Playing a part in the digital revolution

I’ve been blogging for around three and a half months now – a mere drop in the ocean in the 12 year long history of blogs - yet for me it feels like an achievement, albeit a small one.

By playing an active part in the blogosphere I’ve been able to keep up to date with not only news, but opinion; I’ve taken part in conversations with people in the United States, Canada and Australia – in part thanks to online network PROpenMic; I’ve probably spent more time than is healthy logged on to the internet; but more importantly to me as a communications manager, I feel I’ve become more informed about the part social media has to play in my professional life.

I’m not suggesting I’m suddenly an expert in what is a complex and constantly changing digital world, I’ll leave that (for now…) to people like Chris Brogan and Seth Godin. However I do feel able to make meaningful contributions to workplace discussions about online marketing, corporate blogs, or the use of social networks. In fact one of the projects I’m working on at the moment even mentions Twitter and viral videos in the comms plan – not something most people would expect from a public sector organisation.

In the last week we’ve seen the government’s vision of a digital Britain and although it hasn’t met with universal approval / has been greeted with much derision (delete as appropriate depending on whether you work in digital media) it does mean that we are heading towards a society where there should be equality of access to online resources, and for a comms professional that’s a pretty interesting place to be at the moment.

What am I doing?

At the risk of this sounding more like a domestic diary entry than a PR and new media blog, I’ve just taken a few days off work to go and pay a long overdue visit to some old school friends. (When I say old, I don’t mean they’re about to start drawing their pensions, just that I’ve known them a very long time).

Anyway, once the gossip about relationships and family is out of the way, conversation frequently turns to work. Now, my friends all have very admirable careers – a teacher, a musician, a health worker – and I understand what they do; I’ve been to school, I go to concerts and I’ve been treated (very well) in hospital. But when it comes to explaining what I do for a living I have a feeling that they don’t quite get it. It may be that I’m not explaining myself very well, but it may also be that my work as a corporate communications manager just isn’t as tangible.

I’ve had this before. When I used to be a broadcast journalist I could be heard reading news bulletins on various radio networks. Friends and family who used to tune in could hear me do my thing for three minutes every hour, but I frequently got asked the question, “but what do you do for the other 57 minutes?”

So what do I do now? Well, I’m currently working on communications strategies for a couple of really interesting initiatives which will rear their heads in the next few months, one in health and one in technology. And while both of them will ultimately have an impact on improving the lives of people in this country, neither of them are public-facing. I don’t work for a local authority or an NHS trust, I can’t say “I wrote the leaflet you see in the waiting room” or “I designed that poster at the bus stop”; what I do mainly happens in the background, in meetings, in offices and with many hours in front of a computer screen.

I’m not saying that I want to change my job just so it’s easier to tell my friends what I do for a living, or to get any specific recognition for my work. It’s just I chose to work in the public sector because I wanted to make a difference and because I believed in the ideas I was being asked to communicate, and sometimes when you’re so far removed from the people whose lives you’re trying to touch, it’s difficult to see if you’re actually making a difference at all.

Facebook revisited

A fellow MSc student’s post about the public sector and Facebook has inspired me to revisit a topic I first mentioned back in November last year.

As Lee states, a number of NHS organisations are now using facebook as a way to engage with their local communities, and I think in part the drive for trusts to become successful Foundation Trusts has encouraged this interaction. But she rightly asks the question, are any of these sites really capturing the imagination?

Late last year the NHS communications community took part in an online forum specifically looking at digital and social media. While the majority of people were asking questions about how best to use facebook and wikis to spread the word about their organisation, there were a number of posters who were keen to share their success stories. One which generated a lot of publicity was South West Yorkshire Mental Health NHS Trust which set up a group not only to encourage foundation trust membership, but also to challenge the stigma around mental health issues. The discussion forums aren’t bursting, but they’re there and the last post was only 3 days ago.

Unfortunately, one of the issues still seems to be that many NHS trusts block access to facebook so even if a successful site was established, staff wouldn’t be able to get involved, at least not during work hours. Another is the facebook bandwagon. Are trusts setting up facebook pages just because everyone else is? Or because they’ve actually thought about their communications objectives, the benefits for their target audiences and are convinced they’ll get value from it?

So to answer Lee’s question, are any NHS trusts creating a facebook buzz? When I searched for NHS groups I got over 500 results, But aside from the one mentioned above, other organisations with a fairly healthy and active membership include I’ve signed up for the NHS organ donation register and The North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust.

Now, they may be buzzing in their own way, but compared to the real facebook champions – Wispa and Obama – they’re only quietly humming.

That nagging feeling

Last week was particularly busy at work, I assume because everyone was returning from the Christmas and new year break and all of a sudden everything was frantically urgent.

So in between lots of last minute meetings, and becoming one of the east coast main line’s best customers, I must admit I didn’t have an awful lot of time for my virtual existence and I neglected my RSS feed. Now, despite singing its praises just a few weeks ago, it seems that if you overlook it for any length of time it turns from being something really useful into a evil entity which nags you until you just give up and finally press the ‘mark all as read’ button.

I only subscribe to around 40 feeds, and I know other people who have hundreds, so unsurprisingly I’m not the only person who thinks this. I use Google Reader and in their December update they acknowledge that RSS anxiety is a common feeling. Therefore they’ve come up with a solution – hide the figure that shows the number of unread posts. While I acknowledge it may be less stressful if you don’t know how many posts you haven’t read, it doesn’t actually solve the problem – ie you still haven’t read them.

So, I think there are a number of possible ways forward:

1. Unsubscribe from some of my sites
2. Make an effort to monitor the feed – little and often should be easier
3. Find more time in the day to spend online (perhaps I could give up the day job…)
4. Realise that I’m not going to be able to read everything and stop worrying about it

Any other ideas?

Is it time to Tweet?

Here we are in 2009 and the blogosphere is full of people predicting the next big thing.

Debbie Weil says 2009 will be the year of the video (which has also been endorsed by a social marketing colleague in a quick chat across the office desk). And according to Rachel Cunliffe on Mashable it’s the year that Twitter is going to change the way we blog. Aside from the fact I’ve only just got my head around blogging, I’m starting to hear more and more about the benefits and possibilities of tweeting.

So here’s a challenge to the readers of this blog. If you’re a Tweeter, tell me why I should join in. Is it really going to change the way I work? Or will it be all over by the summer? If you can persuade me, I promise I’ll give it a go…

A change 4 healthy marketing

The Department of Health is tapping into the new year zeitgeist with its latest public health campaign.

Change 4 Life, a long term anti-obesity initiative, is one of the biggest examples yet of a governmental cross-media social marketing campaign.

Not only is there an interactive website, but alongside the traditional advertising media there are also TV tie-ins, a You Tube channel and even a presence on Flickr with photos from the making of the TV ad.

The advert itself was released online before its TV debut and there was a lot of buzz about the animation being done by Aardman Animations, the creators of Wallace and Gromit (or Morph for those of us with longer memories).

So they’re clearly taking this one seriously. But just two days after the launch the backlash has already started. Some commentators are complaining about the partnerships with multi-national corporates, while some members of the public are already clear they don’t want to be told what they should or shouldn’t do to change their lives.

But the fact that the conversation is happening shows that the messages must be getting out there. It’ll just be a little time before we find out whether they’re making a difference.

Who’s responsible?

There’s a fascinating conversation raging online at the moment, sparked by this interview given by the Culture Secretary Andy Burnham to the Telegraph newspaper.

The main issues that have sparked the debate are the idea that the internet could be subject to the same age ratings as DVDs and video games in order to protect children from “offensive” content. And also a comment that the minister made about plans to talk to the new US administration in a bid to draw up international rules for English language websites.

This of course has led to plenty of comments (not just from bloggers, although they’re well represented) about who exactly owns the internet – not the UK government it seems, and do we really need a nanny state when there’s netnanny?

Also interesting is the number of posts from people who think that Mr Burnham’s comments show a complete lack of understanding about the internet and how it works. One of most vociferous is on the prolific TechCrunch blog which offers some opinions on why age ratings, and government intervention as a whole, cannot work online.

To date the Telegraph piece itself has generated almost 200 comments, there are another 50 on the TechCrunch site and Andy Burnham’s colleague Tom Watson is also hosting the debate on his site where he encourages an open debate about digital social responsibility and promises to pass all comments on.

I think this one is set to run into 2009. Happy new year!

Changing the rules

There was a brief article in PR Week a couple of days ago about planned new guidelines for how local authorities communicate with the public.

The guidelines are intended to replace the existing principles which are 20 years old and were introduced before the current climate of 24-hour news and web-literate residents. A consultation process is now underway to gauge opinion on whether an update is needed.

In fact, reading through the consultation paper from the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) there is very little mention of new media and technology. Only one of the questions specifically addresses online information, although there is an interesting and valid point about how using blogs, podcasts and interactive websites can improve two-way dialogue between councillors and local people.

Like any public body, local authorities need to make sure they balance understanding and effective communication with the proper use of public funds. Good communication is about more than just informing people, it’s about engaging with them and encouraging participation, so it seems to me there’s definitely a place for new media to play its part there.

Whether we need a new set of guidelines to make this shift isn’t clear. But if the consultation results in a yes, then a further conversation will take place next year to agree the details.

And talking about good communication, I particularly liked this section from Annex C of the consultation paper…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Christmas everyone!

Cutting corners for a communications career?

I make no apologies for two posts in a row focusing on education; that’s pretty much where my head is at the moment. Not only am I coming to the end of my MSc, but my husband’s also revisiting higher education as a mature student 14 years after finishing his first degree. So our house is full of textbooks and deadlines and stress!

Firstly I just wanted to comment on a post from Simon Wakeman that took me a bit by surprise. PR students are apparently offering to pay him to write their projects and essays for them. Now, I may be just being naïve, but when I was an undergraduate that would never have occurred to me. The students in question may consider it a way of showing initiative, but more likely it’s just laziness and as Simon points out it’s certainly unethical.

I’m sure it’s a minority of students who expect to be able to get through their courses in this way. Over the last few years we have taken a number of PR students into the various organisations I’ve worked for (whether on a full gap year or for shorter projects) and almost without exception they’ve been hard-working, committed and willing to learn. In fact at least three that I know of are now successfully working in public sector communications roles.

If there are professionals out there who are willing to take some cash for a bit of extra-curricular assignment writing, who is actually benefiting? We end up with new graduates applying for jobs that they’re probably not capable of doing, which impacts on the clients or organisations they’re meant to be working for, which ultimately could undermine the reputation of our profession.

I may be overreacting there, but does today’s culture of information on demand and instant gratification really mean that people simply expect to be able to walk into a job without doing the work?

So much to do…

I find myself back at University today, sitting in a surprisingly busy library for a Sunday (I’m sure students weren’t this diligent in my day), while trying to multi-task.

Not only do I have my blog to keep up to date, but now there’s the new assignment and a dissertation proposal to keep me busy – all at the same time as trying to hold down a full time job (or two jobs, as those who know me will understand…)

So, as well as sitting here trying to write a comms plan for a forthcoming health education initiative, I’ve also got 4 or 5 internet windows open to remind me to follow up potential topics for my research (plus of course Facebook minimised in the corner, just in case any friends want to pop up and distract me). And to add to all that digital noise, I’ve also got my iPod playing (Kings of Leon, if you’re interested) to try and drown out the surrounding conversations.

Therefore, it’s not surprising that I was unable to get away this week to the Don’t Panic Guide to Social Media conference in Manchester. Luckily a number of my blogroll colleagues did make it. Tom Murphy was speaking about information overload, Stephen Davies talked about news releases in the digital age and Stuart Bruce  wrapped it all up by saying PR’s not dead, the way we work is just evolving. And Richard Bailey was capturing the whole thing, presentation by presentation!

A talk I would have liked to have seen is the one given by Simon Wakeman, Head of Marketing at Medway Council, who talked about using social media in local government. Luckily he’s uploaded his slides to his blog, so I can peruse them at my leisure.

Yes, there’s a lot going on, and due to the internet and social media we have access to more information, more quickly than ever before. It may take time to dig out the stuff that’s important or interesting, but it would have taken me a while to drive to Manchester and back too. Thanks to Tom, Stuart, Stephen, Richard and Simon I didn’t need to. Cheers guys!