This year there are two candidates for the institute’s 2010 president elect: Paul Mylrea MCIPR, Director of Communications for the Department for International Development and Jenifer Stirton FCIPR, Director of Communications for NHS Lothian

It’s good to see two leading public sector communicators putting themselves forward at this critical time for the institute.

Looking beyond the (hopefully) short term financial problems at the institute, I believe it’s time for serious and radical change at CIPR to ensure it regains relevancy to its members and the business of public relations as a whole.

Having read through the pitches from both candidates, I’ll be supporting Paul with my vote. I’ve also committed to lend him what support I can with his bid, so please read on for a message from Paul about his plans for 2010 should his candidacy be successful:

Two years on the board has convinced me the CIPR cannot survive by gradual change. It needs major, urgent reform to re-engage with members. Like many institutions, the CIPR has succumbed to the temptation to prioritise the needs of headquarters over those of its members around the UK. Its public position has been eroded by its failure to keep pace with technological change and by competition from more nimble organisations.

Staff at HQ have undoubtedly worked hard to deliver professional services but now is the time to re-evaluate what we do, and how we do it.

We need to respect the tremendous efforts of those members who have kept the Institute going through its first 60 years and won it Chartered status, as well as the band of volunteers that keep it running in the regions and in sectoral groups. It is for them that we need to re-energise the Institute and secure its future in a digital age.

The UK is entering a period of austerity from which the PR industry will not escape. The CIPR’s Board and senior management must lead by example. That means more efficient use of staff resources, cutting out unnecessary spending, especially foreign travel, and squeezing the best return out of our new, well appointed and well-located offices.

We need immediate action to:

• Secure and build the finances
• Create a lean, professional centre that is outward facing, not London-centric
• Build membership and halt the high number of departures by giving existing members a reason to stay
• Build relationships with other professional bodies, such as the Institute of Directors and the Chartered Management Institute (where I am a Fellow), to make sure PR has a seat at the top table
• Work more closely with the PRCA, for the mutual benefit of both sets of members and for the good of the profession
• Create transparency and accountability to members and regions through online publication of agendas and minutes of board meetings (obviously respecting sensitive commercial or personnel issues)

There are opportunities. I believe my position at the heart of the Government Communications Network (GCN) will allow me to make the CIPR the professional body of choice for government communicators across the UK. I set up one of the CIPR’s first partnerships at Transport for London and I have been involved in persuading NHS London to create a new partnership, bringing in 100 more members. We need more of this and I have strong backing from the top of the GCN to make it happen. Building better links with the public sector, a key client for the industry, is vital for all members.

But it’s not just about the public sector. We have to give all members from whatever sector reasons to join and to stay involved. To do that, the CIPR has to change. I will assemble a team which will make that change happen.

I’ve designed the course for people working in public sector communications and engagement teams who need to know more about what social media is and how to integrate it practically into their communications and engagement mix.

The course takes place at The Studio in Central Birmingham from 9.45am to 4pm.

Places are strictly limited to ensure everyone gets the opportunity to participate and discuss issues relevant to their organisation.

There are just a few places left on this course. Book your place now here.

The areas the course will cover are:

Social media – the basics

• What is social media?
• Seven types of social media explained
• Usage statistics for the UK
• Why should your organisation care?

Using Facebook in communications and engagement

• Profiles, pages and groups
• Enhancing your presence – apps, content and updates
• Promoting your Facebook presence – growing your network
• Examples of Facebook in action in the public sector – good and bad
• What can the public sector learn from private sector use of Facebook?

Using Twitter in communications and engagement

• What roles can Twitter play in communications and engagement?
• Harnessing the power of Twitter to reach new audiences
• Getting the right content for Twitter – achieving shareability
• Integrating Twitter into the communications mix
• Understanding Twitter: hashtags, retweets and the rest
• Developing the conversation – follow etiquette on Twitter
• Attracting followers to grow your Twitter audience
• Examples of Twitter in action in the public sector – good and bad
• What can the public sector learn from private sector use of Twitter?

Social media relations – dealing with coverage on social media

• What is social media relations?
• Effective online monitoring
• The local online audit
• What to monitor and how
• Should you respond if someone says something bad about you?
• How you can respond to social media coverage of your organisation

Writing a social media strategy

• Components of a good social media strategy
• Gaining buy-in – the case for and against social media
• Implementing social media in communications and engagement
• Tackling the issue of blocked access to social media at work
• How to evaluate the effectiveness of social media

I get plenty of emails after conferences asking for the slides, so in the interests of sharing knowledge you’ll find them below. They’re also available for download here.

One thought about when publishing presentation slides here on the blog…I’m always a bit concerned that the slides are just a tiny bit of what gets said in the presentation – but people keep asking for them.

How useful are they really for those people that aren’t in the room at the time?

Freeing the immense amount of data held in councils, police and local health services has the potential to generate significant tangible and intangible value for the communities these public bodies serve.

As well as that, I believe there’s a role for reuse of public data in increasing the scrutiny that the public can put public authorities under – particularly in the context of a declining offline local media which traditionally held the role of holding local public services to account.
Kent County Council has an innovation unit that’s focussed on exploring new opportunities for local government.

The team has just launched an exciting new website that I think really shows the potential of opening up public sector data and promoting its reuse.

The site (picandmix.org.uk/) has two main parts. First up the data section shows all the different data sets that the council has managed to make available – as RSS or Excel downloads.

The second part of the site allows users to post mash-ups that they’ve produced with the data – for example using Google Maps or Yahoo Pipes.

It’s early days so there aren’t all that many mash-ups posted yet, although some early ones do give an obvious nod to the potential of this kind of thing in the future – for example the “schools by postcode” map is a simple mash-up that I would have found useful this time last yer when looking at primary schools for my son – in fact there’s no reason why this shouldn’t be on the main council site before long I expect.

At the moment most mash-ups are combining a single data set and a visualising tool (mainly maps). It’ll be interesting to see when someone posts a mash-up of multiple data sources as for me this is where the value of open data really starts to be demonstrated.

Hats off to Kent County Council for doing this – hopefully it will show other public bodies the potential for open data and we’ll start to see this kind of functionality appearing more often on main council websites.

If you have a spare few minutes please do help her out by completing her survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=SoSKuZzpOhJP4D_2b_2f43Y7BQ_3d_3d

For a while now it’s been clear that there’s a need for genuinely useful social media training for people working in public sector communications and engagement. That’s what I’ve put together – a practical, interactive and targetted day-long course that covers some of the most important issues in public sector social media today.

The first of these courses is taking place at the Studio in central Birmingham on Wednesday, 4 November.

To make sure the course is useful for everyone attending and to ensure everyone can participate effectively, numbers are strictly limited. The course has been on sale for a couple of weeks now, but there are still some places remaining.

For more information, prices and booking details check out the PSF website.

Future dates and locations for the rest of the series to follow soon.

proving value of twitter in soc med trg group – pls reply with your job/org to prove twitter is useful for work (convince sceptics in room)
10:53 AM Sep 16th from web

The answers were really useful, so I’ve published them here for future reference:

alncl @simonwakeman I use twitter for work every day. It provides examples of best practice and a chance to share problems and solve them together
11:00 AM Sep 16th from HootSuite

harry_harrold @simonwakeman I’m a project manager. Twitter helps keep up to date with best practise: I get help, I help others.
11:04 AM Sep 16th from web

escapetocreate @simonwakeman Am developing a new tourism business – twitter great for connecting me to people who want to work with and buy from me
11:05 AM Sep 16th from TweetDeck in reply to simonwakeman

ingridk @simonwakeman Policy /KM/project manager type role – Twitter essential for me in discovering new practice in gov, a network of the helpful
11:11 AM Sep 16th from TweetDeck

leejorgensen Looking 4 stats/research on social media use. Have @simonwakeman http://bit.ly/FjVLB & @lizayan LGEO http://bit.ly/VOtpw #lgcsoc #psfbuzz
11:12 AM Sep 16th from TweetDeck

charlottetwitts @simonwakeman PR for @Hillingdon. Great way to get news out quickly to colleagues and trade press. Good for networking. Handy to get ideas.
11:13 AM Sep 16th from TweetDeck in reply to simonwakeman

sharonodea @simonwakeman I’m an internal comms mgr, and I find Twitter invaluable for getting research and info in my field, networking with others
11:13 AM Sep 16th from web in reply to simonwakeman

abeeken @simonwakeman Web Officer/Lincoln City Council. Use of Twitter for networking with other councils helps to keep on top of trends & news
11:17 AM Sep 16th from HootSuite in reply to simonwakeman

abeeken @simonwakeman Has helped to add functionality to customer facing website that wouldn’t have been aware of otherwise.
11:18 AM Sep 16th from HootSuite in reply to simonwakeman

annaleeb @simonwakeman Media relations, Northants – love it for breaking news, making connections (professional and personal) and sharing woes
11:18 AM Sep 16th from Snaptu in reply to simonwakeman

TessaHallett @simonwakeman Communication Officer, Swale Borough Council
11:19 AM Sep 16th from web in reply to simonwakeman

lesteph @simonwakeman I’m Head of Digital Comms. Twitter keeps me in touch with stakeholders, gives me ideas and helps me promote our campaigns
11:20 AM Sep 16th from web in reply to simonwakeman

sharonodea @simonwakeman oops, forgot to say where I work – London Borough of Sutton
11:20 AM Sep 16th from web

pubstrat @simonwakeman Serendipitous connections: finding out about people, ideas and activities faster and better
11:20 AM Sep 16th from web in reply to simonwakeman

juliac2 @simonwakeman echo @ingridk + @lesteph – I’m in digital comms – good tool for quick updates and ideas – a network of the helpful
11:23 AM Sep 16th from web in reply to simonwakeman

Symmetry_PR @simonwakeman Can be v useful, depends on work/campaign. Gd 4 environmental scanning, issues & crisis mngt, relations. Not 4 product push.
11:25 AM Sep 16th from TweetDeck in reply to simonwakeman

pezholio @simonwakeman I find Twitter invaluable for networking and sharing ideas with people who I might never otherwise have met…
11:30 AM Sep 16th from Tweetie

pezholio @simonwakeman …With budgets tightening, it’s less easy to get out and about and meet people through the usual route of conferences too
11:30 AM Sep 16th from Tweetie

simoneverest @simonwakeman web strategist @defragovuk – share ideas with peers, feedback from end-users, up to the second news…
11:31 AM Sep 16th from web in reply to simonwakeman

danslee RT @pezholio @simonwakeman I find Twitter invaluable for networking and sharing ideas with people <-- echo that
11:32 AM Sep 16th from web

lozman74 @simonwakeman We use Twitter daily @NeLincs, have 300 followers and is vital and integrated part of our comms strategy. Take that, sceptics
11:35 AM Sep 16th from web in reply to simonwakeman

micheleidesmith @simonwakeman Web Dev Manager, Cambs CC. Use Twitter for same reason as @alncl and @abeeken. Also useful to keep up with UX and SocMed news
11:35 AM Sep 16th from TweetDeck in reply to simonwakeman

sharonodea @pezholio @simonwakeman I find Twitter much more useful than conferences. Potential for self-organised events like LocalGovCamp is great.
11:36 AM Sep 16th from web in reply to pezholio

bmwelby @simonwakeman Graduate Upstart Hull City Council - immediate access to network of thinkers & doers without being anyone or knowing anything
11:37 AM Sep 16th from web in reply to simonwakeman

LizBridgen @simonwakeman senior lecturer, PR, De Montfort Uni, Leics - keeping up to date with industry trends, networking (w/ex students in PR) +more
11:42 AM Sep 16th from TweetDeck in reply to simonwakeman

sarahjohnstone @simonwakeman I’m a senior public relations officer at Dorset County Council, cheers!
11:43 AM Sep 16th from Twittelator in reply to simonwakeman

paulgeraghty @simonwakeman A s/w dev involved in many niches whose ‘news’ do not obviously cross over using tw to highlight trends + x-seed common ideas
11:48 AM Sep 16th from web in reply to simonwakeman

paulgeraghty @simonwakeman in short tw helps me straddle communities and hopefully identifies me and my worth – also id likeminded souls – networking
11:50 AM Sep 16th from web in reply to simonwakeman

melanieharper @simonwakeman I agree with @pezholio and Twitter is very useful for keeping up to date – often it’s the first place I hear about things.
12:07 PM Sep 16th from Echofon in reply to simonwakeman

It was an experiment using a live blogging plugin to feed Twitter messages directly into Wordpress.

11:41:55 AM: time for the panel sessions, @dominiccampbell up first #lgcsoc

11:43:25 AM: #lgcsoc @dominiccampbell “welcome to the 30yr old blokes session” (that’s for you @carriebish )

11:46:24 AM: #lgcsoc @dominiccampbell playing video summing up key issues of trust, lack of information among residents,

11:48:02 AM: #lgcsoc social media not going away, convergence of customer service, engagement, communications

11:49:27 AM: #lgcsoc showing some strong networking analysis tools

11:50:03 AM: #lgcsoc london no1 city for twitter use (and equal 1st for facebook)

11:52:46 AM: #lgcsoc barnet leader now twittering his own expenses, sharing raw corporate/peer feedback on youtube <—impressive eg of openness

11:53:14 AM: #lgcsoc myidea4ca.com – crowdsourcing community ideas, bottom-up policy making

11:54:53 AM: #lgcsoc new shoutboxhq is corp moderation tool for twitter, but should is that desirable or just a pragatic response

11:56:15 AM: #lgcsoc @dominiccampbell talking about facebook advertiser tool as means for getting stats on who using fb in your area

11:58:23 AM: #lgcsoc “chill out a bit”

11:58:47 AM: #lgcsoc @dominiccampbell finishing, now it’s @davebriggs

12:04:06 PM: #lgcsoc @davebriggs talking about frustration of lack of adoption of online tools for effective online engagement

12:06:08 PM: #lgcsoc blogs not necessarily an online diary, it’s a medium for publishing stuff

12:08:10 PM: #lgcsoc 5 chars of blogs: freq updated, recent first, permanence of links, rss, commenting

12:09:11 PM: #lgcsocs blogs v search engine friendly <— very true but often forgotten

12:11:00 PM: #lgcsoc @davebriggs – it’s about stories – think about who can contribute stories

12:11:57 PM: #lgcsoc authenticity is key – people can see through ghosted, PR puff content on social media

12:13:19 PM: #lgcsoc blogs shouldn’t exist in a vacuum – need to engage in a conversation, use the power of links (sharing stuff freely)

12:13:53 PM: #lgcsoc “keep listening” – respond as appropriate

12:14:09 PM: RT @stuartclarkson: #lgcsoc Check out my podcast @rochdalecouncil http://feeds.feedburner.com/localmatters and let me know what you think!

12:15:03 PM: #lgcsoc @carlhaggerty @russ_t_uk now on

12:17:20 PM: #lgcsoc rel’n council site to soc media – use website as hub/co-ordinate content (<—-also add authenticity to external presence)

12:19:19 PM: #lgcsoc ugc – not many people in the room publishing UGC on council websites (<—-need to link to purpose/role of website)

12:22:21 PM: #lgcsoc caution – to do soc media integration takes time, knowledge – “don’t go storming in”, don’t create unfulfillable user expectations

12:22:45 PM: #lgcsoc “it’s all about people and conversations” – absolutely right

12:23:47 PM: #lgcsoc do people want to go to council website on daily basis? <—no they don’t -absolutely right, and need to remember that!

12:24:14 PM: #lgcsoc some thoughts on how to measure influence on social media, what value can be realised from being there

12:25:05 PM: #lgcsoc use web stats to monitor referrals (inbound traffic) from soc media sites

12:26:28 PM: #lgcsoc got to understand the platform to understand what is relevant in terms of success

12:27:26 PM: #lgcsoc @carlhaggerty and @russ_t_uk finishing – panel discussion sessions now, am taking a break from twitter to join in

Here are the slides from my presentation:

If you need to download the slides, you can do so here.

This post sets out a three-step model to effective social media relations in local government. It’s focussed on the business of proactively and reactively managing reputation through social media channels.

Step 1: Monitoring

The first step to doing social media relations properly has got to be to have a good understanding of the environment in which you’re operating – just as you’d undertake an environmental audit at the start of any communications project.

I think there are two parts to this when it comes to social media (and indeed the online world more generally).

The first is to undertake an audit of the local internet scene. This involves deep research into local websites and local presences on key social media platforms. The purpose is to identify key influencers and networks that exist online and relate to a local area. Try to understand who the key players are in these networks – what are their positions on issues that your organisation rates as important? How do these people link into existing offline networks of influence?

This audit can be quite a time-consuming piece of work and is only a snapshot of a particular time. The nature of the social web means new networks and influencers can emerge rapidly, but I don’t think that negates the importance of doing a proper online environmental audit on a regular basis.

Once you’ve got the audit out of the way, it’s time to think about setting up some regular online monitoring. There are plenty of paid-for solutions out there, but here are a few free services that can be used to set up a basic online/social media monitoring service:

• Google Alerts – particularly good for “normal” websites, blogs and online news sites. Provides web interface, email alerts and RSS feeds.
• Twitter Search – keyword and advanced search of Twitter messages. Provides web interface and RSS feeds. For email alerts try Tweetbeep.
• Facebook search – search people, pages, groups and places. Main issue here is that I haven’t yet found a reliable alerting system for Facebook so regular manual searching seems like the only option (this is probably because FB want to keep people on their site as much as possible – so search results aren’t exposed much through the site API).
• Backtype – good for tracking conversations in comments on blogs. Email alerts only, no RSS.
• Technorati – blog-focussed. Used to be one of my favourites, but doesn’t seem to pick up keywords as quickly/widely as Google Alerts on blogs now. Web based search and RSS feeds available.
• Icerocket – quite a broad search engine, but particularly useful as it includes MySpace results. Web based search and RSS feeds available.
• Socialmention – billed as “Google Alerts for social media”, this sites covers a broad range of social media properties, including bookmarks. Offers web-based search interface, RSS feeds, email alerts and downloadable results. Also has some sentiment and other metrics, although haven’t paid a lot of attention to these so far.
• Social media firehose – a raw Yahoo Pipes mash-up allowing you to search a whole bunch of social media sites effectively. Web-based search, RSS, email alertts and other options available.
• Nielsen Blogpulse – blog-focussed, but with plenty of trend and other analytics. Includes RSS feeds and email alerts.
• BoardReader – forum-focussed search engine. Offers RSS feed and email alerts.

(I don’t claim this list is by any means comprehensive, but these are the services that I’ve used over the past few years. If you have any more must-have free social media monitoring services, leave them in the comments below.)

When setting up alerts, it’s worth thinking broadly about the terms you need to monitor on. Consider places, issues, names of key people, organisations – and learn how to write more advanced search queries on each tool to eliminate unwanted results from your searches.

It’s also worth thinking about having accounts set up on key social networks that you can use to join groups – so that you receive notifications of group activities that don’t show up in normal searches. However this can be uncomfortable and potentially risky if officers need to use an identifiably personal account (that they may use primarily for their own personal home use) to join what could be controversial issue-related groups on a social network.

However even with this wide range of tools at your disposal, there’s no substitute for manually reviewing the results. There will often be overlap between results from different sources that arrive at different times that require careful reading and intepretation.

Step 2: Assessment

So you’ve got a pretty refined alerting system in place and you spot some social media coverage that sets alarm bells ringing. What happens next?

It can be tempting to leap straight to the conclusion that a response is the right solution, but now’s the time to sit back and assess what’s been said, by whom and how.

Is the person involved a troll (someone with a history of persistent narky, abusive, critical comments)? If they are, is it worth responding? In my experience it probably isn’t and tends to just incite further critical coverage.

Similarly if the content is obviously a joke, taking the mick or satirical, a response probably isn’t the right solution.

The assessment also needs to take account of that person’s influence – how influential are they in the networks you’ve identified in your local online audit? The more influential they are, the more likely your need to engage with them online to achieve your communications goals.

You also need to consider whether you can engage online – in local government there are restrictions on, for example, officers engaging in a political debate. If your assessment is that a particular issue could be construed as politically sensitive then remember the limits to your ability to respond as an apolitical officer.

Having thought through all these factors, there are three outcomes to consider:

• ignore and do nothing
• monitor and review regularly – and maybe if the content spreads or develops consider a different outcome
• actively engage

Step 3: Action

So if your assessment is that you need to act, it’s time to think about the appropriate way to do this.

I’m assuming here that as a communicator a mandate exists for you to engage with social media participants – which ideally would be something specifically enabled in the organisation’s social media or communications protocol.

In my experience the best way to deal with an “angry mob” situation, where there are a large number of people critical of the organisation, isn’t to wade into the public discussion to try to advance your case. It’s better to try to take the conversation forward with key influencers in the group either privately or on other channels.

For example this could mean asking for someone’s email address so that you can have a more considered and lengthy exchange of messages than is possible or practical on say Facebook or Twitter. Indeed for some tricky situations I think it’s preferable to try to have a direct telephone conversation with the person involved – this can help eliminate some of the misunderstandings that can creep into written electronic communications and can help establish a more personal relationship than is possible purely online.

Sometimes if the purpose of responding is to correct misleading or incorrect information, it may be the right course of action to post directly in response, either in the same place as the original coverage or on your own social media presence (and then placing a link as close as possible to the original coverage).

However if you do this, I think you need to be prepared to then engage in the inevitable subsequent online conversations that follow – to not do so could give the impression that the organisation isn’t prepared to genuinely engage and undermine the intent and purpose of the original intervention.

Regardless of the type of response you choose to make, I’d suggest a few principles that you must keep to:

• Transparency – disclose who you are and who you work for. To not do so is unethical, breaks professional codes of conduct and will most likely backfire when someone traces the comment back to you or your organisation
• Timing – social media moves fast and if not addresses quickly enough, the story can develop well beyond its original scope. This means having the organisational processes in place to respond quickly and accurately – who needs to sign off social media responses?
• Considered – once you’ve made your response, it’s out there on the internet and there’s no retraction – so you must be happy that what you’ve produced might be published in public (even if it was sent as a private message), quoted, interpreted, forwarded on and thrown back at you. Don’t publish in haste and take out unnecessary passion – if in doubt, ask a colleague to read it before hitting send.
• Tone and style – it feels like heresy saying this as someone responsible for corporate style, but you need to match the tone of your response to the environment into which it’s being published. YouTube has a different feel to its language than say Facebook or Twitter – your response needs to acknowledge this in the way it’s written. And the chances are writing in corporate style or (even worse) unintelligible public sector jargon won’t be at all appropriate.

Once you’ve completed your response, it’s time to tweak your monitoring to include potential impacts of your response and then start the whole cycle over again.

This three-step model is my initial stab at setting out a methodology for handling social media relations in the local public sector. It oversimplifies a lot of pretty complex and judgement-based decisions but hopefully provides a basic framework on which more complicated processes can be developed.

I’d be really interested in readers’ thoughts, comments and challenges to this model in the comments below.

For many councils and other local public services, “traditional” media relations remains the mainstay of their communications efforts.

I’ve been thinking about how transferable some of the skills of “traditional” media relations are into social media relations, which led me onto thinking more broadly about what social media relations means for councils.

So here today and tomorrow, for what it’s worth is my guide to social media relations for local government…comments, thoughts, criticisms and debate all welcomed in the comments.

Defining social media relations

For me, social media relations is a discrete practice of public relations which involves influencing reputation through direct two-way communications using social media.

The important element of this is the fact it’s two-way – just using social media as tools for broadcasting messages without being prepared to engage in a dialogue with the recipients of those messages misses a key facet of social media. Indeed not listening and engaging in social media can backfire for organisations and risk reputational damage itself.

Just like traditional media relations, there are proactive and reactive elements to social media relations. The proactive side involves deploying a planned approach to online PR with specific objectives, target audience and messages.

The reactive dimension of social media relations involves dealing with online content concerning the organisation, place etc and engaging if appropriate to try to put forward counter-views, arguments or correcting misinformation.

Why bother with social media relations?

So why should a council, the police or a local healthcare organisation be concerned with social media?

My first reason is that even if you’re not concerned about engaging with people through social media itself, it’s a very small step from a damaging story online becoming a damaging story in more traditional offline media.

Any local journalist worth their salt will be using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media sites as a rich vein of sources for local interest stories. As soon as they pick up an issue from there, they’ve got a ready-made story and will be on the phone for a comment right away.

But thinking beyond this, the public sector needs to think about social media relations as the online conversations people have on social media sites will be key influences on their perception of a particular place or organisation.

There’s plenty of evidence that one of the strongest drivers of perception is word of mouth, particularly from trusted sources. Those kind of conversations have always taken place in the “real world” yet organisations have never had the opportunity to hear what’s been said and been able to potentially join in the conversations too.

Social media, and in particular social networks, provide the opportunity for these word of mouth networks to function more quickly, grow rapidly and extend beyond the practical geographic boundaries that face to face networks experience.

And reputation and perception are increasinly important to the public sector. Increasingly the sector is being measured not on what it does, but what it achieves. Often these achievements are measured on people’s perceptions, not just what actually happens.

For example it’s not enough for crime rates to be falling, success or failure will be judged on whether people actually feel safer – and that’s about their perception (and all the factors that influence it) not just what happens on the ground.

Challenges for social media relations

Effective social media relations can be a real struggle for public sector communications teams.

At a fundamental level the organisation needs to be prepared to engage in two way conversations with its publics – which is a big cultural step for organisations that are more familiar with one-way or at best asymmetric two-way communications to take.

Practically this means getting buy-in to the approach before an issue arises – senior people are probably familiar with the “rules of engagement” when dealing with media enquiries, but before it all hits the fan on social media, they need to be equally comfortable with engaging on social media too.

That means it’s encumbent on the communicators to educate and prepare people for this eventuality before it happens, and take a leadership role when it does.

But the challenges for social media relations aren’t just internal. The external environment can pose some traps too. While some social media relations can be conducted without a dedicated presence or channel of your own (for example commenting on a blog or participating in a forum discussion), arguably the most powerful weapons in the social media armoury are those that you control yourself – your Twitter feed, Facebook page or blog for example. Without those channels set up and an audience (or more accurately a community) in place, an organisation’s right to reply or platform for participation in a debate is pretty limited.

Back in the early days of the internet, cybersquatting was a big issue (and for some people still is). The same’s the case now in the social media world. Anyone can go and register your council’s name on a social media site – and then do and say what they wish with it. As the legitimate organisation there’s very little you can do about it.

So getting out and taking possession of key names on the main social media sites is an important bit of digital land grabbing. Even if you’ve no immediate plans to use the sites, just having them prevents others from using them and means you can use them in the future if plans do change.

However it’s not practical to register for every single permutation of names, so it’s also important to prove the authenticity of your social media presences by linking to them from legitimate places on the web.

In my experience for councils the .gov.uk domain suffix is known and trusted by residents – so linking clearly from the council’s main website to genuine social media presences is important for achieving authentication (as well as making good marketing sense anyway).

Sometimes though the challenges from social media can come from within the organisation yet show up very visibly outside the organisation.

Social media gives a voice to those that previously may have not had the ability to reach large numbers of people with their messages. When those people are disaffected staff, the impact on organisational reputation can be huge – check out this example in the private sector.

This challenge has implications for both an organisation’s internal communications and the policies it expects its staff to abide by both at work and at home when discussing work-related topics online.

What do you think are the key challenges for delivering effective social media relations in the public sector?

What can be done to address these challenges? What can the sector learn from early adopters in the private sector?

In the second part of this series (published tomorrow) read my three steps to effective social media relations in public sector communications.

In their own words, Glum Councillors is a blog that

will doggedly collate images of councillors looking glum whilst pointing at holes in the road, wearing hard hats or presenting oversized cheques

Well worth a quick click over to http://glumcouncillors.tumblr.com/ for some light relief this Monday morning.

The ambitious year-long initiative aims to help the citizens of Medway eat better, exercise more and live longer. This is a great opportunity to work on a campaign that will make a difference to real people.

The successful candidate will relish being given genuine autonomy – and will be happy to be accountable for his or her own campaigns, as well as being able to demonstrate a track record of achievement.

The role involves working closely with the marketing and public health teams. Ideally candidates will have some experience of marketing within the NHS / local government / not for profit sectors – or will possess a genuine personal interest in these sectors.

Candidates need to be capable all-round marketers and up to speed with the latest trends including social marketing, web 2.0 as well as more traditional marketing techniques.

For more information and to apply click here.

Salary is £31,439 – £40,338 per annum.

Closing date is 16 September, with interviews on 29 September.

Previous applicants need not reapply.

This research was part of his university dissertation – it aimed to discover about web 2.0 and enterprise 2.0 technologies in local government and learn how the sector is embracing these new technologies. It also expored the factors inhibiting adoption of these technologies in local government.

There’s plenty of interesting data in there about current adoption of social tools and barriers to future adoption. Thanks to Ian for agreeing to share his information.

You can read Ian’s survey findings here.

I suspect the majority, me included, didn’t have the luxury of a media agency to do media buying for them so would have dealt directly with the usual outdoor media suppliers.

Not having an in-depth knowledge of the local area, I’ve always struggled to visualise where particular 48 sheet or 6 sheets sites are from the postcode-based listings provided by suppliers.

The other day I spotted the signposter.com website – you just pop in your postcode and the media type you’re interested in, and it returns a listing of local sites, their footfall figures, costs (should you buy through the website) and a map with the locations plotted. A fair few sites also have pictures of the actual outdoor advertising board itself.

This makes local outdoor advertising buying easy when you’re buying a few sites in a targetted area, which is what I suspect most councils do.

The website was launched earlier this year and claims it can provide 98% of all outdoor poster sitres. It allows you to purchase inventory from suppliers including JCDecaux, Clear Channel, Titan Outdoor, CBS Outdoor and Primesight.

I haven’t done any benchmarking on price to see how prices compare to the negotiated prices that you’d get if you purchased directly from the supplier, but the website certainly simplifies the outdoor advertising planning process if nothing else.

You can complete the survey here: http://bit.ly/nmksurvey

Plus if you complete it, you’ll have a chance to win an iPod Touch (there are two first prizes available) or one of five £20 iTunes vouchers.

We’re on the run-in to a general election, hotly tipped for early May 2010, which means more political activity around the business of local government. While communicators can’t and don’t engage in any politically-driven communications activities, the looming election does mean a changed context for decision-making and a whole set of different circumstances for communicators to operate in.

Plus when the election gets closer there’s also the purdah period to think about too.

Before then, local government communicators will also be handling the announcement of the first round of comprehensive area assessment (CAA) in early December.

While the Audit Commission presents the results of this unified assessment of all local public services in a resident-friendly website (oneplace, demo site here), local government communicators will be trying to explain that green and red flags aren’t opposite to each other in meaning, and the inevitable creation of league tables of the number of green and red flags isn’t really how the Audit Commission meant things to be.

Restructuring of communications functions in many councils continue too, whether driven by a need for more strategic and centralised communications, need to save money on non-frontline services, the fallout from local government reorganisation earlier this year, or indeed all three.

While the inevitable pain that restructures brings is bad, if such changes help raise the level of professionalism that local government communications demonstrates and help position communications folk as more than solely channel managers in the running of local government, then hopefully that will be a good outcome for those that survive the restructuring pain.

On the blog front, I’ve got some really interesting content lined up for the Autumn, including posts on creating the dream communications team in public sector communications, lots more on social media including policies, strategies and case studies, a few interviews and probably lots of other things that cross my path in the next few months.

So if you’re not already a regular reader, sign-up to receive the blog by email here or get the RSS here.

The recent and continuing suspension of Alastair Smith (Newcastle City Council’s web 2.0 communications advisor) from Twitter highlights a real risk for organisations using social media platforms as part of their communications strategies.

Commercial services, like Twitter, can decide the rules for who can and can’t use their platforms – usually with the best of intentions to stop spam usage, but sometimes automated systems can cause problems and if these aren’t resolved organisations could find themselves without access to a key part of their online communications armoury.

In emails with Alastair he’s told me more about what has happened:

So Al, what happened to your Twitter account?

I’m not entirely sure really. On Thursday afternoon I was trying to reply to a tweet about plings data being used to power an app in Bebo called the Boredometer. It’s in public BETA and was looking to highlight it through the council’s Twitter feed (@NewcastleCC). My updates weren’t appearing and I then got an error message telling me my account had been suspended. The message came and went and I had intermittent access to direct messaging until it became clear that the plug had well and truly been pulled.

What have you done to try to get your account re-enabled?

I tried to report the issue online, but Twitter’s “zendesk” system is blocked by our firewall. Instead I followed the instructions and emailed Twitter. At the weekend I used zendesk to register it as it said no support tickets were registered on my account and I could not check progress.

Do you know why Twitter have blocked you?

No. Twitter sent me an auto reply to my email with standard reasons for suspension, the content is as follows:

User Abuse

• a large number of people block the profile or write in with spam complaints
• aggressive following
• imbalanced ratio: the number of followers is small compared to number of people following
• misuse of the reply feature
• updates consist of duplicate links and/or text
• updates consist mainly of links and not personal updates
• updates consist of updates poached from others’ timelines, passed off as one’s own

Technical Abuse

• updates consist of links pointing to phishing sites, malware, or other harmful material
• a large number of accounts is created in a short amount of time
• an account is identified as belonging to a spam cluster

I would dispute all of the above and replied to the email to say as much. The standard email said that investigation of the above could take up to 30 days. I have yet to receive any further communication from Twitter.

Do you think you could have done anything that could have been interpreted as spam?

No. I’m very careful in what I use Twitter for as I use it as a work tool and am aware that if I can use it in a way that is beneficial to my employer I can create a business case for the extension of access to others in the organisation.

What would you say to other council staff for whom Twitter has become a day-to-day tool for doing their jobs?

A similar thing happened to another local government employee the day before I was blocked. His situation was resolved within 40 minutes, and I thought mine would be resolved in a similar timescale. My advice would be that you need a back up or reserve account to inform others of your circumstances. If it does last 30 days it will be very inconvenient, but it is not the end of the world.

If this had happened to one of the council’s main communication channels it may have been a different situation. I applied for ‘Verified Account’ status for our main account a couple of weeks ago and would advise others to do the same so that their main channels are unaffected.

What can councils do to protect themselves from this sort of problem?

Other than the above it would be useful if Twitter could look at the way it deals with large organisations, can workplace contacts be appointed to liaise between the two? It is also best practice to make sure people know the reasons that Twitter use to suspend accounts so that work accounts are not suspended for a legitimate breach.

How can people support you to get your account re-enabled?

People can visit http://act.ly/a1 and post a tweet from there to sign an online petition to Twitter support. We’re also using the hashtag #freealncl.

The survey is for his CIPR Diploma research project looking at ‘How Public Sector organisations are using social networks to engage with their stakeholders’.

The survey is at http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB229CYS67JSH.

It only takes a few minutes and I know Kevin would appreciate any public sector communicators taking the time to help him out.

It’s taking place on Wednesday, 23 September at The Odyssey Complex in Belfast.

I’ll be doing a new presentation focussing on “Projecting and protecting your organisation’s reputation and message online“, covering topics including

• What are the risks involved in real time, online engagement and how to manage them
• Establishing protocols for social media use for brand communication to your members, executive team and staff
• Using online tools to find out valuable insights into your customers/ audiences
• Measuring the impact of your online communications activities

Other speakers on the day will include Niall McKeown (Ion Online Marketing), Alex Butler (COI) and Gareth Dunlop (Tibus).

I’m particularly looking forward to this, partly because I’ve never been to Belfast before, but also because I’ve not met or heard the other speakers before and am sure I’ll learn a lot from them as well as meeting delegates.

For more information about the conference and to book click here.

If you’re planning to go to this event, leave me a comment here, email me or find me on Twitter.