloggers should expect comments on their posts, offering constructive criticisms or mutual support. As part of that, bloggers should be prepared to share their own ideas, supports and criticisms by commenting on other blog posts. Not only is this good social practice, but most blogging platforms offer commenters the chance to add a link to their own blog, so it’s a great marketing opportunity. Just a quick tip though – make sure your blog has some posts along the same lines as the subject you’re commenting on.

Like most authors, bloggers love to be referenced and hate to be plagiarised. It’s a great idea to link back to other blogs you reference. Some blog platforms, such as WordPress, pick up on links from other WordPress blogs and alert the author that someone has linked to them, meaning that they in turn may well link to them from their blog or publicise them using Twitter. However, it’s very bad practice to write a blog post along the same lines as another blogger without referencing it back. Even if you’re writing from another angle, it’s always important to keep other bloggers happy.

Many blogs also contain a “blogroll” – a list of blogs on a similar subject that the blog author recommends. It’s great if you can get listed on these but, as they are normally fairly short, you have to be really good to get on them. A good place to start is to put the author whose list you want to be on in your blog roll – but only do that if you think their blog is worth reading anyway!

The important part of any social media tool is the conversation. Social media shouldn’t be one way and automatic tweets about blog posts, repeated tweets about the same subject or pointless references to other blogs detract from both your professionalism and your credibility. Karen Thorne, a self-taught expert on social media use in the tourism industry, has compiled a very interesting blog post on the subject of making effective use of social media without just “giving out business cards”.

4. Persevere with Twitter

A lot of bloggers have been keen to jump on the Twitter bandwagon for its potential marketing power. However, despite Twitter’s often perceived triviality and ease of use, it does actually require a certain amount of sophistication to get right. I’ve heard stories from many people who have tried Twitter, but quickly tired with it as they couldn’t really see the point. When in reality, they didn’t really invest enough time in Twitter to get the point in the first place.

Now, I’m not going to insult your intelligence and say that Twitter is the answer to all your blogging prayers but, used appropriately, it can certainly be the answer to some of them. It’s not just a case of sending out a tweet with a link to your blog post. No, no, that simply won’t do. Anyone can do that (in fact, many do, and when their blog doesn’t get any more hits they give up on Twitter as they can’t really see the point – see above). As mentioned previously, it’s really important that you use Twitter as a two way communication tool and spend as much time replying to others as you do posting tweets. That way you build up a rapport with your fellow tweeters.

But I don’t have time to reply to everyone! Fair point, but then you don’t always have to. You could just as easily retweet other people’s tweets who blog about similar interests as yourself, and you’d be surprised how often the favour is returned, thus circulating your own tweets with blog links to a wider audience.

Another useful tool on Twitter that can help to promote your blog is the hashtag (a keyword preceded by a #). Most subjects will have a hashtag and many users will specifically search for information about a subject by doing a hashtag search. So if you include a hashtag in the tweet linking to your latest blog post you’re ensuring that your tweet not only reaches your followers on Twiiter (which may be quite limited), but that it also reaches all the people on Twitter that are searching under the hashtag as well.  Bingo – your blog post has just reached a wider audience!

Twitter, if you give it the time, can have many unexpected benefits, which is why it’s often called the ‘Serendipity Engine’ by notables such as Chris Brogan and others.

5. Write Quality Posts!

This is undoubtedly the most crucial point and there are no cheats or shortcuts that we can give away here to improve your blog other than to say write quality posts! Obviously, fellow bloggers are not going to return to your blog if you’re only blogging about hackneyed subjects and only ever agree with whatever happens to be the accepted wisdom of the time.

The power of blog posts is there topicality, as they don’t have to go through the time-consuming peer review process that journal articles do, and as such there’s a lot of scope to write about up and coming trends that are still likely to be of relevance at the time of posting.

Like any journalism or writing, it’s really important that you ensure your posts have a new angle on anything previously written.  While controversial posts may not make you popular, they normally get the comments and retweets, while innovative and inspiring posts can even go viral over Twitter or the blogosphere.  Don’t just do an article that says: “John Brown says XYZ – and I agree.”  Instead try: “John Brown says XYZ and I can build on that,” or “John Brown says XYZ, but other schools of thought challenge this view [provide references!]…” etc.  If you are being critical of others, make sure you know whether you are writing your blog from a personal viewpoint, a professional viewpoint, or as a representative of your college, institution or organisation.  It may be fine for you to write: “Well, I don’t agree”, but a professional blog would be more along the lines of “It could also be argued that…” while a corporate blog probably wouldn’t be critical in the first place.

On a final more mundane point, as with any other piece of writing, don’t be too eager to publish straight away though, take a few minutes to proofread your posts, this can make a dramatic difference to the overall professionalism of your blog.

Today I was talking to several friends who have been, or are, involved in BSF (Building Schools for the Future) programme.  For anyone who’s missed the news the last few days, this was the former Labour Government’s plan to re-build every secondary school in the country, which has been put on hold and looks to be scrapped by the incoming Conservative-Lib Dem coalition.  This isn’t the first building programme cut either – we recently saw funding for a wellbeing centre in Leeds being axed and, during the Labour administration, we saw various college new build programmes cancelled.

This isn’t a political blog, so I don’t intend to comment on the politics of it all.  However, one thing is clear.  Whether your politics is that we need to save money and the cuts are justified or that this is a ideological attack on public education, you have to accept that we’re in a new place where throwing money at problems will not be tolerated and, for the foreseeable future, expensive building programmes are a thing of the past.

When BSF started is was kind of linked in with the whole extended school thing, a project for getting schools to be part of the community.  Indeed, the first rebuild I ever saw was designed to be not just a school, but a community hub.  So, with wellbeing centres, libraries and now schools facing the chop, where does this leave the community?

Well, in a move that will upset critics of the government and friends in the construction industry, I think it leaves it in a place where it can try something new.  Something that’s not been done before.  Something that doesn’t involve the buildings.

There are two stories I need to add in here.  One is one I often reference from a former colleague in community development who told me: “Why am I trying to build a community centre for a geographic community, when that community doesn’t exist any more?”  The second is more recent.  Social media marketing legend Chris Brogan told a recent conference I helped organise: “The difference between a community and an audience is which way the chairs are facing.”

These two adages are linked.  Firstly, because the idea of having community hubs, schools and community centres are very geographically based – they serve a community that is made up of where they happen to live rather than based on their needs, interests or what they have in common.  Secondly, because all of these geographically placed buildings assume a top down approach – a committee, a council or a management team running the building for an audience.  What if the chairs are turned, and the community take control?  What is the old school buildings don’t need to be replaced, because the classroom of the future isn’t a building?

I’ve long argued a concept I call “us, the classroom”.  I base this on the fact that learning takes place all the time amongst young people, chiefly through their collecting, editing, selecting, publishing and evaluating information through social networking.  I argue that, if young people are naturally using this method of learning, why do we ban that method from the classroom?  The real classroom, I’ve declared, is wherever and whenever the learner is.  It isn’t about giving the learner “ownership” because the learner, and the learner alone, owns that space already  So, let’s take this a step further.  Let’s look at this not in terms of the pedagogy but instead in the terms of the learning space.  Is the greatest space the personal space the learner occupies, rather than the building around them?  Open this wider.  Move away from traditional schools and look at extended schools.  Community Space.  Why are we consulting people on one, two or even three options?  Why are we insisting we need to build and construct space?  Some of the greatest spaces are online.  They are shaped, designed, maintained and developed by the users themselves.  Can we learn from this virtual idea and take it back into the real world?

I’m not a community designer, so I probably can’t answer that question.  But I was cheered recently to hear of a graduate whose landscape architecture project went along these lines.  It looked at concepts like gorilla gardening to get the community designing their own space.   Maybe, if we can take those ideas from the landscape designers, take the classroom theories from online learning and the community concept from Chris Brogan we can find some really innovative ways to move education forward – and really build ourselves some schools for the future.

One of my gripes with e-safety policies is that they often only look at e-safety from the safeguarding side of things.  Obviously, this is by far the most important area, however corporate reputation and liability is another angle which is often ignored.  So, you might expect that I was fairly excited to hear this week that a school for the 11 – 19 age group had put in place such a policy.  However, I’m afraid I wasn’t.

The school, which I’ve decided not to name (for reasons that will become apparent), has decided to tackle the issue of videos of teachers in school head on.  Its publicly accessible policy states that anyone posting comments or videos on public websites that show bullying of staff or harm the school’s reputation might be expelled.

Initially, this seems like a good idea.  However, the bit that had me worried was the whole “anything that may harm the schools reputation” bit.  See, I remember that, when working for the council, we had a clause in our contract that we would “not bring the council into disrepute”.  This kind of clause is vital for public sector workers to protect impartiality and confidentiality of public records and integrity, but it is also a get-out-clause that allows someone to be disciplined or sacked for anything that can be deemed “harming” the reputation.  For example, while council officers not on a politically restricted scale are technically free to express their political beliefs, it would be very easy to argue that political beliefs, in particular controversial ones, harm the council.  Thus, arguably, this clause prevents any political discussion by council staff.  I’ve certainly known of cases where union activity was interpreted in this way.  The same could be true of the clause in this school’s safety policy.   The only way to be sure you don’t harm the schools reputation is not to talk about it at all.

A further rule, again issued in the spirit of e-safety, requires all students to sign a “contract” which includes a clause about not identifying that they attend this school on any postings they submit.

Again, it is simple common sense that giving out your school details could breach your security and I’m not arguing in any way that these policies should not be in place.  However, they become far more worrying when you actually see how students are instructed on or interpret them.  One told me that they are not allowed to discuss anything relating to the school, at all, on any social network.  Clearly, the implication of this policy is that the school is not mentioned on social networking sites.  Indeed, a quick scan with Google shows that it’s worked.  There are no identifiable groups set up by students.  However, there are several set up by former students, one of which calls the school “prison-like” and “draconian” amongst many other things.  How can students make use of technology to communicate effectively if they cannot use it to discuss the issues that matter to them?

So, you may be wondering, where is my gripe?  I’ve said that e-safety policies should be taking reputation into account and this one does.  I’ve said that it’s silly to open yourself too much online and this policy prevents that.  Well, my gribe came to me this week as I was looking at a new project that a friend of mine was involved in.  It’s called “The nation thinks”, is part of Crowdworks and is a new forum for political discussions around the forthcoming budget, encouraging users to submit their ideas.

Obviously, this will spurn a lot of political debate.  Useful political debate.  The kind that we want to see more, not less, of.  However, as I registered, I found myself wondering how many people would be put off by clauses in their contracts, vague wording in policies and rules presented as safety being interpreted and enforced as draconian?  In a world where our schools have policies like this and many of our public networks have even stricter ones, where is the room for free debate?

I, and probably most of the readers of this blog, will have argued for some time that the solution in terms of infrastructure is not to lock down systems but to foster awareness of safe and proper practice.  The same is true in terms of reputation.  We need to have a world where we can freely discuss, without worrying about whether we will get into trouble for what we say.  That means policies that are flexible, but make clear what is and isn’t acceptable, rather than simply relying on interpretation.  We need to educate and inform users about the good practice of discussion and debate, the laws of libel and the consequences of sticking your neck out.  But at no point, surly, should we be telling people that they cannot talk about their time at school, or work in any way without fear of disciplinary action?  If we continue on this route, we’ll have a very safe world….but not a world of active citizens.  We might then all be sorry….but we won’t want to say anything about it.

I’ve known David Wright MP for many years.  I’ve met him in a professional capacity as well as in a personal capacity, having lived and worked in the Telford area for many years.  As someone who is vocal on local and national issues, I’ve often approached David and always found him to be a responsive MP.  By and large I’ve agreed with him or seen his point and he’s always struck me as honest, so when he says his twitter account was hacked when the message was posted, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.  I should point out here, by way of a disclaimer, that I’m not connected to any political party nor am I endorsing that people vote for David….I’m simply putting forward my opinion as a former constituent.

My worries about the story were confirmed when I tuned into the media today and realised that the anti-twitter stories that seem to fill the media daily had reached the political stage.  David’s comment, be it a misjudged throwaway comment or malicious hack, had thrown him into the political spotlight and, with it, the use of twitter by politicians trying to engage our interest.

Local BBC radio was quick to pick up the story and keen tweeter Jim Hawkins did a fascinating phone in show about the use of Twitter by politicians.  It kicked off with an interview with Steve Molyneux (@profontheprowl), a fellow social media buff and learning technologist, who has seen the dark side of Twitter himself.   Steve rightly pointed to the dangers of making sure your social media site isn’t compromised.  He also questioned, however, the use Twitter is as an engagement tool for politicians.  More on this point later.  A later  caller summed up my feelings sting: “it isn’t Twitter that’s at fault here – it’s how people use it.”  Another few stated that twitter was simply a “trendy” tool of the moment and that they would “rather see their MP” than hear them on Twitter.  Meanwhile, Conservative HQ, keen to defend themselves against the comments, claimed that: “This is exactly the sort of politics that voters are so sick of”.

What I wondered, looking at all that, was whether this was the sort of politics people were sick of, or whether people were also sick of the politics where a throwaway comment gets blown out of all proportion.  Anyone who reads David Wright’s tweets can be in no doubt of his dislike of the Conservative party.  No one takes issue with this.  He is, after all, a Labour politician.  Even if he had posted his controversial “scum sucking pig” comment, it would not have shown him as a hypocrite, nor devalued his opinion on any policy.  It may have shown him to be juvenile but, if the British public are so sick of juvenile comments, why is it that we crave the controversial guests on Question Time and why is it that Jeremy Kyle still gets such high viewing figures?   Actually, in terms of the latter, why is that?

My worry here is that there are a large group of people who do not engage with mainstream politics but do engage with social media could be engaged in the political process through the use of Twitter.  David claims to be and, to my knowledge is, the only Shropshire MP using Twitter.  Even his critics were quick to congratulate him on using Twitter on Jim’s radio show.  But maybe, as that caller had said, it was how he used it.  Politicians need to maintain some decorum on twitter.

Problem is, when I was recently asked what one piece of advice I’d give to someone starting out their brand in social media, I said: “Think of your brand as a person – a social media account that does not have personality is worse than none at all.”  So, how do you justify this if you can’t make the odd throw-away comment?  After all, we all do this, all the time.

I’m not sure what the answer is, however I do know that, in a world where people are getting on social media, comments will come back to haunt people.  Sometimes, rightly, when they expose that person as someone who is not being honest.  However, when they simply go a bit over the top, I think we should simply demand, and accept, an apology.  If politics becomes about who said what to whom and when, in a world of social media, it will descend into a farce and the tweeters and facebookers, like their “real life” cousins, will join the apathy club.  Maybe I’m not the normal mainstream.  But I want my politicians online.  I want them to make mistakes.  I want them to be human.

It’s taken a long time for a lot of the smaller charities and community groups to cotton on to these ideas, and a few still haven’t. However, it’s at this point that social media comes into play.

Social Media is a branding exercise. Brand has stopped being something that is the domain of the multi national. It’s stopped being the tools of large organisations. It’s even stopped being a sidethought by grassroots campaigners. Brand is now truely in the domain of the individual.  Even the most open facebook user needs to recognise that they are not really sharing everything about themselves – they are sharing select information with the intention of influencing people and affecting how they are perceived.  Like the great multi-nationals, logos, reputation and crisis management are needed.  The logo is the facebook profile picture, the reputation is the groups you join, the photos you comment on or the wall posts you make and crisis management is what you do when someone posts a negative comment on your photos.

I’ve experienced personal brand myself.  At various meetings of the past six months, I’ve found people don’t know me or who I am, but do follow and know about “kevupnorth” (my twitter name).  So, kevupnorth is a user that is known beyond Kevin Campbell-Wright, someone who has his own reputation and on whom people have made their own judgements.  I can’t help but wonder, if I put particular effort into it, whether I could build up a totally inaccurate portrait of kevupnorth, or manipulate his reputation without effecting my own.

The problem is that brand management has been a skill used for decades (or possibly centuries) by incredibly clever operators who we now call “spin doctors”.  It has been honed by exchanges of practice and education.  Yet now, everyone needs to have these skills to make good use of their social networking presence.

To bring this back round to the point of this blog, how is this relevant for communities?  One of the questions in the discussion today was whether I felt every brand would one day be represented via social media.  While I said that they would, I also emphasised that brands would change.  In a world where we are all brands ourselves, it will stand to reason that every community group, every community activist and even every community problem and challenge will be a brand, which will require its own ideas around reputation management, key messages, logos and PR.   If we’re going to tackle digital literacy seriously and support communities in acheiving what they want to, we need to do more than just teach them how and why to use the net and tools for safe usage.  We have to allow them to develop their brand – and give them the skills to manage it.

There were lots of sessions on lots of topics and I can’t even begin to cover every thought and idea that passed my way.  The best thing to do it read the Twitter stream and see all the hundreds of comments.  There were lots of people to meet too, some people who I knew from Twitter and some new faces too.  I won’t list them all, partly because I can’t remember them all and partly because I want to get to the core of this blog post.

My running theme for this GovCamp was, unintentionally, the three Cs:  Community, Crisis and Communications.

Alastair Smith ran a really productive session around social media and the response to the recent snow.  The conversation strayed off into emergency planning as a whole and the role of local and national government alongside the role of media and volunteers.  There were some great stories of how local government had responded using social media, how local government had rallied volunteers and how the media had used council social sites like Twitter to gather information.  Despite a general feeling in the hierarchy of many local government bodies that social media is something for the kids, the snow showed huge hit counts of web media.  One posting even reported 21,000 hits.

However, these great stories were also diluted with the inevitable ones around social media failing during the snow.  There were calls for a greater consistency in the way councils used things like twitter – for example using a #schoolclosure hashtag nationally, so that media organisations could follow everything (which SkyNews did).

In terms of planning for future emergencies,  there was a definite consensus that web officers, ICT professionals, comms officers and emergency planning officers need to work together more to plan for these eventualities.  Somehow a 24/7 approach needs to be agreed.  Other questions raised were:

• What is an emergency – what defines a time when it’s ok to get the boss out of bed to get a tweet?
• How do press staff respond – are press releases the way forward, or is a twitterfeed more useful?
• How does the organisation respond – some schools give their closures to the BBC, not the council PR team
• How does the comms team work with the emergency services, roadwatch and other external agencies around this?
• How is web content updated?  Can key staff access the CMS from home to make web updates?  How do they plan for Twitter or Facebook crashing under increased demand of a major emergency?
• Most importantly, how do they respond to customers?  Obviously emergency queries could be answered online, but is it over the top to assume a 24/7 conversation can take place?  What if someone replies to a school closure with “well that school would close, it’s rubbish”.  How do comms staff avoid engaging in debate?  Should they avoid engaging in debate?

Following on from this nicely, I went to Eve Shuttleworth’s session around how journalism is changing and, more to the point, how comms should relate to the media via social media.  There was strong feeling that video and youtube type content submitted with press releases needed to be in keeping with the spirit of the medium.  There was little point making corporate videos for YouTube.  A lot of doubt was raised that content like this would be used at all, especially as many media bodies won’t use content developed by a council because it’s weighted.  Jim Hawkin’s, from BBC Radio Shropshire, joined in the debate via twitter, suggesting that media releases should remain as text and that actually linking to other content was largely irrelevant – it was a quick, accurate and simple product that journalists wanted.  Despite this, one local newspaper had already agreed that they would take YouTube content for their website.

The final session, run by Robin Grant, looked at how we use the data we can get for consultation.  There were lots of methods suggested and ways of analysing the results were also debated.  My favourite, though, was the feeling that consultation could be crowd sourced, ie that, as part of a formal conversation, we should be tapping into where peopel are talking about the issue already.

I’ll finish this post on a note that really summarised the day.  The first session I attended was a “Local Authority Group Hug”, just a session to catch up where local government was in terms of technology.  There was a real mix form the very innovative to those with complete lockdowns.  The session was facilitated by someone I won’t name, who had come unofficially.  Social media wasn’t recognised in their organisation.  Innovation wasn’t  encouraged.  But that didn’t matter, because staff came from all over the country to see how they could make the change in their organisation.  How they could innovate past the barriers.  It’s that passion for the future that really makes UK Gov Camp.  I’ll certainly be booking my ticket for next year.

There are many arguments for and against having these restrictions and I don’t really want to open the vast can of worms that those debates would involve.  Additionally, I don’t want to go over the whole “your employer, the council, might search for you on google” debate, which has been done to death.  However, having read a recent article re-posted on Twitter by community development consultant Mike Chitty, I did have to think about how this could apply to social media.

The article, from Montana in the United States, revolves around a City Council asking job applicants to submit usernames and passwords for all their social media sites as part of the job application.  They’ve taken legal advice on this and apparently they can do this.

This is an extreme example of councils probing into people’s private lives.   The legal implications of asking people for passwords which, as the article points out, they are bound not to give you by the terms of service, probably means this won’t go any further.  However, I doubt it’s the end of the social media fit for office debate.

Currently, most public bodies I’ve experienced ask you, on application, for the following information:

• To declare any criminal charges or, if relevant, any accusations that have been made against you
• Submit to a CRB Disclosure (police check)
• To declare (and normally to cease) any business interests you have
• To declare any membership organisation you belong to (such as the freemasons)
• To declare (and if applicable cease) any political office you may be involved in

So, would it be that surprising if they started asking you for lists of your online presence?  Do you have a website, are you a member of facebook , what does your LinkedIn history say about you?

There’s always that argument that if you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve nothing to hide, but the fit for office argument gets tricky here.  What if you’re a member of the facebook group  “I was born in the UK so why don’t I have as many rights as immigrants“.  To some, this is a legitimate, humanitarian debate.  To others it is a political, right wing, cause.  To others still it is an unfounded, racist and prejudicial statement.   If you went to a physical rally around this subject it would be quite easy to determine if it was political or not, based on who had organised it.  You’d be able to judge the tone of the rally and decide if your presence brought the council into disrepute.   However, on a facebook group it isn’t quite so simple.

The standards board ruled some time ago that a politician who posted arguably racist comments on a facebook page had not violated standards because it was a personal account.  So where does this leave public bodies?

Looking back at the guidance from Darlington Council, I note that even politically restricted persons can display a political badge on their person or vehicle…so what about on their facebook account?  What if they also conduct some council business over facebook?

The answers to this, sadly, are policy and guidance.  Applicants, staff and political members need to be clear about what they can and can’t do politically via social media – otherwise we’ll end up with job application forms asking the questions that they do in Montana.