Councillors and social media
February 28, 2011 2 Comments
Between providing expert help and advice at our session in Scarborough, Cllr Cheetham took time to do this short video clip. Follow Cllr Cheetham on Twitter (@cllrtim) or view his blog.
February 14, 2011 2 Comments
As part of the regional sessions we spent a lot of time discussing with councillors why they should bother with all this social media stuff. The barriers ranged from not enough time to reputational and standards risk, from techno fear to generating even more work for a busy councillor. Quite often there seemed to be more reasons to avoid social media than positively pursue it.
Well, for all you councillors considering taking the plunge, have a look at the Top Ten Reasons for Cllrs to Use Social Media produced by those lovely folk at Local Government Leadership. Their 21st Century Councillors site is a brilliant space for councillors (and officers who support them) whatever point they are on on their socmed journey.
February 9, 2011 2 Comments
Cllr Barber - On-Line Cllr of the Year 2011
Well, gutted as we are that our own cllrsocmed expert CllrTim Cheetham didn’t win the On-Line Councillor of the Year at the Councillor Awards, congratulations go out to Cllr James Barber. Quote from the judges below:
“Cllr Barber’s use of online media demonstrates how councillors can engage citizens within their own space in order to make a difference in their communities. He has established a presence on a citizen-run neighbourhood website by engaging and responding positively to local people’s issues, providing information, giving responses from officers and inviting residents to submit their problems and questions to him. Cllr Barber has been cited as a pioneer in this field in research for London Councils; by offering his services in a citizen centred space.
Unlike other nominees in this category, judges really felt that Cllr Barber’s achievements stood out as being different because he has managed to assert himself on existing media that residents of his local area use – he has gone to them rather than expecting them to come to him. The judges noted that ‘if social media is about anything, it is about being where people are’ and this is an excellent example of this.”
This is another brilliant example of a councillor using social media in imaginative and effective ways to make a positive difference.
February 5, 2011 Leave a comment
As we enter the election period I thought it might be timely to share something I stumbled on a few months ago. Through the wonderful world of Twitter I came across a tweet from Kirk Schmidt who is one of a number of folk involved in CalgaryPolitics.com. They are:
“Bloggers, pundits, and citizens, trying to cover civic politics in a semi-organized way, to share the burden each of us thought we’d have to shoulder alone, cover the races and candidates that the mainstream media can’t or won’t, and maybe add a hint of mischief to what is typically a NOTORIOUSLY dry subject, covered in notoriously dry ways.”
I recommend a detailed look at their site – they are doing some brilliant stuff designed to facilitate interest and engagement in politics. One specific piece of work they have initiated involves the use of Twitter for political debating purposes. It’s called a Twibate. Full details of the what and the how are captured by Kurt and his colleagues. In essence -
“The Twibate is an opportunity to have the candidates online, answering questions in a debate, combined with opportunity for any follower to engage, ask follow-up questions, and learn more about the candidates in one place. 11 mayoralty candidates have Twitter so far, as do almost 30 aldermanic candidates.”
I think there might be some real opportunities here for local government in this country. Using social media to generate interest in and engagement and dialogue with politicians has got to be something worth considering in more detail.
February 3, 2011 2 Comments
A few words from one councillor to another. A brief video clip of Cllr Simon Cooke following the cllrsocmed session at Scunthorpe. Follow Simon on Twitter (@simonmagus) or view his blog.
January 27, 2011 6 Comments
@StevenTuck lecturning
Welcome to the last piece in the CllrSocMed tour of the Yorkshire & Humber. This final session comes to you today from Leeds, down at the Carriageworks, Millenium Square. We’re expecting pretty much a full house today, so it’s all hands to the pumps. We’ve also got a lovely view of the Leeds ice rink. Our lead councillors today will be @SimonMagus, Bradford MC, and @ClrAndrewCooper from Kirklees Council. We’ll try and keep you up to date with conversations and debate as they progress throughout the day.
Entry 1: Introductions are underway. Goes without saying that we’re hoping for a good session today. @TimSwift is here from Calderdale Council, Halifax. Fantastic, that’s my home town (rather than my adopted Huddersfield). Also, we have @CarolePattison from our own Kirklees Council. Another brilliant cross section of cllrs is going to make for a really good day.
Entry 2: @StevenTuck starts by doing his ‘what the internet is’ explanation. You can never get bored of the simplicity of the explanation, of his history of the internet, and how it has gone from geekery to an all inclusive medium so people can communicate via twitter, blog etc etc. You don’t have to be Rupert Murdoch to publish your opinion or view point to the world!!
“There is no point of a communications tool being difficult to use” – @StevenTuck. And this, “there is more computing power in this *waves phone* than there was when they sent the first sattelite into space”.
Entry 3: @ClrAndrewCooper, talking about blogging – “As cllrs we’re expected to have opinions. Blogging is a way of getting them out there”. Is also touching on how he has grown with the technology, how he now can do and link to more things and use more tools, that make his presence more accessible.
Entry 4: What do you do about comments posted on your blog? Well, you can set a blog to moderate, so the comments have to come via you first before releasing. However, you’re not necessarily going to get thousands of comments there! And anyway, people who comment more than likely have an interest in the subject matter. Really important for cllrs to make sure they moderate some comments, because if they are ‘unnacceptable’ – in language, abuse, racist – you could labelled as endorsing those! There is a big BUT though – do not refuse release of a comment, just because it disagrees with your opinion as a cllr. It is important to repsond where necessary. What is the point of having a blog if you’re not going to engage with people who have taken the time to comment? People want to be engaged with!!
Entry 5: You can use your blog to try and just push your political message or view out there – but the social can be just as, if not more, powerful. Expressing the human side of who you are, and what you do, as a person away from politics, whether that be reading, rock climbing, or work, or where you go with the family…difficulties of parenthood, worklife balance….an endless list…balloon modelling!
Entry 6: A morning dominated by blogging, covering the ins and outs of the whole affair. The interest and focus has been around content of a blog, political and social, and we’ve touched on how easy and/or difficult it is. Conclusion is pretty much that it is as easy or difficult as YOU make it. You can set up a blog that is as simple as sending an email, or develop one to include pictures, photos, video, link to posts or websites. It’s really about exploring – you can’t break the internet!
Our lead and attending cllrs have stepped back a moment from there discussion, while @StevenTuck responds to the question, what is RSS? This is pretty much how you can grab the link from a webpage or blog and pull it into your own web space.
We’ve sort of come full circle this morning. Early on we touched on ‘blog comments’ and interest, concern and exploration of how you can deal with comments, and our lead cllrs are helping put that into context – “don’t worry about it” is pretty much what they’re saying! Lets also remind ourselves, that in terms of social media, a lot of the discussion we have had is not about the technology and tools, it has been the social interaction or communities that exist!
A brilliant, place to start for cllrs wanting to find cllrs is @TweetyHall!
Entry 7: Moved onto twitter – micro blogging. In context with other social media tools, like flikr, blogging, youtube – all these things rely on you to communicate with people, in order to generate interest. You’re not going to attract anybody to any part of your online presence if you don’t actually present yourself. The magic power that gravitates people towards you, is you and your interaction with them! Twitter opens up a wide range of opportunities to open up a broad dialogue, through posting links to your blog, photos, other websties and documents.
Entry 8: We’re back, after what was a very nice lunch. So, with appetites satisfied, we’re now straight into creating a blog with our attending cllrs – surgery time! When setting up a new blog, don’t set your password as password – just saying!
Entry 9: That process of setting up a blog is really easy. It took about 10 minutes, which did of course include questions, answers and discussion. Using an application like Blogger.com, which we have just used, well once you’ve gone through the set-up process it is just about as simple as sending an email. No, really, just as easy as sending an email!! Of course, there are other simple blogging tools out there too. Now, from the question being raised of how you drive traffic to your blog (otherwise nobody will know it’s there), the cllrs in the room are asking how you might link your blog to say, Facebook? Observation: We reached this point in last weeks visit to Barnsley, but via a slightly different route, the point being that the natural inquisitive nautre of cllrs exploring the ins and outs of a topic, probably through council meetings and studying agendas and reports, they absolutely know which questions to ask to get to the answers they need – they are…quite…relentless! This is one reason why cllrs are key to driving social media within local authorities 
Entry 10: Local campaigning, use facebook! About you and what you’ve been doing, create a blog! For networking, researching your local area or specific topics, Twitter can be great! They are all social tools, which can be used to push information out, pull information in, and gather local intelliegence, and which develop greater interaction via human input.
Entry 11: Tagging has been raised and so we respond! It is a way of labelling posts, descriptive words that help your post to be identified. #hash tags are the twitter equivelant to tagging a blog – afterall, twitter is just a micro-blog, so it works the same way. Tagging can be in someways likened to having a filing system, or at least creating one. Tag your posts with a number of descriptors and the potential for them to be picked up by other people increases; for instance, tag them with a place name, your name, subject matter, organisation, geographic location, but also a building name or name of a person.
Entry 12: Well what another blooming interesting day. So much so that we’ve not actually wrapped up yet. Supposed to finish at 3pm and it’s now 3.20pm! These cllrs, I told you they were relentless – you’ve got to love it; the pursuit of knowledge, information and how they can use it. Brilliant! An amazing day and a fitting way to end our tour of Yorkshire & Humber.
January 21, 2011 4 Comments
Hello from Barnsley Digital Media Centre, from the Cllrsocmed team. We have 12 visiting cllrs today who we hope will inspire and be inspired. Our lead cllrs today will be the familiar @Simonmagus and from Kirklees Council, Cllr David Woodhead. We’ll be under way soon – as it is at the moment, we’re all settling in, getting coffee, and helping ourselves to biscuits. We’ll provide updates throughout the day.
Entry 1: Introductions. Lets see what variations of interest, input, skill and engagement we’re going to get! Bets on a mixed bag? Always! But that’s the beauty of it, and the very reason why cllrs need to lead sessions like these, not officers. We’ll facilitate, they’ll debate and explore. And by the sounds of it, cllrs being represented by Rotherham, Barnsley and Sheffield all seem to have a pretty good handle on it. Hey, where did these two Scrutiny support officers come from, wanting to know about how to better support their councillors – the cheek of it 
Entry 2: @StevenTuck giving a great ‘brief history of internet’, and how now we have the capability to publish globally via a blog. You don’t have to be Rupert Murdoch, but more than that, we are talking about the internet as a space for social interaction. So, a place where cllrs can interact with their constituents, then? Well, of course!
Open floor…cllrs asking what are the advantages of some social media tools over others. What can they use them for, what is best for them??
Entry 3: Some discussion around linking your blog to, say,Facebook for instance. How to embed one part of your social media presence into another – linking the tools! So, cllrs having brought that to our attention, they want to possibly know about the more technical side of actually doing it. I see some practical surgery activity coming up in the afternoon! Discussion shifts to RSS and ‘how does that work?’ Cllrs showing interest in the advantages of being able to pull information IN to a site, but importantly, how they can pull their own blog into another of their (or push to someone else’s) on-line space.
Entry 4: What if I say something wrong? Actually, what if someone doesn’t look at my archive of tweets properly, and is selective of what they choose to publicise – misrepresentation of my opinion! Twitter is different from blogging, in that with your blog you can write it and come back to it in the morning – a tweet is instant and out there straight away – says @SimonMagus. Plus, we’re all open to misrepresentation, this is just a different way of people accessing your opinion. We’re free to give our opinion, and equally, like anybody, we are free to change our minds further down the line!
Oh, and blogging and alcohol do not necessarily mix! You have been warned, gently, of course
Entry 5: Tweeting and Hashtags – they allow for national conference from your phone or office. Cost benefits! Networks! Time saving! They allow for the public to follow what is going on from inside a council meeting, for instance Full Council at Kirklees. Webcasting council meetings can further compliment and enhance the experience of the public, and support more engagement to a more open and transparent democracy – they can see ‘council business’ as it happens, which is actually ‘their business’.
Entry 6: Today’s cllrs wanting to see and know about different tools. It might be the usual suspects in terms of those tools, twitter, flikr, blogs, youtube, but it’s how they are thinking about exploring the possible links between them all that is generating the real value of the conversation. Also, use of twitter being highlighted as how quickly information, photo, research can be pushed out, reviewed, pulled in and interaction with other people.
Entry 7: That’ll be a break for lunch then! Deserved by all. There’s been a heck of a lot of energy used in this session this morning. Phew!
Entry 8: We’re back after a very nice lunch! Asking cllrs how they want to proceed this afternoon; what do they want to cover. Looks like ‘blogging’, actually how to set up a blog, that is. Simplicity is king, for @SimonMagus – nothing to do with ability, it’s about time and convenience – for him then, Blogger.com. BIG Question just popped up: Can cllrs use their council issue laptops for posting to their blog?? Much commotion, no definitive answer.
Entry 9: @StevenTuck going through ‘actual’ process of setting up a blog, to demonstrate how easy it actually is. I’m pretty sure there are some support resources within the CllrSocMed blog (scroll down other entries) which Steve put together. Have a look, cllrs. Talking about tagging blogs, with ward name, street, issue etc, so they can be found!! Cllrs really getting it.
Entry 10: We’ve covered the simplicity of inserting a photo, creating a link to another website, redesigning the look of the blog. It really is easy, you can feel the realisation of it throughout the room. There are some well informed cllrs here, and they know that they have the ability to use and utilise the tools available. The session is really about how we adjust settings and updating blog, and how they can actively promote the blog. So, meta-tagging is key? says one cllr. Learn to, or get into the habit of tagging your posts, and your constituents are more likely to find them!
Entry 11: Today’s session has raised all sorts of interesting discussion. The latest is practical grabbing of RSS feeds, shortening URL’s, what TweetDeck is and how that can work for you. Posting from TweetDeck to both your Twitter stream and Facebook account. It’s been a very different session, challenging in a way that offers up the fact that cllrs are out there that not only want to know about how social media can work for them in theory, but in practice. They want to get out there doing it, if they’re not already, and more so, how they link their online presence to the each of the different tools available to them.
We’ll be back sooner rather than later for our next cllrsocmed session; that will be in Leeds next Thursday, then! Can’t wait. We’ll see you there.
January 4, 2011 Leave a comment
Friday 21st January 2011
Events
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