Alice Ainsworth

**UPDATE – shortlisted for Digital Excellence in CIPR Local Public Services Group’s Excellence in Communications Awards**

I was yabbering away in one of the Building the Perfect Council Website (#pcw09) plenary sessions a couple of weeks ago about how council comms/web/marketing people should just dip their toe into the water of social media – and was surprised by the general feeling of hesitation in the room.

My thinking: if you’re worried it might backfire or fall flat on its face just make it clear to everyone that it is a ‘pilot’. If it works, ‘excellent – the pilot was successsful, hooray’. If it fails ‘well, it doesn’t matter – it was only a pilot’.

(Pilot idea stolen from chief storyteller Tony Quinlan’s talk at LGComms conference earlier this year)

So, I thought I’d share an example of how we dipped our toes in the water at Southwark – and how it turned out pretty well. Not to say it wasn’t a steep learning curve but it was a fun one – and more to the point, a worthwhile one.

The case study below has been entered into the Digital Excellence category of the CIPR Local Public Services Group’s Excellence in Communications Awards (fingers crossed). A similar entry won Silver in the LGComms & LGA Reputation Awards for Best Environmental Campaign.

Background

Prior to December 2008 Southwark Council had no social media presence and no policy in place for using Facebook or Twitter. In fact the newly-established e-communications team had never used social media to implement a marketing campaign before.

So when Mayor of London Boris Johnson launched his ‘Help a London Park’ grants competition we considered it a perfect opportunity to pilot the use of a Facebook campaign.

Objectives

Our campaign had some key objectives:

Win Boris’s millions
Our main objective was to win the Mayor’s top grant of £2 million for Burgess Park which at 50 hectares sits in the poorest part of one of London’s most deprived boroughs, surrounded by sprawling 70s housing estates.

We had the added motivation that if we secured the £2 million we would then receive a further £4 million in match funding from Southwark Council and the New Deal for Communities.

Get local people actively involved
Burgess Park is central to a massive £2.5 billion regeneration scheme but as it stands, residents consider it “unloved”, “in need of a redesign”, and “unsafe after dark”.

Yet for most of the 70,000 people living within 5km of Burgess Park it is their only accessible, local, quality green space.

A particular focus of the campaign was to engage these local people, encourage them to take ownership of their local area and feel proud of their park.

Strategy and implementation

From the moment the shortlist was announced to the date of the decision there were just 10 short weeks. With a limited budget and a restrictive timeframe for planning and delivery we decided online media would be our most powerful tool.

The target audience for our campaign was Burgess Park users – young people, families and students not typically involved in council activity – as well as the local voluntary sector and community groups.

Our social media approach

We knew from research that our residents are keen Facebook users and that thousands of members already belonged to Southwark-related groups.

We created the group ‘Back the Burgess Park bid – we need Boris’s millions!’, allowing local people to get actively involved but in an informal, less traditional way.

Our approach was to:

• Choose an alliterative, eye-catching and amusing title for the group
• Use friendly, jargon-free language that focuses on the park and the people – not on the council’s involvement
• Give enthusiastic calls to action

We took a grass-roots approach to building a Facebook presence, knowing that people are far more likely to buy in to an idea if they hear it from their peers rather than their council. We wanted to create a word of mouth effect

We launched a range of social media applications, including a YouTube channel, Twitter account and Flickr photo library to help raise awareness of the campaign – all linking back to the Facebook group.

Other ways of driving traffic to our Facebook group included news stories on the council’s website homepage, links from the parks web pages, items posted in the local online community forums e.g. SE1, and prominent features on local newspaper websites and on the Friends of Burgess Park website.

We sent email messages to supporters over the weeks updating them on any news or events and encouraged them to provide their suggestions on what they wanted to see improved in the park.

Developing an integrated campaign

We recognised that our social media approach would work best if supported by traditional media.

Stakeholder support: Briefing notes from the Leader went to local strategic stakeholders including the police and NHS, asking them to write letters supporting the council’s bid, and also encouraged them to sign up to the Facebook group.

Councillors and influential local groups such as Friends of Burgess Park were briefed and asked to join our social media campaign.

We also arranged for Boris to receive hundreds of children’s drawings, as well as letters from local schools in support of the bid.

Internal communications: E-newsletters were sent to council staff and a series of news stories were published to the council‘s website and intranet.

Events: More than 500 locals turned out to support two concurrently run Help a London Park voting events – many of whom received the invitation through our Facebook group. Council staff donned blonde Boris-lookalike wigs to provide imaginative photo opportunities.

Presentation: A well thought-out presentation was made to the GLA panel, including a short video of resident voxpops (see YouTube video below). Exhibition panels produced by the Young Friends of Burgess Park expressed their aspirations for the park.

Media: We specifically targeted publications we knew the judging panel read, e.g. Horticulture Week.

Partnering the Southwark News provided weekly positive stories and the popularity of the Facebook group was used as a hook to sell stories into the trade and London press.

Evaluation and measurement

On March 4 2009 the Mayor of London announced that Burgess Park had won the transformational £2 million grant!

The Facebook group was considered a major factor in the park’s success and an example of good practice for the council’s new approach to online campaigns.

• We invited no more than 10 people to join the group yet within 10 weeks the group had swelled to 1,135 members – demonstrating effective word of mouth
• There were more than 80 posts to the wall and discussion forum about what people wanted to see happen to their park
• On the whole messages were overwhelmingly supportive of the council and the bid

The group was a powerful way to demonstrate the strength of feeling in the local community. Real people with honest opinions and experiences of the park provided depth to the campaign and the human face of the bid provided an emotive and convincing argument for us to win.

Comments made during the campaign

“Since I was a kid I regularly used Burgess Park to play football…but I always dreamed of just how good it would look if some serious money was spent on landscaping the park and making it feel like a destination. It still feels like a piece of reclaimed wasteland (which is what it actually is) and although funds have been allocated on an ad-hoc basis over the years to keep it looking vaguely presentable, Southwark Council have never had the budget to sort it out properly”

“Burgess park is such a huge green space in the middle of a very densely populated area. But, there is nothing to do in the park, the play facilities are awful, there is no designated footbal/basketball or tennis areas and it feels very unsafe and unkept. Please get some money to develop this rare open space in Central London for the people who live nearby.”

Comments made after we won:

“Yay this is amazing, good work. The lake is lovely i just really hope they put some lights up so we can walk through at night. YAY ”

“fantastic news,hope the money will be well spent on improving a great park!”

In the months since the announcement the Facebook group has been used to keep members informed of the progress and now forms part of the strategy to involve local people in the long-term future of their park.

Lessons learnt in the process have helped inform the social media policy for the council.

Positive media coverage

Throughout the campaign we received positive coverage in the South London Press, Southwark News, Horticulture Week, the Evening Standard and PR Week.

Our success was featured prominently on ITV London News, in the Evening Standard, London Paper and the locals.

Other evidence

An Ipsos-MORI survey carried out in the lead up to the parks announcement showed 83% of residents were satisfied with Southwark’s parks and open spaces – an all-time high.

The local gov day at Google’s London HQ this week (#googlelocalgov) definitely gave me some food for thought. No, they didn’t have all the answers, but as a group we do tend to have a LOT of questions.

There are a few things I’ll be looking into over the next few weeks as a result:

1. Google Adwords - I want to see just how much bang a council can get for its £300 buck in adwords. The Hillingdon example (pdf) was very interesting.

2. Site Links – The links that appear under Southwark Council when you do a google search are probably already the most appropriate but I’m not sure the landing pages they take you to are totally up to scratch…

3. Being more garish and less subtle – if it really only takes eight seconds for someone to decide if they’re going to click through to anything else from a page we need to make things REALLY obvious. What are the pages we really want people to see? We need to make the links more prominent!

4. Make registration easy and useful – when we move to a CMS that allows registration we need to make it SIMPLE, show the benefits, be reassuring and transparent and avoid distractions. Test test test to make sure we’re not losing people at the same stage every time and make sure we get them to the finish line. Sounds obvious but it will take a fair bit of work to get it right.

5. Advertising on a council site – This isn’t a high priority and I’m not sure how well it would go down but it might be a consideration when looking at template design – particularly for the what’s on section of the site. I was quite impressed by some aspects of Nottingham Council’s what’s on section.

6. YouTube – I didn’t know that YouTube was the second most popular search after google. At Southwark we have a channel and a few videos on it but nothing particularly new or exciting. But I think this will take off soon. A couple of good examples were shown on the day:

I really like the way annotations have been used in this video:

I thought the Visit Blackpool video was original and entertaining:

Both of these examples relate well to the kind of campaigns that we’re running at Southwark Council…

7. Google maps – There doesn’t seem to be a ready answer about how councils should be using Google and Ordnance Survey maps so it makes it even more important that we work together. Residents don’t care what goes on behind the scenes – what they care about is being able to find local services. They’re not interested in the boundaries of a borough when they’re looking for their local park or nearest recycling centre.

There were plenty more subjects being discussed on the day but these are the key points I took away from the day.

Go to the Google local government resource centre for more info.

A few months ago the number of people asking for advice about Facebook, Twitter etc was starting to alarm me. I mean, at least they were asking questions and not plunging headfirst into their own online campaigns but still, talking people down from their big ideas was taking up a lot of time.

I would have to explain what the council’s stance was on social media, why we’d chosen that route and then ask a whole heap of questions about what they wanted to achieve, when, why, who etc.

Fortunately I work in a good comms team which plans the council’s communications and marketing work around campaigns that have to have clear objectives, and the rest of the council seems to be coming round to the idea of planning. Radical I know

So, I pulled together some background research, examples of good practice (and bad) and now when someone comes aknocking I pass them:

1. An introduction – what is social media and how can it benefit the council

2. Some guidelines – outlining the council’s policy of corporate communications and a reminder that the same protocols about confidentiality etc still apply in social media

Then, if they’re not put off I give them

3. A social media checklist which follows the ROSIE rules: Research -> Objectives -> Strategy -> Implementation, -> Evaluation.

Anyone who wants to invest time and money in a campaign should be able to answer all these questions:

Research

What are people saying about us already?

Before you can take part in these conversations you need to know what people are already talking about, who they’re talking to, and where they’re having these conversations.

There are lots of places you can find out:

• The council’s online forums
• Local community forums
• Councillor blogs
• Facebook – including the council’s own wall and discussion topics
• Twitter – including responses to council’s twitter, cllr tweets

What do you already know about your target audience?

• Where do they go for their information? Local radio, local newspapers, forums?
• Do you know if they use particular social media i.e. Facebook or YouTube?

Look at the demographics of the group you’re trying to reach e.g. age/gender. You have to go to them – where will you find them?

Objectives

What are you trying to achieve?

• Improvements to a specific service? E.g. finding out what people want and giving it to them
• Raising levels of awareness of a service
• Increasing uptake or involvement
• Increased value for money of a service. Will you be able to provide the same (or better) level of service for less money if you use social media?

For each of these points you need to have qualitative objectives that you can measure e.g.

• Increased participation in housing strategy consultation by 20%
• Decreased printing costs for events brochure by improving online search and providing an invite a friend facility
• Video of Leader’s vision for the borough viewed by at least 4,000 people

Strategy

What do you want to talk about?

• What do you want to talk about?
• Are the issues controversial?
• Any sensitive/ confidential/anonymity issues need to be considered carefully.
• Will there be events advertised?
• Will you post news?
• Is there a timeline for actions?

Timeframe

• For preparation
• Need to factor time in to build up momentum online

How will you let people know about your campaign?

• What offline/online publicity are you going to do?
• Will you want to engage with the media – send press releases, do radio interviews etc?
• Will you need to advertise your campaign through the council website – e.g. homepage news stories or the e-newsletter?

How will you deal with feedback?

• Are you ready for what people have to say – how will you deal with questions?
• What happens if you receive a torrent of negative comments?

How will you moderate people’s comments?

• Are there going to be online discussions involved? Will you be asking for people’s opinions?
• Who is going to moderate these comment?
• How much time can you allow for this?
• Do you know what our moderation policy is? E.g. when you should remove a post and how you go about it

Results

Before you start you need to know what you’re measuring

• Were you able to engage people in new conversations?
• Did you learn something about our residents/service/ etc that you didn’t know before?
• Did members of the public learn something about us?

We need to be monitoring these conversations and collecting data.

You can do so by setting up RSS feeds from blogs and forums (RSS in plain English YouTube video) as well as by the traditional method of reading newspaper cuttings.

You need to identify what keywords you’re interested in – just ‘Southwark Council’ or ‘Heygate’, ‘Aylesbury’ etc?

Evaluation

When will you decide whether you have achieved what you set out to do?

• Is there a specific deadline or climax of the campaign

You need to evaluate how you’re doing as you’re going along

• If you aim to engage 1,000 people over the course of three months then do you know where you need to be after the first two weeks? Or at the half-way point?
• Are people reacting positively to your presence on a social networking site?

When you’re representing your organisation through social media a bit of common sense goes a long way. But when there are a few of you involved it can be useful to have to have some guidelines in place.

We don’t have an official policy at Southwark Council but these are the headline principles I share with colleagues:

Don’t get offended

Council bashing is inevitable. We can’t be offended if people don’t like us we just have to respond positively.

Be polite and sympathetic and refer people to the customer service centre if they have a problem. If they are making a complaint then point them in the direction of the complaints procedure.

Be human

Social media works best when it’s facilitating conversations between individuals rather than organisations. You need to write in a personable and conversational style but avoid the use of ‘I’. Use ‘we’ instead if possible.

Work on the basis that if another council officer took over from you then members of the public should be unaware of the change.

Be professional

Facebook users should set up a work account if they wish to represent the council online. Do you want residents to see photos from your last party? No, didn’t think so.

Setting up a work account also ensures notifications will be sent to your work email address.

It is important not to abuse the good will of people who join your cause or group by intruding on their spaces – you can easily become SPAM.

Beware of elections

Purdah is imposed roughly six before elections. During this time the council is not allowed to communicate with members of the public about any new or controversial Government initiatives (such as modernisation initiatives, administrative and legislative changes).

If are unsure in any way it is better to be safe than sorry. Ask your communications colleagues for advice.