I recorded this a little while ago to go alongside some other training and consulting work I was doing at the time.
I basically explain how to plan out digital engagement work to ensure it is most likely to succeed, by thinking about your own objectives, the needs of the people you want to engage with, and that sort of thing.
It refers to a template throughout – you can download a copy of that here – it’s in PowerPoint format.
Hope it’s useful!
When I delivered the Civil Service Learning digital engagement for policymakers course with Steph Gray, Steph put in a really neat slide which explained that different people have different needs from any one engagement exercise.
Some people are happy to just know a bit more about what is going on. Others want to be able to have their say. Some people don’t want to be bothered about it at all!
This is an important thing to remember when trying to engage people with your policy, campaign, event or service. A single digital solution will put off as many people as it attracts.
Planning a digital engagement exercise needs to include consideration of each different audience, what their needs are, and what they are able to offer.
For those that just want to know more, try a clear English version of your policy to help people understand what you are trying to do.
For those who would like to be involved but perhaps don’t have the expertise to contribute in a major way, provide some kind of interactive quiz or exercise to allow them to give their overall view without getting bogged down in detail.
Then, for those with deep knowledge of the policy area you are engaging with, provide easy ways for them to be able to share that knowledge and their views – through a nice survey or commendable document, say.
The important thing is to do the research and planning to begin with – who will have a view on this? What will they want to do? How much understanding do they have?
Once you’ve done this, it ought to be much easier to design engaging tools to help make it happen.
Getting people to actually use new tools in the workplace is pretty hard.
No matter how cool your new social platform is, your colleagues (except for the super keen) won’t suddenly leap into using it.
Instead, you need to think tactically about how you engage workers with new online tools.
Here are ten ideas for making it happen. If you can’t see the embedded document below, then you can download the PDF version.
My thanks to Steve Dale and Anne McCrossan who gave me some great advice when I was putting these together.
It would be great to get your views on these ideas – and whether you have any to add?
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Helen Coen is currently online community manager for the RSPCA, the UK’s leading animal welfare charity. Previously she has been a senior RSPCA press officer and award-winning journalist. She is also Dave’s sister.
I admit it: I wasn’t always that interested in the internet and social media.
In all honesty I was a tad old-school – I’d started out as a newspaper journalist before the internet really took off, and before social media became mainstream.
I just didn’t quite get it.
As far as I was concerned print and broadcast media were very important and social networks and blogs were something ‘other’ and a bit of a mystery.
Luckily I had a hunch that I needed to get with the times (and keep up with my brother!) and learned through courses, conferences and trial and error.
As my knowledge and experience increased I realised that online is where people are now and how wonderful – and important – online and the communities that form there really are.
It was natural to feel that communicating online – and directly with the public rather than via journalists – was a risky business. After all, I was responsible for protecting the RSPCA’s reputation.
It’s a common fear that by having an online presence you’re making it easier for the general public to slate you whether you deserve it or not.
To some extent this is true. But people will say negative things about you online whether you’re there or not.
At least if you’re easily contactable and listening to the conversation you have a chance of putting things right or setting the record straight.
There’s no getting away from it, entering the digital world does involve risk and not a small amount of time and money. But there is no doubt in my mind that not getting involved is a huge opportunity missed – and frankly not an option.
I’ve found that communicating online is an essential way of building relationships direct with key influencers – whether it’s through working with bloggers and forums or building your own online community.
The most rewarding and worthwhile element of my online work so far has been talking with bloggers.
I’ve been blown away by how hard bloggers work – mostly in their ‘spare’ time – to make sure their content is genuine, engaging and well written, and also by their brilliant help spreading the word to the right people.
A handful of bloggers I’ve contacted have said that it’s not a cause they can support or agree with, or they already support their quota of charities.
But (approached in the right way) most are happy to do what they can to help, have a vital part to play and are a pleasure to work with.
Okay, not all bloggers have a huge readership, but small, carefully chosen blogs have massive influence on the people that matter – and don’t forget that newspaper articles (and content on news sites) are here today, gone tomorrow – blog posts stick around for years.
Twitter: @HelenRSPCA
I’m giving a talk today at a conference in Norwich for parish and town councils and one of the things I want to do is just to share some really simple ideas on how councils could get some online interactivity going.
One of those ideas was to tweet meetings. I asked my network on Twitter for examples, and was deluged!
I’ve used Storify to collect them all together, and have embedded it at the bottom of this post. Storify seems a great way of dragging tweets (and other media) together – ideal indeed for covering meetings!
It seems like there are different approaches being taken, mainly around who does the actual tweeting. Is it council officers? Councillors themselves? Journalists? Citizens?
Have a read through and see what you think.
Dave Briggs 