the social agency

Should government departments and agencies be social?

A while back I wrote about the social organisation, looking into the place and the relevance companies have on social media. I questioned the need for organisations to be social, particularly corporate industries, critiquing the use of social media as a one-way dissemination tool. I see this as a problem as the new media age is characterised by two-way dialogic communication as opposed to the one-way approach typically associated with marketing strategies.

In the blog, I argued that most industries should be on social media, not as a means to promote products or services, but rather to engage conversationally with customers in a public relations capacity. Ben mentioned in a comment that a social media presence may be disadvantageous and suggested that some industries may prefer a low public profile, such as law firms.

Even though some industries many not benefit from engaging customers with social media, in general social media is considered to be essential to PR and marketing strategies. Not only that, Danka made the all too important point that social media is critical in environmental scanning and crisis management and prevention. If your organisation is avoiding social media, then you’re facing a bigger risk by not controlling any of the messages about your organisation.

I work for a local council and I have to say that this particular industry, generally speaking, has been slow to jump on the social media bandwagon (for lack of a better word). The role of local government is to provide services for the community, so why are they so behind the eight ball in engaging communities over social media? Do people really care?

Working within the industry for a number of years, I have seen attitudes relax in regards to using social media, however a lot of the time the people working there feel they don’t have the right skills, or even see it as important to their day-to-day work. Traditionally these local councils didn’t need to interact with their communities on a day-to-day basis, opting to just send a letter to inform people. Council’s haven’t always needed PR teams as they are an essential service, a place to get a parking permit or get a rubbish collection.

However people are expecting more and more from their local councils as they pick up the slack from other areas of government. Services such as social support, environmental protection and enhancing parks and open space are a big concern to local communities and a more important part of local councils. In the council I work for, the gatekeepers of the organisations Facebook and Twitter are a few in the communications department. If you need to engage the community over an issue, you get them to add it to the Facebook page.

But is this really enough?

In my niche field of environmental management, there is debate about engaging people around environmental issues via social media. One organisation has even developed a website to help enviro people find the right social media tool. I think it’s a good first step, but this only addressed one fairly minor barrier. I think people in the field are battling much bigger issues, such as:

· strict corporate social media guidelines,

· money and time to manage social media pages, and

· skills and confidence to do it

So how do we move past this?

I say we jump right in! Work out a flexible strategy for managing it and relax those strict guidelines. If you have something worth saying, then you should say it. Mistakes will happen and if they are minor, they will pass soon enough as long as you’re open and honest.

Being present is far better than being absent so there is really very little to lose!

As always, I’m keen to hear your thoughts so comment or tweet me @chwesty12