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Aiming High with Social Media
Posted on February 23rd, 2010 No comments
The DCSF has just published two guides and a set of videos on using social media to promote positive activities. This is great encouragement from DCSF for authorities to take a social media approach to promoting positive activities.Enabling the direct feed of positive activity information in social media spaces has long been one of the advantages of Plings (and you can find mention of Plings in the guide) – as the output API enables a whole host of approaches, from the Application-based Bordometer, to automated widgets and feeds of event listings to Facebook pages.
Here’s how the DCSF ‘Social Media Explained’ guide introduces itself:
Social media is here to stay and it is changing the way millions of people communicate.If you have not yet joined Facebook or Twitter, or watched YouTube, you may well wonder what it is all about.But for most young people using social media is second nature, so as professionals at the heart of youth engagement,it is important to understand it and be part of it.With this in mind, this guide is specifically for you, youth project managers, with the following aims:- To explain social media technologies and functions using simple language.
- To provide you with the tools to increase interest and attendance at your project by working with young people and promoting your activities through social media.
The Social Media Explained guide is also accompanied by some old-school guidance on creating videos for the web, and a series of video clips that outline ways of creating a high-quality video clip about a youth project. Of course, as well as carefully planned video clips, ‘quick clips’ created and shared online (with the appropriate consent and attention paid to making sure they are shared safely) can help promote activities – and so we’re hard a work right now on identifying how the ‘PlingBack’ framework in development can build links between multi-media and Plings records, building on the photo-links recently added to the national Plings.net.
For more on using social media in youth engagement, you can also check out the developing online ‘Youth Engagement and Social Media’ guide and the Youth Work Online community, and if you’re already using social media in promoting your positive activities, then do drop in a quick comment on this blog post to let us know what you’re trying and what you’ve been learning from the process…
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Boredometer now on Facebook
Posted on December 29th, 2009 No comments
The Plings social network site application, Boredometer is now available for local authorities to offer to young people in Facebook, after a successful beta test on Bebo.Boredometer on Facebook comes also with the Bordeometer Admin Tool (BAT) which local authorities can use attached to a Facebook page to send activity information out to their Facebook page fans, or to find out how is using Boredometer in their local area.
To find out more about Bordometer check out the Plings Developer Wiki, or watch this short Screencast from app developer Harry Harold.
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Networks of Engagement: Facebook Pages
Posted on October 3rd, 2009 No comments
Tower Hamlets Summer University use Facebook pages to promote future activities and celebrate activities that have taken place.
Facebook pages offer an opportunity to promote positive activities to young people, and have information spread through online network.
If you’ve not taken a look at the ‘Pages’ feature in Facebook for a while – then it’s time to look again and explore it’s potential as a tool for promoting positive activities. Pages have emerged as the victor in the ‘Groups’ vs. ‘Pages’ debate as the best way for organisations to have an identity within Facebook and to reach out to young people.
Facebook pages are similar to individual’s profiles – but instead of becoming ‘Friends’ with a Page (a reciprocal relationship), Facebook users can become a ‘Fan’. As the administrator of a page, you can post news, videos, photos and other content – just as you would on a personal profile – and it will appear in the News Feeds of your ‘Fans’. Just like profiles, you can add applications and extra features to Pages – and making use of the notes feature, you can even get your Page to automatically pull in an RSS feed of news from outside Facebook – offering an easy option for when you are getting started and want to keep your page up-to-date.
Getting Started
You can set up a Facebook Page to promote positive activities from your youth centre, project or local area in less than 30 minutes (but you need to make sure you’ll have time each week to promote and develop it, and keep it updated.)
Setting up a Facebook Page
To create a page you will first need to have an account on Facebook. Consider setting up a work profile. Explain clearly on that profile who you are and who you work for – as this pro-file will be displayed as the creator of your page.
You will find the links to create a page in the bar along the bottom of the screen when you are logged into Facebook.
Look for the ‘Pages’ link and then the ‘Create Page’ button:
Work through the prompts on screen to set up your page. You now need to encourage young people to become a fan of your page.
Once your page is set-up you can configure it by looking for the ‘Edit Page’ link when you are viewing it.
Make sure you add images and clear descriptions to your page to make it engaging.
Explore how you can use your page to encourage dialogue by posting content and looking at the different ways in which people can comment on it. Think about how you will keep track of comments and feedback.
The ‘Wall Settings’ feature allows you to determine the level of interactivity on your page.
Using the ‘More Applications’ option at the bottom of your page settings interface allows you to add other features to your page from Facebooks library of third-party applications.
You can use the ‘Get a Fan Box for your Website’ option to embed the latest updates from your Facebook page, and a list of your fans, into your main website.
Using the ‘Send Update to Fans’ option you can message all the young people who have become a fan of your page. You can also target these updates by age, gender or location. Updates to fans appear as notifications rather than in their Facebook inboxes.
Tip: When you are viewing your own page you can select ‘View All’ next to the list of your page fans. You can then promote fans to be page owners (useful for colleagues) or you can remove fans if for any reason there are people you do not wish to be displayed as your fans or to recieve your updates send out to fans.
Case Study: Buying Bradford Connexions
Using targeted Facebook adverts I got around 20 new fans of the ‘Buying Bradford Connexions’ consultation project within 48 hours. Over 80 people clicked on adverts to view the Facebook Fan page, but not all became fans. Overall – the cost of advertising turns out to have been around £1 per new ‘fan’ – but the real test will be to see what value and interaction having a new channel to share updates and invite input from a group of local young people brings.
Safe & Sound
As with all work with young people, it’s important to make sure that your activities support young people to be safe and free from harm. Here are a few things to think about as you plan your Facebook page:
- Allowing young people to comment on your Facebook page, and to contribute photos and videos, can increase young people’s engagement with the information you want to communicate. Make sure you have planned time to check and, if necessary, to moderate any content submitted by young people. Think about how you will encourage young people to get the consent of all the people in photos and videos that they might post on your page, and how you will respond if someone asks for photos or videos to be removed.
- If young people interact with news items or posts on your page, Facebook may show this interaction, and the original posts, to their Facebook friends. This can be great for spreading news about activities. However, it can also lead to young people unintentionally revealing information about their interests and even where they will be at particular times – and to this information being available to their wider network of friends on Facebook. Think about whether the information you put on your page encourages or discourages this & how you can limit this sort of ‘leak’ of personal information.
- It is right for young people (and adult too) to double-check details of the activities that they discover online Think about periodically sending out an update with guidance on how to double-check the details of an activity and to encourage this as a positive behaviour.
You can find more guidance on safety in using Social Network Sites in the ‘Youth Engagement and Social Media‘ guide.
How will you use Facebook Pages?
Are you already using Facebook pages to promote positive activities? Have you got ideas for ways you could use Facebook pages in future?
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Social Media Marketing
Posted on September 16th, 2009 3 commentsA lot of what we are building for the Plings project is about supporting the use of social media. But whilst data from the Plings project can be used to generate widgets, or feed into Facebook pages, going out and using social media to market positive activities and to communicate with young people takes something extra.
Which is why we were delighted to hear that our friends at Public Sector Forums have got Simon Wakeman on board to deliver a series of events on ‘Social Media for Public Sector Communications and Engagement‘.
We got in touch with Simon to find our a bit more about how local government communications and social media can mix:
Q: What signs should communications professionals be looking out for that might suggest they need to start thinking about social media?
Simon: I think communicators need to be focussed on their audiences – and be using the online tools, services and places that their target audiences are using. There’s no doubt that social media is being used extensively by people of all ages, so social media needs to be planned into communications activities as “business as usual” rather than being seen as something new and funky that just young people are into.
Q: To what extent is communication through social media radically different from the forms of PR and communications that local authorities might be used to?Simon: Social media is inherently chaotic, dynamic and spontaneous. It’s a world away from the well-used media relations and advertising communications mix that most councils are used to working with – so communicating through social media requires councils to let go of the perception that they have complete control over their messages and where they’re used – which can be quite a culture shock for communicators, senior officers and elected members.It’s also two-way – having a one-way dialogue just doesn’t work! Social media blends communications and consultation in a way that councils with a silo-ed approach to the two will struggle with – but you can’t start using social media without being prepared to have conversations with people online.
Q: Should social media become the domain of the comms team? How best can front-line practitioners work with their comms teams to use social media? Any good examples to point to?
Simon: Who should be responsible for social media is a real topic for debate. I think it’s incumbent among the communicators in an organisation to seize the initiative and drive forward understanding and adoption within organisations, but I don’t think that’s the long term answer. In the future I see social media interactions with residents, customers etc as being as commonplace as phone calls and emails with customers – which means a centralised approach to social media isn’t practical. In the longer term we need to equip all our staff with the skills and remit to engage through social media – but with some pragmatic controls on risks put in place by a central co-ordinating team.
You can find out more about the first of the upcoming events in Birmingham on the 4th November on the PSF website here. -
A place to go, a thing to do, somewhere to talk…
Posted on February 24th, 2009 No commentsLast week I visited the Social Media Centre in Salford, which is a fantastic resource for community use. The centre is based at the Innovation Forum, a managed office space for start-up or emerging companies utilising technology – and based right near the university of Salford. But – that doesn’t quite mean that the centre is the domain of research and technology – it is actually housed in the “community room” for the venue – and represents a real space for community engagement with social media.
Mick and Teresa and their team at the centre have a wide variety of activities going on every week – from blogging workshops, podcasts from community events, right through to moves to aggregate together information on activities into a common calendar. Monday mornings will also see an online radio broadcast from the centre, programmed by a group of young people.
What's on?
A new direction for community information?
The background to the centre is also interesting. It is managed by the Manchester Community Information Network (MCIN) who I have known for many years. MCIN started out in community directories, databases and kiosks, delivering wide range of portals and interfaces into their data. MCIN are now due to rename and make over, into Peoples Voice Media – perhaps reflecting this new direction – from data to content. This is something we have always said and looked at in relation to the Youth Offer – having and publishing the data on activities is one thing, getting content and people talking about them is another.
For the Plings project and ISP Radiowaves and Young Advisors will get under way in March with content creation around different positive activities, running workshops and outreach activitity much like that at the Salford Social Media Centre. How far are are we from a future where every community information service is a hub for social media content creation?
