Posts Tagged ‘social media’

Youth Parliament Elections campaign – a social media case study

Monday, July 12th, 2010
Make Your Vote Count! Scottish Youth Parliament Elections

Campaign graphic

Later this week I’ll be attending a national awards ceremony, at which one of our campaigns has been nominated for an award. ** UPDATE – we won! **

Edinburgh’s 2009 Scottish Youth Parliament election campaign has already won a Bronze award in the Marketing Society’s Star Awards – the only local authority campaign to win in any category. It was also a finalist in the CIPR national awards, in the category of best campaign under £10k.

It has now been shortlisted for the “Government to Citizen Communications” category of the Good Communication Awards, and I’ll be representing my organisation at the ceremony on Thursday.

The tremendous reception that the campaign has received is thanks to the enthusiasm, innovation and hard work not only of my colleagues, but also of the young people involved in the elections, and I’m proud to represent such a campaign as just one of the many people who worked to make it happen.

The following gives a flavour of the efforts, and hopefully offers some inspiration to others, especially those involved in e-participation and youth engagement.

More about the campaign and our use of social media

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Scotland’s first GovCamp

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

A quick note for those involved in working with government in Scotland, particularly in digital engagement. The end of July will see Scotland’s first GovCamp.

There’s no agenda as yet – in the tradition of GovCamps, we’ll be setting that on the day, but there will no doubt be a strong Web 2.0 and social media theme.

The Informatics Forum in Edinburgh will provide an inspiring space for discussion and engagement, the sharing of experiences and creation of new ideas.

You can find out more, and book your free place for the event, at http://scotgovcamp.eventbrite.com

Also read this preview of the event by Improvement Service reporter David Friel.

Thanks to Lesley Thomson, from the Scottish Government, for getting the ball rolling.

EDIT – the event now has an official site at http://scotgovcamp.wordpress.com

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Election Count 2.0 in Edinburgh

Friday, May 7th, 2010
Election map showing Twitter updates

Twitter Election Map

Over the past year or two there has been a palpable surge of interest in using Web 2.0 in the public sector, and in most cases that’s a very positive thing. The added value that such platforms can bring to the services we deliver is obvious, opening new channels of outreach and improving engagement and involvement.

During last night’s election count, the City of Edinburgh Council were putting Web 2.0 to marvellous use by keeping citizens bang up to date with progress of the count taking place over at Meadowbank Stadium.

The following is a summary of what the council did on the night.

More about Election Count 2.0 in Edinburgh

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Hard lessons in social media: political suicide

Friday, April 9th, 2010

I’ve just updated my list of social media lessons learned the hard way with details of a Labour candidate who appears to have committed political suicide on Twitter.

Read more about Stuart MacLennan’s costly social media gaffe

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Creating a dynamite campaign

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

Today I found myself in the opulent surroundings of Edinburgh’s Balmoral Hotel for a breakfast seminar, run by Precedent, on creating dynamite campaigns. The following are some of my notes.

The seminar was lead by John Campbell and Mark Baillie, and John began by considering the good, the bad and the ugly. Examples of good campaigns included:

  • Coca-Cola’s 80s/90s “Can’t Beat the Feeling” adverts – a tune that many of us still recognise today and an excellent example of strong branding.
  • The University of Birmingham’s Circle of Influence campaign to raise £60 million. Astonishingly, they’ve already reached the £50m mark, combining online strategies with a more traditional print campaign.
  • Drinkaware’s drink diary, which allows you to monitor your drinking and compare with friends, adding a social element to the mix. You can even download a phone app. I couldn’t help thinking this could backfire though – imagine people using the diary to compare how much they could drink in a week and actually trying to beat each other!
  • Volkswagen’s Fun Theory website, featuring various viral videos aimed at making people change their behaviour for the better:

John notes that common factors to all of these successes were creativity and innovation.

More on creating dynamite content

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Joining the conversation – handling complaints via Social Media

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

A colleague recently raised the issue of how we handle complaints that come in via social media, and this got me thinking about the impact of these channels on how we deliver customer service in general. It’s a massive topic, with an awful lot of angles to consider, so here are just a few thoughts.

To start, though, I thought I’d have a quick look at what people were tweeting about in relation to my organisation (LinkedIn has a handy feature called Company Buzz which makes this easier). As expected, the results were not great.

Some recent feedback on Twitter

Some recent feedback on Twitter

You can immediately see why this subject is an important one, especially if the individuals posting such comments have a lot of followers (as the recent Dooce vs Maytag story proved). But do these individuals expect the Council to respond? And if so, what should we be doing?

My thoughts on handling complaints via social media

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