• 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.

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.

Not too long ago I did a post about how Twitter and other social media being used in emergency situations.  Now, I don’t claim that millions of people in local government read this blog, let alone act on it, but very few people could have failed to notice the phenomenal rise in social media this year – and local government, along with the media, now think they are on board.

The first problem is that social media is a 24/7 media.  It doesn’t just work within working hours.  The second is that social media is not simply a new hi-tech version of old media.  Both of these problems were highlighted over the first weekend of 2010 and in the week that’s followed.

Firstly, a week ago, when a huge gas explosion ripped through a shop and flats in central Shrewsbury.  Like most news these days, I found out through social media, or facebook to be exact, when a friend living nearby changed his status to “WTF WAS THAT????  It sounded like a bomb”.  The media was on board too, with BBC Radio Shropshire and their presenter Jim Hawkins, amongst others, using Twitter to keep people informed of the situation.  The council’s Theatre Severn also made good use of Twitter, explaining the cancellation of the closing night pantomimes and the injury of one of the cast members in the explosion.  However, the main local authority twitter feed remained silent, a single Tweet from Friday warning people to avoid a bad batch of chick peas.

Meanwhile the people of Shropshire, or certainly those I follow on Twitter and Facebook, began talking about the story.  Photos started appearing and the BBC snapped them up and put them on its site.  Citizen Journalists fed out the story.  However, there was an issue.

Citizen Journalists, unlike their professional cousins, do not always filter news based on fact.  Rumours of deaths and exaggeration of facts spread quickly.  Luckily, the BBC provided sanity in this conversation, however the local authority, whose buildings were damaged, whose roads were closed, whose citizens needed reassurance, remained silent.  Wy have a twitter feed if you don’t want to join the conversation?  This isn’t an argument AGAINST local authorities using Twitter – it’s an example of why they need to think about how they use it and use it effectively.

That was the end of that story, but it wasn’t the end of my week of local authority let-downs.  Over the following weeks the snow really took hold and I was surprised to see how badly twitter and facebook were used by local government to put out information.

There are lots of issues around technology and snow, I’ve outlined them before and Digital 2020′s John Popham has also done an excellent post on the subject, so I won’t repeat it.  However, there were some points raised that do require further commentary.

John refers to mobile working practices being a solution to the snow.  It’s true that this would have alleviated many businesses problems and, as someone who is able to work flexibly, I was able to carry on close to normal working from home.  I say close to normal because mobile working is currently a fledgling idea and, in the way local authorities have often jumped into social media without a strategy some organisations have used the snow to do the same with mobile working.  We work from all locations and are used to it, but people who are used to the social banter and processes of the office can’t simply be told to work from home…it’s a major culture change that, while productive in many cases, can be damning if implemented without thought.  That’s not an argument against it, and, like John, I think a link to project nomad is needed to show where that thought and planning is taking place.

John also mentions being irritated by “heroic” attempts to get to work.  While I’d agree that it is always stupid to put lives at risk and that many people try to get to work when they don’t need to, I think that many people could easily have got to work if they tried.  This would have kept the systems of this country running better and meant the snow was far less of an “emergency”.  I went to work on the days I could and was very grateful to social media for keeping me informed about bus and train delays and closures.  Social media from other commuters and West Yorkshire Metro, I should add, not my local Bradford Council.

However, elsewhere, parents were panicking about whether their schools were open.   They weren’t as lucky in terms of social media help.  Back in Shropshire a local independent radio station got some school closures wrong and facebook was full of discussions and questions.  A conversation among citizens where everyone participated, except the local authority. Luckily, some inspiration was at hand in the form of Kirklees Council, whose Twitter feed (@kirkleeswinter) kept people informed about school closures and gritting and, in a pretty innovative approach for local authority Twitter, actually interacted and responded to questions citizens posed.  A great example, which I hope they’ll follow with a KirkleesEmergency so people can follow it for any crisis.

There will be sceptics reading this who wonder whether this is just the voice of geek, telling local authorities how communities work when really no one is reading social media.  To that end, I’ll put up this that I noticed on facebook from family in The Wirral.  I’ve blanked out the names and schools, but this gist is clear.  A teacher walked round the estate to tell parents when the school was open.  Why, one the parents enquires, couldn’t they have just put it on facebook?  Why indeed.

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.

I’ll let you do the reading, but, in a nutshell, it’s the report of a study that suggests young people could be damaged, emotionally, by using Twitter.  The reason being that we can process negative stories much faster than positive ones, leaving us with an overall negative impression.

The National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition looked at how volunteers responded to real-life stories chosen “to stimulate admiration for virtue or skill, or compassion for physical or social pain.”  Volunteers we’re brain scanned and the findings suggest the volunteers could process and respond very quickly to signs of physical pain in people, but took somewhat longer to show admiration of compassion. The argument goes that the streams of news are just a bit too fast for us to process.

Another argument the report makes is that this slow processing of admiration could lead to a lack of inspiration – I’d very much argue this, as there is much inspiration to be had from “top bloggers” and “celebrity tweeters”.  However, whether people are able to identify with a tweeter who talks about the positives in their life, rather than one who cries for sympathy , remains to be seen.

As an educationalist, I cite the wikipedia argument – That Twitter as THE source could be destructive, but as A source is constructive.

However, as a community developer I think this report also has a major impact for community technology, aside from the obvious implications of having a world with a broken moral compass.  Will community relations crumble if fast moving news fails to highlight the positives?

On Easter day a lot of questions were being asked on facebook about an apparent fatal stabbing in the area I used to live in.  It turned out that no one had been stabbed, no one had died and the police had only cordoned off an area of the town after a serious assault.  The rumour mill, fuelled by a lack of news on Easter Day, had gone into overdrive and this had spread into facebook groups and statuses.  Currently, facebook groups and statuses don’t seem to have the viral impact Tweets have – but as facebook changes itself Twitterward it remains to be seen if this stays the same.

Either way, the internet became a rife ground for rumours and by the end of Easter Sunday questions were being asked on a local radio facebook group and various statuses were buzzing with comments about the dangers of living in the area.  This could be looked at as a media issue, as they were slow with an online response.  However, I see it more as a community one.  After all, any damage that was done to community safety or cohesion by the false rumours would be felt in the community.

Many will argue that when the real news came through, it would just quell those rumours.  However, this report suggests otherwise.  It also suggests that a community organisation having a tokenistic twitter feed or reassurance officers posting positive tweets won’t counter the negativity and stigma that rumours and negative tweets could cause.  However, from a PR point of view, someone to react quickly to counter the viral spread via twitter might go some way to controlling the message.  Highlighting the positives may take longer, but in the fast news culture,  shouldn’t that mean we get started now?

They’ll be many who will use these comments, and the report, to point to a Web2.0 Fuelled break in society, one that needs real people, in the real world, to fix.  The fact is that speed has become the essence and, while we may all benefit from slowing down a touch, there is little chance of that happening very soon.  There can be no doubt that there is an element of truth in their arguments for a real world fix – but there is also truth in that I found out about this report through seeing it on @jangle’s twitter feed.  How did you find this?