A presentation on social media at DCLG for the digital champions network

1. Digital champions
21 and 22 July 2015
Alexis Bailey
Head of Digital Engagement
Twitter: @MsAlexisBailey
LinkedIn: uk.linkedin.com/in/AlexisBailey
Social media

2. 2
Digital projects team
Comms
Press
Internal comms
Campaigns
Digital
Digital projects
Project management
Social media strategy
& training
Digital content
GOV.UK
Social media content
Local digital Local authority digital
skills & services

3. 3
Why use social media?
• Reach audiences who may not look at our website or read follow traditional media
• Engage the public and partner organisations
• Share what we’re doing and get feedback
• Influence people to share our messages or take action
180k people
follow us on
social media

4. 4
DCLG’s social media strategy
• Embed the use of social media tools within our communications
• Listen to what people are saying about us and our policies online and
respond where appropriate
• Widen access to the policymaking process through digital engagement
• Evaluate social media activity to demonstrate its value
• Encourage colleagues to use social media channels for communication,
engagement and relationship-building

5. 5
DCLG’s social media channels
• Sharing updates: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
• Images and video: Flickr, YouTube, Pinterest, Vine, thinglink, Instagram
• Sound: audioBoom, SoundCloud
• Blogging: Tumblr
• Mapping: Tripline
• Collating: Storify
Search for
CommunitiesUK
to find DCLG on
social media

6. 6
Content
• Start with your objective, then look at channels
• Don’t just publish content, it’s about listening and
talking to people
• Start early – find online audiences and build a relationship
• Generate content for online channels. Don’t just copy and paste
• Ask questions and encourage people to respond
• Use existing tools, no need for expensive bespoke tools
• Use a hashtag
• Follow up – let audiences know how their comments helped
• Experiment and improve

7. 7
Case studies
The Great British High Street
The Great British High Street brand was set up to encourage footfall to town
centres by increasing positive sentiment towards local high streets. The Awards
are to showcase the work that’s going on to make high streets great places to visit,
shop and socialise. In 2014 the competition attracted 135 entries from villages,
towns and cities across Britain. A panel of judges chose seven winners from a
shortlist of 21, with one overall winner. In 2015 the public will be able to help decide
who wins by voting online for their favourite shortlisted high street.
We use digital and social media to:
• maintaining a visible and recognisable ‘Great British High Street’ brand
• sustain interest, engagement and investment in high streets by consumers,
businesses and entrepreneurs
• raise awareness of the Awards and encourage entries
• engage local communities and encourage them to support their high streets’
entry and vote for a winner
• share advice and tips
• drive traffic to the resources on the website
• attract followers so we can keep them up to date with news and events

8. 8
Case studies
#CoastalHeritage photo competition
• Ahead of the announcement of new funding to bring
disused coastal heritage back into use to attract visitors
and investment, and regenerate costal towns
• The competition was to celebrate coastal heritage and
highlight what our coastal towns have to offer
• Entrants tweeted photos of coastal heritage using the
hashtag #HistoricCoast to win a photography masterclass
with an English Heritage photographer
• The public voted for their favourite photo to win
• Over 1k entries
• Nearly 11k votes
• Over 3k votes for the winner
• Over 20k views of the images at the voting stage
• The hashtag #HistoricCoast was used nearly 3k times on
Twitter by people entering and supporting the competition,
including organisations such as coastal institutions, local
councils and photography societies

9. 9
Measuring success
• Pulsar
• Hootsuite
• Twitter Analytics
• Google Analytics
• Channel stats

10. 10
Measuring success
• Better to measure engagement than accounts reached. Engagement shows that
people have seen and interacted with content
• Measuring sentiment is inaccurate (doesn’t recognise sarcasm) and subjective
(eg what’s positive to campaigners may not be positive to us)
• LinkedIn sometimes generates more engagement that Twitter
• Difficult to engage the public unless we have something to motivate them
• Less is more. Too many tweets about the same subject can lead to unfollows.
Better to focus on quality not quantity
• Photos, videos, and before and after pictures generate more positive comments
and engagement
• Promoted posts reach a much higher number of people – the more you spend,
the better the results
• Targeting celebrities is not effective, it’s better to target interested, engaged
groups, bloggers etc

11. 11
Exercise
15 minutes
• You are holding a consultation about the fire service spending review. You have
written to all fire chiefs asking them for their views. You have encouraged them
to share the details of the consultation with their staff and set up a digital survey
for people to give their views
• A firefighter has heard that there may be cuts and is tweeting angrily about it.
He thinks the consultation is only for fire chiefs and wants to know why all
firefighters weren’t invited to give their views
• The public see the tweets and this causes people to start tweeting their
concerns about public safety
• How do you respond? What digital tools could you use? How do you encourage
firefighters to share their views? How do you measure whether your activities
have been successful?

12. 12
What next?
• Read the social media guidelines on the intranet
• Complete the Twitter in 10 weeks course on Yammer
• Share what you’ve learnt with your teams

13. 13
Digital projects team
Alexis Bailey
Communities, high streets,
Community Rights,
homelessness
Ed Ridout
Housing and planning
Alasdair Dick
Local growth and devolution,
local government, fire and
resilience
Maxine McLeary-Jones
Integration and faith, women
and equalities, City Deals,
travellers, HS2
Rachel Christopher
Troubled families
Graham Noad
Finance and corporate
services, data and analysis
Helen Markides
Digital capability