Councillors, councils and their partners are using social media for a wide range of purposes. It is being used as a way to spark innovation, drive efficiency and engage in conversations with local people. As well as using social media themselves, members should ensure their local authority as an organisation is using it well.0 Comments

6.1 How councils are using social media0 Comments

Councillors should be aware of the opportunities for social media to be used by councillors and partners. Below are examples of how some councils are using social media.0 Comments

Providing information about services0 Comments

In February 2010, the Society of Information Technology Management (Socitm) provided an audit of councils’ social media usage and showed that 154 councils are using Twitter and 73 have Facebook pages8. Some other uses of social media for services include:0 Comments

• Staffordshire’s RateMyPlace.org.uk, which provides food safety ratings for local people and a place for local people to share reviews of eateries.
• Islington’s Facebook group, which is used to promote and share information about recycling in the borough.
• ManchesterLitList, a blog that provides information about literary events and featured books.
• Sutton Council providing information about grit bin locations which was mapped by a member of the public who is a web developer. The map was then hosted on Sutton’s website informing residents of their locations so citizens could grit and clear icy pavements themselves.
• Many schools and councils used Twitter and easy to update blogs to alert parents of school closures during the heavy snow in January 2010.

Supporting local democracy0 Comments

Redbridge’s Big Conversation provided a platform for local people to set priorities for spending and engage in policy discussion during a major borough-wide consultation, providing a place for local people to discuss issues. Just as you would consider what people are saying at area forums, councillors should take account of these discussions in their decision-making and can find that these platforms are a good way to explain why difficult decisions have been reached.0 Comments

In the 2009 local elections, councils with integrated and interactive reporting (for example mixing traditional web communications with tools like Twitter or blogs) doubled traffic to their websites, according to Socitm. Derbyshire County Council used a mix of online tools and channels to support and report local elections results in June 2009. This included multimedia web content, social bookmarking (a way of storing, sharing and recommending websites to others) and real-time results delivered through web graphics, Twitter and a dedicated Facebook page. Media interest was high and citizen feedback was extremely positive. Visitors levels to the council’s website were the highest ever recorded.0 Comments

Gathering customer insight and managing customer relationships0 Comments

Barnet Council is using social media monitoring tools to find out about conversations that are taking place online and tackle complaints about services. Greater Manchester Police are using social media monitoring to read what people are saying publicly online to identify and tackle fear of crime.0 Comments

Some well-known commercial brands use communities of users to answer questions and resolve complaints, and several councils are beginning to experiment in this area. This has the potential to reduce transaction costs for the council and provide a more ‘human’ face to dealing with bureaucracy. In Newcastle, engagement with a Facebook group critical of the council’s perceived role in shutting down a popular nightclub helped to explain the issues around noise enforcement. As a result, one of the group’s organisers met with council officials and the council has since advised a co-operative that aims to buy the bar.0 Comments

Councillors will find that these tools provide a vital insight into what’s going on in their communities and often allow them to engage directly with the key players.0 Comments

Promoting culture0 Comments

Medway Council is one of many that uses Facebook to promote festivals and events.0 Comments

The London Borough of Wandsworth’s film office uses Flickr, an image sharing social network, to promote film and television locations. Many museums, often local authority supported, are using a combination of social media tools to promote collections, events and special exhibitions.0 Comments

Councillors can support cultural events by joining Facebook groups or promoting them through their own social networking profiles.0 Comments

Supporting community cohesion, neighbourliness and resilience0 Comments

There is strong evidence that online networking can promote better connected neighbourhoods. One American study showed that neighbours who were connected online were much more likely to talk to and engage with the people who lived near them.0 Comments

Local networks like Harringay Online or Pits n Pots in Stoke-on-Trent provide an online platform for the views of local residents. Although these are usually independent websites, councillors can and should engage with these sites constructively.0 Comments

Internal communications and learning and development0 Comments

Many councils are using the tools of social media such as videos, blogs and internal social networks to support internal communications. The IDeA’s Community of Practice platform has over 50,000 members and every council in the country is represented. The IDeA’s Knowledge Hub programme will take communities of practice to the next level and offer even greater opportunities to harness these technologies for professional development and data and information sharing between partners.0 Comments

Councillors can take advantage of these learning opportunities themselves and encourage the use of internal networks like Yammer (a corporate version of Twitter) within their councils and use them to reach a wide range of officers in their council or among partners.0 Comments

Open data0 Comments

Governments around the world are making efforts to open up their data and make it available for re-use. The US began with data.gov and the UK has upped the ante with the comprehensive (though not yet complete) data.gov.uk which focuses on central government data. Opening up data sets promotes the notion of a government responsible to the people it serves, giving them the tools of information and transparency to hold it to account. But there are other benefits, too, which include better interchange of information between public sector partners and the re-use of open government data to provide useful information and services to citizens.0 Comments

Some councils are making strides with open data, notably Lichfield and the GLA and others are experimenting with some data sets. Barnet, Windsor and Maidenhead and a few others are experimenting with exposing data on all purchases over £500. Kent County Council has made more than 500 data sets available online as part of its ‘Pic and Mix’ project. Visitors can browse the data catalogue and use online tools (known as mashups) to transform and personalise public data.  This essentially means they can combine different statistics to make it useful to them in a variety of contexts.0 Comments

This puts citizens in control of public information and avoids unnecessary contact with the council, Empowering citizens in this way means they can solve their own problems and become more engaged with their community. Early indications from US cities like San Francisco, Chicago and Washington, which have already opened their data, show that significant value can be created through open data11 and that savings can be achieved by reducing the cost of freedom of information requests.0 Comments

Councillors can play a vital role in providing the assurance that’s it’s ok to put information in the hands of the people or use the data themselves to hold a range of public services to account.0 Comments

6.2 Opportunities not taken0 Comments

Although social media can be used to effectively and efficiently support council priorities, in most councils these opportunities have not yet been fully exploited. There are significant barriers to using social media within councils for both councillors and officers who wish to engage with citizens to improve local services. Some are technical, but most are cultural.0 Comments

For example:0 Comments

• Access to social media sites like Facebook, blogs, Twitter and YouTube is routinely blocked from council computers.
• There may be no clear policy on using social media for councillors or officers either in a personal capacity or in an official capacity.
• There may be a lack of clarity about whether a councillor’s blog or social media profile can be linked from council corporate sites and whether this counts as political or council business.
• Communications strategies rarely incorporate social approaches.
• There often isn’t a clear policy for responding to comments from citizens on social networks, whether these be compliments, complaints or service requests.
• Computers can be out-of-date or ill-equipped to use social media. For example,  older versions of web browsers or computers with no sound makes viewing residents’ YouTube videos impossible.

Councillors wanting to support their roles as local leaders and campaigners with social media may find that it’s easier to just set up their own social media presence such as blogs or Facebook pages. There are plenty of free sites and this neatly circumvents the issue of whether official council blog sites need to be shut down during elections.0 Comments

Councillors do have a responsibility to ensure that their councils are making the most of the potential these tools are offering. Councillors should ask whether there is a council policy for social media use, particularly for officers who work in communications, policy, customer facing services or those who work with communities.0 Comments

Some questions you may ask about your council’s approach to social media:0 Comments

• Is there a social media policy?
• If access to social media sites are routinely blocked, who can authorise unblocking and what is the procedure for those whose work requires access to social media?
• How are complaints and compliments from external social media sites such as FixMyStreet fed into the council’s customer service arrangements?
• Is the council integrating social media effectively with more traditional communications channels such as print and the web?