• 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.

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 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.

So, I decided to develop my own mini-strategy for social media use. I thought of Twitter as online equivelent of the business networking event – sure there may be some refreshments and some banter, but really you’re all there on business. Facebook, on the other hand, I saw as the works night out. Sure, some shop gets talked but, primarily, you’re there for a social purpose.

I started splitting my tweets and status updates using Ping.FM. This meant I could send an email from my phone, premixing “@fb” or “@tt” depending on whether I wanted it to go to facebook or Twitter or, on occasion, leaving it off entirely and letting it go to both.

My next observation was about use of Twitter. It is essential that Twitter reflects your personality and isn’t just “shop” tweets, but at the same time overuse with uniteresting tweets can cloud it and put people off following you or, at least, reading them. This came to light when I missed a really interesting, useful, work related Tweet, because the same person had tweeted several times that hour about more menial things. So, I tried to do my “personality” tweet once or maybe twice a day (at the start and end) and only add other personal Tweets in as “@ replies” or when something happened that I thought others may genuinely be interest in.  On the whole, the personal tweets ended up as facebook statuses.

Interestingly, this didn’t mean I tweeted less.  The chart shown here (from Twanalyst) shows that, wheile there was initially a drop, the picked up again fiarly quickly. (The second drop is since the birth of my daughter, where I have stopped many weekend and evening tweets).

I feel that this makes my tweets more readable and, certainly, I feel from feedback that peopel are paying more attention to them.  Additionally, my facebook activity has picked up too, as my updates there are more geared up to what facebook should be about.

The lesson I’d take from this are these five points.  Whether applied to your personal, professional or corporate social media usage, I think these are my golden rules for using the media effectively.

1. Use each media separately.  That doesn’t mean you can never import tweets or delicious bookmarks into facebook, just that you shouldn’t ALWAYS do it.  Recognise the strengths of each medai (ie Facebook for social, twitter for networking)
2. Keep “on message”.  Try and avoid “what I had for breakfast” tweets, unless breakfast is your business
3. Use Re-Tweets / FB Shared links when others in your audience may be interested – not as vanity tweets for them
4. It’s OK to Tweet/FB MORE, but do it targeted using DMs and @Replies.  Don’t overload your feed with Tweets or shares however useful they are
5. Respond to people who respond to you.  Follow less people if this means you can do this more.

However, now that I’m back here, I thought it time I put key to computer again and got a blog up  – so maybe it is a bit odd that I’ve chosen the same subject as last time.

As a commuter and new parent of a very young child, I am naturally paranoid about Swine Flu and have therefore been following the stories closer than I normally would.

Today’s call to close schools to curb the spread of the flu is not a shock and I fully expect the closure of other public offices as the virus spreads.

So, now is perhaps the best time for organisations to be sorting out their online presence.  With the aid of social media there is nothing stopping this country continuing to function without any major disruption even if the vast majority of office staff are at home.

In a recent meeting through work, the developers of an online learning platform told me that they are receiving more and more enquiries in light of possible swine flu closures – so what’s stopping the rest of the public sector looking at the same?

If this pandemic does reach the epci proportions predicated, we’ll have a lot of people staying at home who want to be kept informed – and social media will be the west way for that to work.

This isn’t rocket science – but it doesn’t seem to be happening in the UK.  New York City recently looked at how facebook could be used in an emergency - and it would be good to see plans like that over here in the UK

Birmingham City Council have recently completed a great wordpress powered site to put all their new output in one place, providing breifings for journalists and other interested parties to keep them informed.  Similar sites could do the same with Swine Flu (or indeed other emergency) information.  Here are some other features I think they could add:

• Find a flu-friend (sign up to volunteer to drop off food or medication to someone hosuebound by flu – or sign up to locate a flu friend)
• Online chat room to support people with expert advice or a place for a chat if you’re bored indoors
• Links to national support websites.

It should olnly take moments to set up – so let’s hope someone sorts it.

1. Everyone can see everything.  These people are often so paranoid they don’t use it for work at all or seriously under utilise it
2. No one can see anything.  These people are naive at best and often end up putting something on they shouldn’t

So the first question, really, has to be – who can see what?

Well, in the old days it was very different.  But, since facebook brought in privacy settings, the answer is entirely up to you.  So, I’ll deal with the defaults, then I’ll look at how you change them.

• NETWORKS:  If you join a network (eg Leeds or University of Wolverhampton) everyone else who is on these networks can see large chunks of your profile by default.  Even after you have set privacy settings, any new item you set privacy for will, by default, be available to your networks.
• PHOTOS:  Only your friends and networks can see photos you can upload.  However, if a photo is tagged of you, even if you don’t tag it, your friends will automatically be able to see it and will be informed you’ve been tagged in their feeds.  You can remove the tag and, at that time, your friends can no longer see it.  However, if they have already seen it and saved it, obviously, the damage may be done
• PROFILE PHOTO:  Everyone will be able to see a thumbnail of your profile pic
• STATUS:  All your friends and networks will be able to see this
• PROFILE:  Your networks and friends can see everything you put in your profile.  This includes any pages you are a fan of and groups you are members of.  So, if you join “I vote Nazi” they can all see that!
• FRIENDS:  Anyone at all will be able to see your list of friends.  The only people they will not see are people who have fully hidden their profile.
• SEARCH:  Anyone who searches for your name will find your profile, though they will only be able to see your list of friends.  This “Public Search” will also appear if someone Googles your name
• MESSAGES:  If someone sends you a message and you reply they can see a limited amount of your profile, including your status, for two weeks
• CHAT (using the live chat box at the bottom of the page) This is private between you and the other person chatting
• WALL Vs MESSAGE:  Messages are best posted by clicking INBOX at the top. These are confidential (but can open privacy loopholes, see ‘messages’ above) Clicking on a persons page and sending a message may mean you posdt to their wall.  This is open.  You can restrict who can see YOUR wall but not who can see your posts on friends walls.
• APPLICATIONS:  Many applications post things regardless.  Be aware of SuperWall and FunWall which initially seem fun but are often used to send messages that may not look professional.  Feel free to not add/block these applications.

To change who can see what, you first need to group your friends.  This is where the search in part 1 comes in.  Go to your main facebook page (by clicking on the facebook logo NB:  This is NOT your profile page) and click FRIENDS at the top and ALL FRIENDS.  On the left hand side you will see “FRIENDS LIST” and below that “MAKE NEW LIST”.  Make these lists and add your friends to appropriate groups.

Next, go back to the main facebook page (click on the logo again) and click on SETTINGS at the top right (see picture) and select PRIVACY.  Now, you can work your way through various options, switching off networks and, by clicking on CUSTOMISE selecting the only people you DO or DO NOT want to see this, by individuals or group.

A more comprehensive guide to privacy settings is found here.

There are still some things to consider:

• PHOTOS:  Even if you remove a tag and have set up your priovacy so peopel don’t know that you’ve been tagged, if friends of yours are also friends with the person who uploaded the photos, they can still see it.  There is nothign you can do about this.
• PUBLIC SEARCH:  It’s very tempting to remove yourself from search engines.  However, facebook is a social network.  if no one can see you, or add you, is there much point really?
• There are a few do’s and don’ts to think about.  The first one, whether you use it for work or not, is what you say about work.  People have lost their jobs for slagging off work online.  And why not?  It’s easy to say you have the right to do so in private.  However, if your boss can find it, it’s not really private.
• Don’t join groups that could be a conflict of interest with your work.

I said in part one that this wasn’t about using facebook AT work but FOR work.  However, if you’ve been told you can’t use it AT work but are, be aware of the time stamp on wall postings and status changes.  Can you justify them?

Remember to stick to your rules.  For example, you may add colleagues but not customers.  You may had managers but not staff you manage.  You may add everyone, and filter.  Whatever you do, be aware that, if you like the wrong button or forget to tweek a privacy setting, it could all become public very very quickly.   If you’ve got to do things you don’t want work seeing – stick to things like private messages etc – or use a different network.

There’s more tips on “How to use facebook and not loose your job” here.

So, that’s the scare tactics out the way.  Next, it’s time to look at the positives.  Why would you use this for work, how would you build a work network and, more importantly, what would you do with it?

That’s all Part 3, Coming Soon……

The most definite way to separate work and play on facebook is to have two profiles.  I know people who do this.  They have their work profile, with their work friends and their social profile with their old and new friends.  Initially, this seems like a great idea…but there are drawbacks.

1. Social Networking is concept that crosses boundaries.  Most of us socialise, at least to a point, with the people we work with and sometimes the people we have worked with in the past.  Anyone who works in a role that requires networking will also know that you don’t entirely switch off when you’re socialising.  If someone says they work in your field, you’re quickly getting their number.  So, which category to these people go into?  Work profile?  Social Profile?  Both?  There are times when you might even want this cross-over
2. It’s pretty likely that, unless all your work and social contacts never ever meet, your two profiles would collide.  For example, you get married and invite some colleagues.  They tag you in a photo under one profile (see part 2) and your friends in another.  The two both become viable and someone adds the “wrong” you.
3. Logging In – It’s hard enough to remember you passwords and emails for the accounts you do have – imagine remembering what account you’re logged in as as well.  It would be very easy to be logged in as personal and add a work contact and vise versa.

It’s worth noting that, if you have added anyone who is senior to you, anyone who has been into your shop, or someone who was your service user you’ve already crossed the line into using facebook for work.  So play it safe and think the whole thing through.

Assuming you d0n’t have two profiles, these are the stages I think for planning to make use of facebook professionally:

1. Think about how you are going to use your profile professionally.  Are you going to use it to network, or are you going to add customers / service users too?  Make your rules and stick with them.
2. Decide on some categories, which will later be used for setting privacy levels.  Would you, for example, want colleagues to be able to see some things that wider work colleagues could not?  For each setting, you will need to be able to group people.  Bare in mind that your needs may change.  For example, you may not have an issue with your boss seeing your whole facebook page…but what if things change?  You could create a new category then, but it’s probably easier to have the categories set up from the start.  I currently have 17 different categories on my facebook.
3. Check with your work about a social networking policy.  If they don’t have one,  do not assume you’re OK.  If they have one, read it and learn it.  If you think it’s unfair, bring it up with your manager, but don’t flout it.  If there is no policy try and get your manager to draw up some clear, written, guidance about social networking.  At least that way you know where you stand.  If you don’t, you run the risk that some other clause in your contract, normally one about disrepute, may be used against you.
4. Don’t assume that, because it is in your own time, your work do not have a right to say what happens.  You are interacting with colleagues, customers and potential customers in a very public way.  If you declared your work was boring on the shop floor you would be disciplined.  The same is true on facebook.  You can prevent certain people from seeing certain things (see part 2) but if it is findable through a way you’ve not thought of and it is found, expect consequences.  This story is a good example.
5. Look at your role and think about conflicts of interest.  Go through any groups, pages and anything else that could associate you with topics of people you don’t want to be associated with.  For example, if you work in local government, groups criticizing the council might not be a good idea, along with political groups.

After that bout of paranoia, it’s time to move onto setting the privacy control to make sure the right people see the right things.  That’s Part 2….coming soon.

When I started using facebook nearly three years ago, I had no idea I’d ever use it for work. However, I’ve found more and more use for it both socially AND professionally and, it’s fair to say, the two are not always mutually exclusive.  I now use facebook both as a social and a professional tool.  The groups I access are mainly work,  my time on facebook is fairly evenly split and almost exactly 25% of my 325 “friends” are work related.  I’ve used facebook to meet new work contacts, establish new professional relationships and keep abreast of the latest news and good practice.

I also spend a fair amount of time ensuring my professional and personal presence on facebook don’t run into conflict.   So, I thought I’d write a blog with some instructions on why and how to use facebook for work and some of the dangers involved in this. The resulting posts will then be published on my site as a downloadable file, along with any comments that come up along the way.

It should be noted that this guide will shos the use of facebook FOR work, not the issue of using facebook AT work.  While we’ll look at the issue of separating personal and professional content and not doing your personal contact at work, you might well find that your organisation doesn’t see a need for you to use the web socially at work.

Personally, I think that organisations with appropriate systems should let you, during your breaks (ie outside paid work time), access websites that are not against company interests and do not cost them additionally for you to access, as I think they should let you use telephones at your own expense.

However, there are many reasons both good and bad why many places of work don’t and, not being an expert on employment law and rights, it’s a minefield I don’t want to get into.  Increasingly, workplaces are seeing a key need for a professional use of social networking and are allowing those who make a business case for its use use it.  If you think you can do this, go for it!

Even if you can’t use it at all at work or from a mobile device, you may well still,  in your own time, till use facebook as a professional tool and there are things you may need to know and think about.

Finally, please note that I’m writing this about facebook because that’s the tool I use.  There are other social networks and Web2.0 tools that some of these rules apply to and others that they don’t.

Cue “working with facebook”

Part 1 – Mix’n'Match – Separating Professional & Personal

Part 2 – Privacy Issues – Who can see what and what’s not to see

Part 3 – Who you know – Building a facebook professional network