This presentation was delivered to an extended management team meeting (audience included managers, supervisors, directors and general managers) in a municipal government. The objective was to gain buy in for adopting social media within the organization.
5. What is it anyway? Social media are primarily Internet-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, social interaction and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. ~ Source: Wikipedia 2008
21. Why should we care? Since 2000, growth rates of Internet use have been highest among seniors – they recorded use rates in 2007 that were nearly 4 times higher than in 2000. Source: Statistics Canada, 2007 data
22. Why should we care? Source: Anderson Analytics, “Social Network Service (SNS) A&U Profiler,” provided to eMarketer, July 13, 2009
25. Time spent [on social networks] accounts for almost 10% of all internet timeSource: Nielsen Online, March 2009
26. What’s in it for CoB? Opportunity to provide open and transparent information to the community in real time Ability to gain feedback from community regarding various issues Content is being pushed to the resident, rather than relying on them to come find it Provides an opportunity to engage a larger segment of the community
27. What’s in it for CoB? Complaints can be addressed quickly Rumours can be dispelled publicly Will also give the City of Burlington stronger online profile
28. Can be used to enhance customer service by providing frequent information on programs and services Start conversations with residents to get feedback on issues How can we use it?
29. Who is using it in our community? Royal Botanical Gardens Performing Arts Burlington GenNext: United Way Young Professionals - Hamilton/Burlington
39. How can we use it? Ongoing opportunities to use social media: Environmental issues Transit scheduling and information Promote special events Major announcements Construction updates Human resources recruitment
40. Who else is using it? Elliot Lake Kingston Port Coquitlam OttawaOakville MississaugaNiagara Region North Bay TorontoVaughan WindsorAurdrie, AB Calgary Edmonton Nanaimo Medicine Hat Kelowna Guelph Saskatoon St. John, NBVancouver Victoria, BC Oshawa Thompson, MB Timmins Brampton Surrey, BC
41. Case studies: City of Guelph Region of Niagara City of Calgary And how is it working for them?
42. And how is it working for them? City of Guelph – Facebook,Twitter accounts, Mayor’s and Councillors’ blogs Engaged in social media for about 1 year It has been a positive experience The workload is quite manageable Experience very little negativity from users Females 35 to 45 are the main users
43. And how is it working for them? 2 to 3 employees share the account management responsibilities part-time Moving to multiple authoring permissions for Twitter Expect to move maintenance and account management into customer service responsibilities in next year Now working on policies and procedures for web and social media
44. And how is it working for them? Region of Niagara - 12-month pilot project Drafted a social media policy and created disclaimers with the legal team Recently finalized strategy with senior management team Currently pushing news releases out through Facebook and Twitter
45. Web co-ordinator responsible for updates and account management Back up support from Corporate Communications Will monitor staff time involved – resourcing a big issue Was useful for H1N1 – used YouTube And how is it working for them?
46. And how is it working for them? City of Calgary Joined Facebook in 2008, Twitter in March 2009, blog introduced in July 2009 Launching a new city newsroom in January 2010 Social media is integrated into communication planning Has resulted in being better able read the pulse of the community Found that media view does not always link with public view: people have their own beliefs
47. Have equivalent of 1 full-time person dedicated to social media Still determining the best way to practise social media—sorting out workloads and strategy Several councillors use Twitter and are on a blog platform Calgary’s communications director and general manager supported use of social media And how is it working for them?
48. But what about… Complaints? -> We have an opportunity to correct misinformation in a public forum, addressing complaints shows transparency Inappropriate comments? -> Moderators can remove rude and inappropriate comments – policies and guidelines would outline parameters for removal
49. But what about… Misuse by employees? -> providing content on corporate page as a “friend” -> viewing, distributing or generating inappropriate or unauthorized content -> personal use (productivity concerns) -> Existing HR and IT policies and guidelines address these issues -> May require updates and new policies to fully cover social media concerns
I’m sure you’ve all seen this picture by now. This picture was taken on a mobile phone and posted to Twitter – soon it made it’s way into the mainstream media – on the cover of major newspapers and showing up on news casts as well – Social media and new technology has become a way of life – it has been absorbed into our culture - and it’s not going anywhere… but we don’t need to be afraid of it. In fact we can use it to our advantage, as you’ll see in a little while.But before we get to that, let’s take a look at how we got to where we are today
It might surprise you to know that the Internet is actually over 50 years old – it may also surprise you to know that the Internet was an initiative of the United States military … now this is a very brief, condensed version of the history of the internet … and of course you can always find more details online on wikipedia
You will note that the last slide covered a span of 34 years and showed a few very significant milestones ... This slide covers the last 16 years, and really shows the huge boom in the development of the Internet and social networking applications – in fact, the whole social media phenomenon has really taken off in the last 10 years, with the bulk of the activity in the last 5 years …
So what is social media anyway? The key is the “social” part, and that is why it is so popular – it connects people in a way like nothing else has before
Here are some examples of applications, and different technologies – for the purposes of this presentation, we are going to focus on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and blogs., mainly because those are the most popular and mainstream apps out there right now.How many of you actually use Facebook … Twitter… LinkedIn
So why do we need to jump into social media? Isn’t it just for kids? Well, no. As this slide shows, the youth segment is the one that is experiencing very little growth - as of March last year, women over 55 are the fastest growing group that are participating in online activities
This is also echoed in Canadian data. As this slide shows, people over the age of 65, are increasingly moving toward Internet use
These survey results show the precentage of each group that uses the different social media applications – the 65 to 82 age group has the highest percentage of respondents using Facebook
1. Only behind search, portals and software downloads So what this information is telling us, is that there are likely a significant number of our audiences – our residents – pending time online on social networks
So what’s in it for us? Engaging in social media will give us an opportunity to provide open and transparent information to the community in real timeAbility to gain feedback - Imagine Facebook as being a 24/7 town hall meeting where you can get instant feedback on an issue and get a snapshot of what the community is feeling about that particular issueContent is pushed to the residentGives us an opportunity to reach more people
We can also address complaints and rumourspublicly
So how can we use Facebook to our advantage?As I mentioned earlier, you can think of Facebook as a 24 hour town hall meeting where you can get feedback from residents on a variety of issues
Let’s take a look at what’s out there now -
We can use Twitter to …
There are also a number of applications and different technologies that we could use internally as well
Some upcoming opportunities include …
All can utilize a variety of applications (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to relay information to residents, and will allow opportunities for instant feedback
As you can see – a lot of municipalities are already using social media and this is just the tip of the iceberg, many othe r– mainly Facebook, Twitter, and blogsNow this does not mean we need to jump on the bandwagon just because everyone else is doing it, but we can learn from what others have done
The City of Guelph is very progressive – their Mayor and some Councillors blog, and they have corporate Facebook and Twitter accounts
two communications staff, 1 IT staff member2. allows preapproved staff from different departments to update information when needed
- Announcing news stories through FB and Twitter, with links to news releases on web site
We will be hearing from Paul Newmarch from the City of Calgary after the break, but we’ll just take a look at what they’ve done here
I’m sure a lot of you are thinking, that’s all well and good but what about …