The Use of Social Media in Local Authorities

THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN LOCAL

AUTHORITIES

Mark O’Toole,

Kilkenny County Council.

Topics What is Social Media?

Some of the most common social media tools and examples of those tools in use

Why Should local government use Social Media?

5 Steps to implement a social media strategy

Monitoring and interacting with social media

Some sample social media policies and guidelines

Some barriers to implementation.

What is Social Media?

Shift Happens New Web 2.0 tools facilitate

collaboration. Team based work / collaboration Internal Collaboration / Collaboration

with engaged citizens Knowledge Management- managing

implicit knowledge(connecting people across departments and hierarchical boundaries)Digital Divide / Net-Generation - prepare for the future but don’t exclude anyone

What is Social Media? What is Social Media (Web 2.0)? Content, Conversation,

Communication, community- it is not broadcast only. User-Generated Content Users Want to Create and Co-Create Content Edit Content Rate Content Comment on Content Discuss Content Tag and Organize Content Mash Content with other Content Personalize Content Share Content

What is Social Media

Some of the most common tools..

•Blogs

•Microblogs

•Social networking

•Widgets

•Wikis

•Video/photo sharing

•Podcasting

•RSS

•Mashups

•Webinars

•Virtual worlds

•Social news

•Social bookmarking

Architecting for Collaboration Organisational Culture (reward hoarding

or reward sharing?) Management approach (open or

controlled?) Staff skills (training/exposure to tools) Budgets (proprietary enterprise software

or open source?)

RSS(Really simple syndication)

Google Reader

Blogs

External Government Blogs

Wikis

http://www.screwturn.eu/ open source wiki ASP.NET

External Wikis – Kilkenny County Council Local Area Plans

Lap.kilkennycoco.ie

Youtube

Flickr- Bring your photos to the people

Podcasting

Microblogging

Facebook

Facebook

Social networking isn’t just for young people- there are over 1.2 million Facebook users in Ireland

Age Profiles of Irish Facebook Users

(Mulley Communications January 2010)

162,880 1,114,780 774,100 514,220 30186,040 40

70,600 50

18 and under18 and over25 and older30 and older40 and older50 and older

Social Bookmarking

Social Boomarking

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbbmcNgpXcg

Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing

Why Should Local Government use Social Media?

To successfully implement social media tools for your organisation You will need..

an understanding of social media a clearly defined strategy the right tools the job the resources to implement your plan

Step 1 step 1- understand social media tools

learn how they work and what they offer they can allow you to:

enable internal collaboration allow information sharing with external partners exchange information with the public keep pace with fast moving events in real time harness the collective ingenuity of the public to

support your mission

Step 2

Focus on your goals and choose the right tools

to solicit the public’s thoughts on an issue you could ..

send out an email post a notice on your homepage Tweet a question write a blog post inviting customers to share

their ideas as comments (or use custom sites to invite feedback, fixmystreet, lap.kilkennycoco.ie)

Step 3 make sure you can support multiple communications

tools social media sites that sit untended can lose their value very quickly-remember -it’s a conversation

allocate or reallocate resources to implement the tools you have chosen, like any business tool , social media requires an investment of resources in order to make it work, this investment will likely primarily be staff hours.

after an initial investment you may find these tools enable your staff to work more efficiently and quickly and improve performance

Step 4 before implementing plan, define what success

looks like and how you are going to measure it. often social media can save money. but its strength really lies in increasing audience engagement which helps you accomplish your mission.

examples of measurements include subscriptions page views blog views clickthroughs

Step 5

implement your plan, like any project, using social media requires strategic thinking.

start small and see which

initiatives work and which don’t

Monitoring and Interacting with Social Media

Create feeds to search the ‘blogosphere’ Create feeds to search twitter Create feeds to search google news

(DEMO of Google Reader and Google Realtime) Twitter is the place to be for breaking news and ‘live’

stories. #latelate #morningireland #rtefl (the Frontline) #rtept (primetime) search for these hashtags on

search.twitter.com during the programmes and you will see the debate unfolding across the country.

Feedback 2.0

key principles - openness -collaboration –community transparency-trust

Social Media Policies

Guidelines for Participation online

UK Civil service CodeThe Code sets out the four core values that underpin

every civil servant’s work. Integrity – putting the obligations of public service

above personal interests Honesty – being truthful and open Objectivity – basing advice and decisions on

rigorous analysis of the evidence Impartiality – acting solely according to the merits

of the case and serving governments of different political parties equally well

UK Civil Servant Guidelines for online participation

Principles for participation online 1. Be credible Be accurate, fair, thorough and transparent. 2. Be consistent Encourage constructive criticism and deliberation. Be cordial, honest and professional at all times. 3. Be responsive When you gain insight, share it where appropriate. 4. Be integrated Wherever possible, align online participation with other offline communications. 5. Be a civil servant Remember that you are an ambassador for your organisation. Wherever possible, disclose your position as a

representative of your department or agency.

Barriers to implementation All interactive websites pose certain security

risks- from webmail to filesharing. Find a balance. In the US the CDC have a

network of PCs on a network specifically resourced to allow staff to utilise social media. These PCs are not connected to the organisations primary network.

Most companies seem to be using these tools without problems.

Security issues become public and are solved very quickly

Further resources

My blog:

www.rialtas.net

[email protected]

Twitter: @convex02l

See also: webcontent.gov

My Delicious Bookmarks around this talk are at:

http://bit.ly/9W0lAZ