Social media managers and people with similar roles sometimes get a rough ride in the wider digital community.
It’s seen as the fluffy lighter-weight end of the digital spectrum. If you want to do big or meaningful things, you’ll probably want to build a website or transform a service.
I think the high profile of innovative social media marketing has something to do with this.
It’s not helped by comments like the one below, which I do understand.
I’m convinced huge swathes of hapless new / social media consultants have rebranded to digital transformation.
1. Social media is often the right answer to colleagues who would otherwise insist on building something
2. It keeps organisations true to their audience, to listen
3. It helps us observe behaviours and the ways people are consuming information
4. It gets organisations in the habit of measuring and being critical about numbers, in a way that website stats never managed
Being a supplier means that sometimes it is easy to make assumptions about the people and organisations we work for.
‘Organisation X have the same problems as all the others in that sector’
‘It was the usual thing when the brief came in’
‘They don’t need (what they’ve asked for), they need this thing’
And so on.
Sometimes we all need help to listen more carefully. To not make assumptions, or project our ideas or frustrations on the requests that others are making.
It’s also important for us to recognise what we need, and request it clearly – and politely – from others.
Generally we’re not that bad at this, as a team. But when work is stacking up, it’s easy to relieve the pressure by projecting our frustrations on to the requests we receive. There’s no such thing as a stupid question or a bad brief – we just haven’t yet identified the need behind it.
A common source of frustration might be a request to close up white space on a web page. When we hear that, it’s easy to think ‘what do they know about design?’. In fact, the client may be under pressure to find space for competing priorities, or to satisfy a perception that less white space equals greater value for money.
Whatever the real need; pausing to consider, and listening attentively to find out the answer, is invaluable.
Easy enough to say this in a few lines on a blog, but more tricky to put in to practice every day.
For that, we’ve been working with Max St John and Wild Things – his alternative business school.
Max has run a workshop for the Helpful team and been visiting our office once a month, to help us apply a form of Non-Violent Communication, which he calls Collaborative Communication, to our work.
It’s early days, but I feel there has been a real difference in how our team copes under pressure. We’re not a consistently serene, happy and forgiving ship, and nor should we ever think we can be – Max is pretty clear on that. But the value in simply recognising when we are getting into a judgement cycle is brilliant. The atmosphere is lightened and we can all have a laugh – recognising that it is us who are wrong in the first instance, and working together to identify the real need behind clients’ requests.
It is now OK for us to get frustrated, openly, but work together to lighten the load and get to the nub of the problem. And that means we’re better able to help our clients too.
If you’re working in a team where blame and frustration are creeping in to projects, then I’d encourage you to get in touch with Max.
This month we’ll complete a project to kick start digital engagement for a relatively small, but important, organisation. The delivery has involved reviews, planning, strategy, pilot projects and training: I feel like I have spent time with everyone, from the CEO to the newest recruits.
What made this project tempting to us, was the fact it had been commissioned by a team other than communications. This is unusual for us, but very welcome. We’re always keen to work with people who are on the front line, seeking audiences beyond media and wanting to get involved in conversations.
The challenge for an established organisation is that they’re used to channeling conversations, statements, broadcasts and engagement, through the communications team. Typing this blog post as I am (as I would have done years ago when employed by big Government departments) and hitting the publish button of my own accord, has been a completely alien concept for the staff we talk to. Without evidence of regular digital engagement from within the communications team, the rest of the organisation feels a little more nervous.
Digital can, and should, live everywhere in an organisation. But it really helps if the communications team are confident digital practitioners. They should have oversight of the critical messages coming out from any organisation, but they also have a responsibility to disseminate digital engagement, and empower their colleagues.
In the case of our latest project, the communications team became some of our best participants and proved to be fantastically flexible, encouraging and enthusiastic.
I used to think it was all about wresting digital from shrinking communication teams. Now, I’m changing my mind. Organisations need a safe blanket: confident digital communicators who encourage and empower.
There’s this great event each year called Govcamp. It comes along at the end of January, which is just the right time for some inspiration, group therapy and sharing ideas.
I couldn’t possibly cover all the topics that found their way on to the agenda this year. You can catch up on much of the conversation by reading the live blogs.
There was one common theme to all the sessions I attended, that deserves more airing. That theme is trust.
We rely on trust in order to get things done. No one person can control all the information flows, relationships and projects in any organisation. When you employ someone, you make a judgement call about their abilities, their strengths and their weaknesses. On this you base the amount that you pay them, and the type of work you give them.
On the basis that most people go to work to earn money, need to earn money and want to continue to earn money, you should be able to trust them to handle information and conversations with proportionate care. That’s at any level of an organisation.
All this is missing when we try to control how people use collaborative platforms for work, or decide whether or not they can use social media to bring value to an organisation.
In fact, when an organisation says ‘you can only use our XYZ intranet’ or ‘you can’t access Youtube’, what they’re saying is ‘we don’t trust you’.
About a year ago I started renting a garage near home. This was for various complicated reasons involving a dinghy, some classic car speculation, and various mountain bikes in states of disrepair.
As it happened the boat never materialised and the car was sold to fund something rather boring.
So, logically, I should have let the garage go. Instead, I've been working out ways to fill it with other things, none of which I really need.
We expand to fill the space that is available.
And it gets worse. The bikes that now luxuriate in their own dry space, carefully stacked and surrounded by just-in-case tools, are sometimes treated to new bits: special tyres for tackling mud, or better brake pads.
This is because I am a sucker for a good bike shop, and surely the way to improve my PB for ascending the North Downs, or tackling that awkward berm on the common is by buying better equipment? Nothing whatsoever to do with my own ability, naturally.
We focus on products to solve problems, rather than behaviour change.
In the office we are going through a Ways of Working review: identifying the things that might better contribute to efficiency, productivity and well being in the workplace. Having recently worked my way through Culture Shock and Peopleware, I am more interested in these ideas than ever.
However, I've noticed that unlike the values from these books, people tend to get a bit hung up on the visible changes and 'design' of these new ideas. Open plan meeting spaces, bring-your-own-device and mobile phones instead of desk phones are seen as the catalyst for improvement.
My worry is that, like my surplus garage and the shiny bits on my bike, none of the changes above really get to the crux of typical workplace problems like prioritisation, inefficient meetings or general workloads. In fact, if my use of cloud tools is anything to go by, it's all too easy to get suckered into handling even more information and losing focus.
What most workplaces need to do is get to the heart of what causes inefficiency and resulting unhappiness or stress. And it's not about hardware or the way in which space is designed. It's how this stuff is used or abused in the first place.
So, instead of testing and deploying new furniture and equipment I'd like to see:
1. Email accounts restricted by memory size. Let's say 5MB tops.
2. The ability to send emails restricted to just two 30-minute windows every 24 hours
3. Much less closed meeting spaces, to get people out of the habit of holding meetings, that don't really need to be so formal in the first place
4. Knock down the surplus meeting rooms and use left over furniture – the less of it the better. That way we stand and focus on what needs solving, not the colour of the fabric
5. Cut out messaging around the building that doesn't specifically and directly link with the organisation's priorities
6. Give managers the freedom to structure teams and projects in a way that audiences will understand, and that delivers results, not just replicating historical structures
Some of these are quite basic, and others more fundamental, but it would be a start. Know anywhere that has done this already? Do tell me.
In the meantime I'm off to clear the garage and get fit.
Here’s ten memorable digital communications ideas that I came across in 2011. Some are genuinely useful, some are just for fun and the rest simply caught my eye.
If you have more please add them below.
1. Tweetathons: they won’t change the world, but they do raise awareness. Take a look at this example from Southampton University Hospital.
2. When I visited Doctors 2.0 earlier this year, one of the speakers, Lucien Engelen, offered attendees who checked in on Foursquare a free copy of his book to download from the venue.
3. A creative, balanced, engaging series of films on the personal risks of using social media, from the Ministry of Defence.
4. A fun and informative Facebook page for Blackburn residents that keeps them updated on snow, gritting and the effects of winter in their local area.
5. A web cam for watching ghosts at Salford City Council’s Ordsall Hall Museum. Seriously.
6. A creative and moving social documentary about a Canadian town that disappeared from the map.
7. The digital engagement game – great for helping colleagues get their heads around all the different tools that are out there, and how to use them.
8. 2011 must be the year of the tweet chat: #nurchat, #twitjc, #nhssm to name but a few health communities. Hundreds of people talking, tagging and sharing at an appointed time each week, and continuing the conversation after hours.
10. And last but not least, a cheeky plug for #NHSXmas. Starting on Christmas Day, NHS organisations will be tweeting daily health messages that rhyme with the Twelve Days of Christmas. Read more about it and get involved here. I’m sure it will become a top idea from 2011…
Crowdsourcing is one of those evergreen buzz words that always looks good in a digital communications plan, but rarely gets used. Letting people review, rank and rate their own ideas is a difficult concept to sell within any organisation. If moderated in a fair way, you have very little control over the outcome, and people’s expectations of what will happen afterwards need to be managed.
Despite these problems, crowdsourcing is a very exciting way to start a conversation on the web.
Crowdsourcing:
doesn’t ask for much: A few sentences, a vote or a comment.
is fun: Its like voting for the X-Factor winner, but without the stage smoke, nervous pauses and behind-the-scenes gossip.
provides analysis: Instead of wading through a mass of mixed up comments at the end of an engagement exercise to try and identify themes and trends, these can be identified as the exercise progresses.
helps manage comments in a more constructive way: Long comment threads on a blog post or forum mean that people end up duplicating the same points, or missing crucial information.
But crowdsourcing also demands:
time to moderate: Duplicate ideas still crop up, and they need to be merged.
promotion: It almost goes without saying that people need to know they can take part.
explanation: Crowdsourcing is quite tricky to explain to people, so you need to talk them through it.
objectives: If you don’t have these, then you won’t know whether 1, 100 or 1000 ideas is a good result.
These are just some initial thoughts, based on a few days’ experience with Maps and Apps. The Department of Health is asking people to nominate their favourite existing health apps, or share their ideas for health apps they would like to see. The maps bit relates to the fact that many will be based on geolocation or mapped data.
We are using Ideascale as the crowdsourcing platform. Its ready-made, cost effective (we’ve bought an annual license so can use it for other projects) and quick to set up, which is very important. So far, the support has been good and they were even open to a little bit of negotiation on the price of the licence. I have played around with it before, for small projects and demonstrations, so it is a bonus to finally use it properly.
Originally we were aiming for around 1000 ‘interactions’ with the site: votes, comments and entries. After just a few days we are well on track to meet this target, but we have to keep up the momentum in the coming weeks.
The fact that people are using the space to talk to each other, share links, debate and connect is probably the most pleasing result so far.
Take a look, and let me know what you think. All feedback gratefully received.
What might a press office look like, if a selection of the brilliant and (mostly) free digital tools were put to work?
I’m thinking about a real world scenario: where budgets are lean or non-existent, so I won’t be suggesting iPads for every press officer. And I recognise that not everyone is a confident social media user, so the emphasis is on listening rather than engagement. I am also trying to be realistic about how important social media channels are perceived to be on the media scale. While social media plays a role in keeping abreast of breaking news and opinion, it is not considered as important as the daily front pages or TV news.
My thoughts have been centred on press offices in Government departments or other public sector organisations, but I think the same principles could apply anywhere where there is a requirement to monitor and react to the news.
Listening to the web
The press office I have pictured in my mind has a TV screen for displaying a social media dashboard; searching all the different networks for key terms like the name of the organisation, names of Ministers or leaders, or key policy areas or products. By putting social media up on the wall, where everyone can see it, alongside traditional news broadcasting, the press office is making a statement about the channels it monitors.
There’s a useful post here about monitoring news and debate online.
Typically a press office might be divided into different desks, each covering specific topics. The staff working on each of these will have more niche monitoring requirements such as following specific journalists or perhaps technical terms. It’s important they have a Twitter profile, to follow and read what their contacts are saying. Having a Twitter profile doesn’t mean they have to engage, as long as they are clear about who they represent and the purpose of the account: i.e. just to listen.
I think it’s also important that a press office has its own collective digital profiles across different channels, so that journalists can choose their channel of preference to make contact. Perhaps a press office twitter account like this one from the FBI(!) and blog, for starters.
Collaborating with each other
A great deal of press office time is also taken up with collaborating on writing press releases, statements and agreeing lines. Google Docs is ideal for this. It isn’t as secure as some would like, but I think the risks posed by multiple versions of documents flying around between random copy lists is far greater. There’s always Huddle or Basecamp for an added sense of privacy, plus shared calendars for identifying important events and milestones.
Email traffic can be huge, so some sort of instant messaging system would be ideal, such as Blackberry Messenger, Skype or Yammer.
A shared delicious account is ideal for clipping and sharing relevant news reports and features, without having to constantly email links to the whole office.
Creating content
Visits and events constitute a huge amount of work for many press offices, so it makes sense to come away with some original content that can be used now, and at a later date. Budget flip cameras and tools like audioboo allow press officers to quickly and easily film or record events, or previews of speakers.
Webchats can open up media briefings to many more journalists than would otherwise be available to visit the office in person, and materials such as presentations, photos or film can be shared during the chat, and afterwards. Transcripts of the webchats are available after the event, for those who couldn’t attend and for reference at a later date.
Sharing content and information with press and the public
Incoming phone calls with requests for standard information like quotes, copies of press releases, stock imagery or important dates can be time consuming, which is where the web can help house and share all this information.
A dedicated RSS feed might help keep enlightened journalists up-to-date. Stock imagery sorted into sets on Flickr provide a one-stop-shop.
A daily email summary of press releases and announcements is another option for keeping contacts updated. These can be generated automatically from some websites using tools like Feedburner.
Some of this might be wishful thinking, but I reckon a lot of could be deployed quickly and cheaply. Corporate IT and security could throw up some challenges like downloading Skype or uploading video. But listening to what’s being said online, and using effective tools to collaborate with colleagues should be a no-brainer.
Does any of this sound familiar or too far fetched? I’m keen to hear your experiences, good or bad.
There’s more than one way to raise the profile of a press office
