Another weekend, another social media PR disaster

Boots. I salute you. Because damned if you do and damned if you don't just really bit you on the behind.

UKUncut have been out bringing protest and humour to the streets again today. And Boots have received a visitation due to their alleged (I don't know enough about all this so am using alleged) tax avoidance. It appears, superficially, that while police were outside the door CS gassing protestors, inside someone was tweeting this (via @nksheridan). It appears to come from @bootsmealdeals and appears to be commenting on Boots attitude to the polices reactions to the protestors.

The account has now been deleted. As has @bootsstores. Now ordinarily, my reaction to this would have been woah! overreaction much, and to question why they simply didn't issue an apology on the stream, explain that it had been a mistake and carried on, business as usual, because deleting the accounts simply makes them look a bit stupid, because as the link above clearly shows, nothing on the interwebs is ever actually deleted. Ever.

But then you start to look a little deeper and you wonder exactly how deep the doing it wrong goes. And it goes quite deep. A quick riffle through the boots.com website reveals a blog (I'll not pass comment, it's not fair) and no mention of Twitter, at all. Even in the Contact Us bit. So thanks to other Tweeters, I discovered an account, which has also been deleted, called @bootsstores. The only tweet from this account that I can easily find is this one. Funny Donkeys. Yes, you did read that right. Also, note the user pic.

So, we've got one of two situations here, and neither of them is very happy making for Boots. 1) two accounts which are not actually being run by Boots officially, but are being run by employees are merrily tweeting quite company reputation damaging stuff (yes it's only donkeys but really? First rule of running an official company Twitter account - be friendly but not over friendly and keep it vaguely related to business) because commenting on police action is just not the done thing or 2) you allowed two accounts which were nothing to do with you use your company name and cause quite widespread confusion when those two accounts are deleted, because if they're not you why have you waited until now to get them deleted and if they are you why do they look so unprofessional?

Whichever way you tilt your head, there are some very interesting issues here. In the midst of a backlash against social media consultants, I would argue that now more than ever they are needed (as long as they actually know what they're talking about and it might be helpful is there were some questions somewhere which people could use to filter out charlatans), and I would also argue that Twitter verification is really rather necessary and taking it away leaving a gaping void is damaging Twitters reputation as well as other peoples. The potential for damage to a company not keeping an eye on what is happening on social networks should not need to be pointed out and nor should I need to say no Funny Donkeys.

But it seems I need to. So, no funny donkeys. If you're tweeting from a company account, make it clear it is, put a logo on it. And if someone sets up a Twitter account which might be mistaken for your companies official mouthpiece, hunt them down and ask them nicely to cease and desist and if they wont, get your Legal Department on the case.

Don't be a Boots.

More Twitter rules for business

I would do well, one day, to write one of these posts when not a bit irritated. I am a bit irritated.

Last week, someone who had never spoken to me before, out of the blue asked me about my relationship with Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council. Now. If it weren't in my bio on Twitter, I would forgive that oversight, but it's stated quite clearly in my bio on Twitter where I work. Ordinarily, someone not bothering to read my bio wouldn't matter either. However this person was trying to establish a business relationship with Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council.

So here's some free advice. Do your research before pitching at people.

Next. Same person. Asked me for traffic figures for our website. Completely out of the blue, with no preamble and only having spoken to me previously about the aforementioned cock up regarding my relationship with my own Head of Service. Whilst Twitter is informal, I freely acknowledge this, this is akin to striding up to me in the pub when I am sitting at a table in conversation with someone else, interupting, asking a completely irrelevant question to the existing conversation - and then leaving again.

The final nail in the coffin, however, was being berated in public the 3rd time this person spoke to me because not taking up his products meant a lollipop woman was out of a job.

Can anyone guess why I am not inclined to do business with this person, if I can at all help it?

I appreciate that Twitter is a new business tool for a lot of people. But taking the time to find out what the etiquette is, find out who the people are who you're trying to sell something to, can go a long way towards those people actually wanting to do business with you.

This applies to all kinds of business transactions. Being aggressive and pushy simply means I wont acknowledge you. Trying to speak for me, on my behalf in situations, means I will get slowly more and more narked. Going behind my back and agreeing things without any discussion when the outcome directly affects me is simply not the done thing and trying to tag onto the back of something because it is successful when you've never ever spoken to the organiser before simply makes you look like a dick.

Because Twitter is new, and because I am perhaps being a little uptight, everyone gets two chances. Two people blew theirs with me this weekend and it didn't need to happen - they just needed to scope out the person they were dealing with just a little bit better and everything would have gone just fine. If you're not prepared to spend the time to do that on potential customers/collaborators from whom you're going to be getting a lot of money or exposure - I suggest you don't enter into the arena at all.

PR vs the geeks

Lets see if I can explain the new world order to some people who have most definitly missed the point. Vodafone. You have missed the point. Your PR agency has missed the point. Your web devs have deliberately not missed the point but not told you. I suspect if you'd asked them, the entirety of your mobile technical support centre could have handed you the point nicely wrapped in a gift box with bows - but they'd have chosen not to.

It's not Christmas yet and you just dropped a bomb. This isn't surprising to me, because I don't count you as a particularly young and hip brand any more - you got left behind in the mobile provider wars when you didn't secure the iPhone before everyone else and even now you do have it your coverage of my bit of the UK is so appalling that I might as well use my 'phone' as a paperweight.

But all this aside, what you did this morning (Sunday, 12th December 2010) is hilariously appalling. I've only been in front of my PC for 40 minutes. In 40 minutes my perception of you as a company who has the ability to do business in the modern world is now exactly zero. I don't matter. Your stakeholders matter, of course they do, that's why you're dodging a rather large tax bill and continue to do so despite the horrific damage to your reputation this has caused amongst a demoraphic who 2 weeks ago were your main customers. The only people who matter to you are your stakeholders.

Unfortunately, when you decided you were going to use the hashtag #mademesmile to promote your 12 smiles of Xmas you forgot something quite fundamental. You decided, lord alone only knows why, in your infinite wisdom, that not only were you going to try and run a campaign to recover some of your lost reputation after the demonstrations last week, but you were going to do it in the very arena where the people who organised that demonstration gather, speak together, organise and collude.

Your arrogance, because I can only assume it is that, is going to be your downfall. Because, you see, whilst the #ukuncut bunch are not your stakeholders and don't matter and the police will deal with them and ensure you never have to put up with their pesky demonstrations again - you've now got a bigger problem. You're a laughing stock among the demographic who are your main customers. And in among those customers are the sons and daughters of your stakeholders. Who this morning will have woken to the biggest joke of this Xmas season so far - a company who listened to a PR agency who surely must be the stupidist people this side of the Atlantic?

Because who in their right minds would recommend a campaign like this is a good idea? I can only imagine we've come back to the same old problem yet again - they're a PR agency. They do PR. They've always done PR. The words social media will appear somewhere on their hastily redesigned business cards, but don't be fooled.

PR is about managing reputations. Marketing is about selling things to people. Social media? Here be dragons if you don't understand people. People who are not stupid. People who are smarter than you. More organised than you. More agile than you. More responsive than you. Can move quicker, mobilise quicker, think quicker. It's not rocket science, but it's not PR and it's not marketing. The skills required to navigate your way successfully through this new ocean, are not ones your average PR nor marketing bod have.

The simple fact is, Vodafone, you asked the wrong people. I'll give you a clue. If someone is dressed in D & G and Armani, they're not social media bods. If they're smart and smelling of gel, they're not social media people. If they're smart casual and wearing a Star Wars t-shirt - trust them, they know what they're talking about. If they're wearing trainers, pristine ones, which look like somehow they've impossibly come out of a box fresh from the 1980's, listen to them, they know of what they speak. Hell, if they look like their mother dressed them, you'll get better advice on social media than you will from people who've tacked those two words onto their online advert which has so many different colours in it it looks like a Pantone advert.

You are all still listening to advice from the wrong people, because you are all still working to the same stereotypes you always did.

If you don't want to become the next Vodafone, for gods sake go see someone sensible like Technophobia or someone decent. Let the PR bods do what they do best, let the marketing guys do what they do best but this? This is best left to the geeks.

A little bird tweeting

I am naught but a little bird tweeting. I am not a journalist, I am a geek. A geek in love with words, yes, but nevertheless a geek. A woman who loves to describe, shape, evoke, revoke, aspire, inspire, play and provoke, but a geek, first and foremost.

Geeks don't like it when things are not 'fair'. I don't mean not fair in a tantrum rattle throwing way, I mean a basic human right violated, criminal getting away with it kind of not fair. Something done wrong, which could easily be righted, a thing unprovoked and unwarranted, undone.

On Thursday, a man called Paul Chambers lost his appeal against his conviction earlier this summer, under some random nuisance call legislation, for posting a tweet joking about Robin Hood airport being closed. No matter that the tweet was a written communication, no matter that it was a joke and everyone knowing the man who read his stream would have know this without needing to be told, no matter that he is one man writing in public what a thousand will have said in private - the conviction stands and he is saddled with a total £2000 bill as well.

Also on Thursday, a Birmingham Councillor posted a tweet inciting the stoning of a Muslim columnist for the Evening Standard and The Independant, also on Twitter. Gareth Compton apologised, used in his defense the comment:

Twitter is a forum for glib comment of the moment. It was a glib comment. Who could possibly think it was serious?

 If the Judge in the appeal for Paul Chambers cast doubt on his defense that he was not keeping up with news and current affairs, then one assumes this is also the defense Gareth Compton is using. So tell me, do tell me please, how it is possible that Gareth Compton is not being charged with anything for a 'glib comment' on Twitter which was tantamount to inciting murder in text, while a young man has been punished for life for doing exactly the same thing - except I think we can all agree that perhaps his comment was more obviously a joke, given the context?

Ah, but here we come to the crux of the matter. Context. Both these tweets are taken out of context, and as such contain no history, no attached framework which explains the context within which they were said. And lo! because legislation has not kept apace with technology developments, we now have a situation where we are using 80 year old legislation to prosecute 21st century commentary. Which, therefore, does not require context, but only allows a comment to be judged on what it is - a comment out of time.

So we come to this morning. Ah yes, I hear you cry, but you're biased. Well actually, I'm not. I've never spoken to the lady in question, until this morning I did not follow her, and though we know many people in common because this is the nature of Twitter, we did not know each other at all. I now follow her, and she now follows me. But this is inconsequential, as I have not read her stream at all.

The lady I am talking about, of course, is one Sarah Baskerville, aka Baskers, which is her tag on Twitter. The Daily Mail, this morning, saw fit to print a character assasination of someone, by name, in Quentin Letts column. It is worth noting the number of comments on the piece linked above. It appears The Daily Mails abhoration of freedom of speech extends to its readership, who are not permitted to express displeasure at the contents of the articles they are reading.

Baskers is a civil servant. She writes a wonderful blog. In it, she comes across as a rather intelligent, bright young woman, in a job which she admits she could try harder at but also admits is not glamourous or particularly frontline. So instead of descending into a spiral of self pity and demotivation, she has looked outside of her little silo and has decided to push the transparency agenda as hard as she can, involving herself voluntarily, and giving her time freely, to attend unconferences and bar camps and to talk to the geeks who are trying to do cool and funky things with data, in order to bridge a gap, a gap of understanding, of comprehension, of workflow and of civic mystery.

In other words, last time I looked, a shining role model of what Big Society is. Is it not? Is this how we reward the people who work for us not only 9-5 in front of a desk, but also out in the wild, telling people the good, but also occasionally the bad, and in the process gaining audience and credibility in their honesty? Is this the thanks we will give to a generation of men and women who see the right and shout about it, but also see the wrong and shout about that too - and then get off their asses and go and try and do something about it? Do we want sheep who will do nothing but what's instructed, never to think for themselves, never to innovate or find the edges?

Can I suggest to the Daily Mail that the roi on Baskers is not only monetary? That she is a link between the past and the future? That her way of doing things - honestly and openly - is the future that generation y are bringing en masse whether you like it or not?

Except no, I cannot. Because the comment thread is closed. And here we come to the root of the cause of all this noise. The fear. The fear that social networking, social media is untrackable, untraceable, rippling and evolving. Out of control? Perhaps in only the sense that everything is out of control, in its evolution. Could we have predicted the expanding capabilities of the computer chip 10 years ago? Should we have stamped on that development because we had no idea of where it would end? As a species, are we going to stamp on all things which we cannot predict, because we do not wish to see where the unsigned path will lead? Why is freedom of speech free only verbally, why is it becoming clear that freedom of speech textually is going to be a gnarly issue, attempts made to constrict and punish? Why has Twitter suddenly become the focus of so much attention? Is it because it is easier to read bursts of 140 and find the thoughtlessly posted comments, than it is to wade through every blog in existence? But reading only one 140 burst only gives a moment, not the context.

So here's the thing. I am going to ask very many people to tell me the good things about Twitter. The positive things. The life changing things and the little things which make peoples day. If social media is telling a story, well come tell me yours, because if you believe the media this week, Twitter is only negative, and I don't believe that for a second.

So, in the spirit of militant optimism, this is the line. I am drawing it. Time to fight back in black and white, to tell the story of networking, of entrepreneurs, of love and laughter, of connections and friendships for life, of lobbying and engaging with constituents, of doing business and telling people they've got jobs, of memes and hash tags, of all the things Twitter which has brought us, of all the conversations in sight and out. All things can be used and abused. Alcohol causes utter chaos every Friday and Saturday night. But in the interests of balance, I think it's time to pour a glass of wine, just the one, and to savour every drop, sensibly.

ETA: A story of the Gaza convoy hostages via my friend @annelidworm who used social media with others to bring the plight of his friend to the attention of the traditional media. Incidentally, I've met him once, but spoken to him, on and off, for well over 15 years - using social media. 

Illusions of transparency

In this digital world, it is very easy to give the illusion of complete transparency. You can chat on Twitter, post your holiday pics and general life pics on Flickr, if you're not careful you can broadcast every move through Facebook whether you like it or not, and you can tell people what music you listen to and what you like to watch via Last FM and YouTube.

All that information might make you think that if you looked hard enough you could find out everything about me.

You probably could. You'd need one key piece of information that you don't have because I have been very careful to keep my work life and the things which are not important, separate from the things which are, but if you didn't know that, you would think that I had laid my soul bare on the web.

I have not. I know that I have not because people reply to some of my tweets with such leftfield comments or assumptions that I splurt coffee everywhere in shock that someone could ever think such a thing of me. If people really knew me, then they'd never make that assumption at all. But here in the digital world, it's easy to think you do know someone, easy to think you have a working relationship or friendship, when all you have is shifting sand.

There are still some people for whom this is the case. I am one of them. I've met some wonderful people who I have chatted solely to using the internet prior to meeting them. The friendships have lasted years and still prevail, despite hundreds of miles seperating us on a weekly basis. Despite a suspicion of being odd for warming to someone before actually meeting them, I do not think I am in the minority any longer. I meet people I have been chatting to on the web who are not in any way 'fluffy' and there is an instant comfortableness, months worth of chat revolving around common interests providing a cushion against the usual initial unease of edging around new people met, trying to find common ground, trying to survive the small talk that I am so bad at it's not even funny. I think some of those will become something slightly more than acquintances and some of those will become firm friends. Some I might have become friends with if we'd never chatted online first, some perhaps not.

But it is easy to think that you know everything about someone. Easy to intentionally portray that you are being completely open about everything. But it is also easy to keep some sides of your life entirely private, locked off and off limits to all but those who know you the very best. We are all, perhaps, coming to terms with a new openess and a new way of working and relating to each other which seems to require a certain level of openess from us, but actually only requires us to be what we always should have aspired to be.

To be human.

Why can't they just....?

I recently attended Download Festival, and am a reasonably active member of their forums.So far, so normal, really, in this day and age. I go to the festival, I comment on the festival, I give feedback, interact with other people with the same musical taste as me, and to a lesser extent provide help where I can on trying to make the festival more environmentally friendly.

So I've been paying particular attention to the feedback form, and one thread in particular entitled Environment Tent Purchase Option. I think it's actually supposed to be Environmentally friendly tent purchase option because that was what was offered by a very nice new company, who saw a niche in the market - tents which could be recycled in their entirety, all in one go, without someone having to wade through the 1000's of tents left behind at festivals each year and seperate them all out into their constituent bits. Believe me when I say, there are literally 1000's of tents left behind at Download. Download is not alone, Leeds, Reading, V, all have the same problem because essentially we live in a throwaway culture and those attending these festivals are predominantly from the generation which have grown up in a throwaway culture.

So, full points to the company for trying. But where does social media come in to all this?

Read this thread - if you're short of time, jump straight to post no 100 in that thread. It says, and I quote: "Why can't they come onto the forums and do this themselves" where this is collect feedback and suggestions on how their service can be improved before the masses at Leeds and Reading tear them limb from limb in a way the Download lot are way too polite to ever do (don't judge rock fans by anything other than the fact that 99% of them are ineffably polite and whilst they will have complained at the festival, they will have been more interested in getting drunk).

I find this fascinating. No longer is there any leeway made for a generation who are not comfortable with computers, never mind creating forum accounts and getting their head around the complexity of social interaction on the web. The next generation expect responses, immediately and on their own terms in their own arenas. They are not forgiving of those who are not comfortable with those arenas. Companies reputations can be damaged irreparably by their inability to operate in those arenas. I suspect the response in that thread would have been very different if the company involved had made the effort to create an account and come and explain themselves, or indeed paid someone else to do it on their behalf.

So it comes down to this. The rules of the business game are changing. Either learn to play by the new rules or pay someone who already understands them, because if you don't you will be left behind in favour of those companies who are comfortable dealing with customers and delivering customer service instantly through web interfaces.

It might be early days, but already the missiles are being fired and are landing.

Information overloads

A number of blogs have been linked to in the past few weeks which have, in effect, been about information overload.

It's made me think about how I use social media, and how I use my iPhone specifically. It's also made me realise that for some people, social media is becoming an albatross around their neck. It shouldn't be this way.

Take the social out of social media for a second, and what have you got? Media. Communication. Data. News. Information. The social side is almost irrelevant when you think of it in these terms - you are the end receptor of a massive amount of information on Facebook, Twitter et al and it really can be as simple as that. You can sit and watch, you can sit and read, there is no necessity to sit and interact. It could be argued that perhaps you are only getting half the intended outcome if you only watch and read and never respond, but the choice is ultimately yours.

If the weight of expected interaction is weighing you down, then perhaps you need to step back from things for a bit and become an observer. Watch the data streams scrolling down, learn from them whatever you can, and leave it at that. Step away. Take the information, use it, budget with it, plan with it, use it to inform your decisions, but don't respond, don't get involved and don't become drained. Social media is not supposed to be a problem. It is supposed to be a tool in a box, among many other tools.

I come at things from a slightly different angle. I am a geek. I suspect quite a large amount of Twitters userbase, for example, are. And so because we are geeks, there is a very large liklihood that we have been using what has now been niftily coined as social media for years. Very many years. Somewhere in the region of 20 years for some of us, though I was a late starter and only started communicating with random people on the internet about 15 years ago. But it is as much an intrinsic part of my life as picking up the phone to communicate with someone. In fact I must confess, I am far more likely to communicate via text than telephone and there are a number of reasons for that.

The biggest one, ironically, is information overload. If I call you on the telephone, there is an expectation that if you are in you will answer it. It might be something important, afterall, and once you have answered the phone, it is very difficult to then explain you're tired and only answered in case it was important. It's a socially awkward situation imposed on someone else, putting the other person on the other end of the phone in the position of 'answer and carry on speaking' or 'ignore and possibly miss really quite important news'.

Dropping an email in an inbox is different. There is no expectation on turnaround time. There is no awkwardness. There is just a little marker in someones inbox which says 'Hi, could use some interaction/date for an event sorting/just to say hi/nothing important' and it can be left to a time when the receiver has a spare moment in their day when it is appropriate for them to answer. There is no forced expectation.

Now take that concept a little further. Imagine a world where everyone operated on their own timescales if something wasn't 'important'. Imagine a world, for example, where you could email your GP and explain you needed an appointment for something not urgent. A refill of a prescription which needs an appointment perhaps, or a vaccination for a trip abroad, or just for some advice on a non urgent twinge in your arm. No hanging on the phone for 30 minutes listening to the endless 'you are now x in the queue'. No tired over worked harassed receptionist. Just a marker in someones inbox which says 'Hi, I need some help when you've got a bit of time'.

The sender is free to wander off and do something else. Like look after their new born child, or look after their elderly relative, or indeed even go off to work. Meanwhile, the marker sits in the inbox, waiting for someone else to finish with the early morning rush when things are mad, to grab a brew, and to sit down and wade through all those markers, firing off replies and updating the appointment database at their leisure. It doesn't matter if a crisis happens and they get interupted and have to dash off - the marker remains until it's dealt with. No one is put on hold, no one is charged any money for wanting to use a free service, everyone wins. They win in time, energy, patience and the ability to not be tied physically to the end of a phone.

The same usage works right the way across using social media as a communication tool. The onus is not on you to respond immediately. Just because someone can send a Tweet in real time does not mean you must respond in real time. As long as you have clearly stated turnaround times and manage peoples expectations, why exactly does it have to be instant? Yes there may be communications coming into you which do need an immediate response - fine. Scan down the list every hour and farm the important ones off, deal with them, forward them to the right person, retweet them to the right account and you've spent 10 seconds dealing with something urgent.

Data doesn't have to be drowned in. It doesn't have to be an albatross. If managed properly, with the right frameworks set up, data is merely another asset to be managed, something to be learned from, and ultimately something to be won with. Knowledge is power. Negative or positive, it is still power.

It's time to stop talking about social media, and to start using social media, media, communication, data, whatever you want to call it, to make peoples lives easier, gentler, less stressful and more centred around the increasingly time poor way people live their lives. It can be done.

Judging books by their covers

A few days ago, I commented on a blog. I don't normally do this. for a variety of reasons, some of which will perhaps become clear. But the post made me think, and I wanted to discuss the subjects the author had raised and so I commented.

Annoyingly, of all the subjects to get stuck on repeat loop in my head, the one of judging books by their covers is the one which wont go away. So in an effort to get out of the loop, I'm sharing, because it's a source of enormous frustration to me and one of the reasons I've been ever so quiet on a variety of subjects to this point.

Someone who shall remain nameless, in a place which shall remain unidentified commented that they used to judge whether someone was worth doing business with on the basis of whether they had a mobile phone, because they were the right type of person.

I boggled.

That was the way business was done in the late 80's/early 90's. I accept that. In the absence, perhaps, of anything else to go on, a mobile phone was an obvious indicator of someones worth in monetary terms. But is the world the same now? Is my value as a contributor to the current discussions on digital inclusion and infrastructure dependant entirely on my access to that infrastructure and the fact I am included? Is my monetary value directly correlated to my intellect? Does my experience of living 50% of my life in a connected web world become invalidated when it becomes obvious that I do not dress in Gucci and my iPhone is last gen and battered to death?

I think outside of the box, because I don't see the box. I question because I am curious, intensely so, about how the world is being shaped, who is contributing, what the rules are, who's speaking sense and who isn't. I am not alone in this by any means, I am not unusual. There are 100's of thousands of people just like me stating the obvious, pulling people up when they make silly assumptions, correcting peoples misunderstandings of the technology and what it will do. To the last, to the absolute very last, the thing which makes those people so valuable to our economy and our future is the very thing which is not visible in any kind of monetary way. If you looked at me, or any of my friends you would see nothing remarkable. We are not remarkable. And yet we are the people with the experience, understanding, commitment, passion, enthusiasm and drive to want to make a difference, to want to make things happen, who build the things people think there are no use for only to find that actually, they're fundamental. They build toys because they can, code music because they can, create digital replicas of reality, because they can.

That person, who made that comment, would look at me and dismiss. He is a businessman. He will be playing in the digital sandpit in the future and he will be playing by old rules which are no longer always true. The digital world works differently, connects differently. The terms of engagement are changing and those who play by the old rules, will perhaps not be as successful as they could be if they do not learn the new ones.

And while we're here and I'm having a bit of a rant about the new world order, yes, I come to you Mr Head of Age Concern. I listened with interest to someone referring to your comment that 'in two years the geeks will have taken over' or something along those lines.

My response to you is this. Shall we take our tech back now? Those machines which whiz and whir in your local hospital, those scanners and life support machines churning out vital data about peoples hearts and kidneys and livers and brains.....shall we take the software which drives them, the code which makes them whir and whiz, shall we take it back? How about the flight control software which I have no doubt takes you on your shiny holidays each year and means your likelihood of crashing has been reduced quite considerably considering the amount of tin cans flying around up there? How's your commute to work? Is the traffic control maintained and controlled by dynamic speed limits and traffic lights who have been given parameters to know and understand feedback from sensors and react to that input to give you a smoother faster drive to work?

If you were to surmise that this comment irritated me somewhat, you would be correct. Geeks have inherited the earth whether you like it or not. That comes with it's own responsibilities (yes, I am looking at some of my friends very sternly), but most of the geeks I know are stepping up to the plate finally and sharing and training and communicating what they know. That's a seperate post. It's not published, but it's written, and yes I know.

Anyhow, here's the rub. It's too late to decide you don't want to play in the new world. The new shiny world allows such amazing possibilities for connection and not letting people disappear off the social map, that I am struggling to comprehend why the Head of a charity aimed at assisting older people with the quality of their life seems to somehow fear this. We don't want to exclude anyone. Anyone. Everyone is welcome on the bus. Including you. But please, seriously, would you go and find your nearest friendly geek, sit them down, feed them coffee and cake and ask them to explain whatever it is you don't understand about tech and the web. You might not understand all of it, but they'll try their very best to explain the opportunities and doorways which all these magic little tools the geeks have designed for you to play with open up, and you know, it's okay to ask questions.

It is not okay to dismiss in one sentence the hard work, passion, enthusiasm and blue sky thinking which has been going on for at least the last 20 years and which allows you to live longer and more comfortably. Get on the bus. The people you are representing will thank you for it.

And finally. If someone comes along and tells me I misheard, didn't understand the quote, it was a misquote from the chap who quoted him initially, then I will concede and apologise profusely. But I fear he is not alone in his misunderstanding and I fear there is much work to be done in making the toys we take for granted more user friendly and intuitive than they are at the moment. But that's for the other post

Firstly, a disclaimer. I've been on the 'web' since 1995 in one form or another. From the early days of the Webchat Broadcasting System and every webpage having a grey background to the current web 2.0 shiny world, I've watched quietly whilst the virtual world changed around me. I didn't leap on web 2.0 immediately, as documented below, for various reasons. A lot has changed in the past year.

Eventually, no matter how shy you are, you come to the point where you realise that knowledge, experience, observations and musings are worth nothing if they remain in your mind. No opinion is wrong in this brave new world. I have no qualifications and no training. All I have is who I am, a geek watching the world change around her and deciding to become a part of that world in all the myriad different ways which are now available, from festival forums to Google Wave, from Twitter to software user feedback groups. Knowledge is worth nothing if it isn't shared. As a result of the new social networked world, next week I will be trying to help a festival organising team make their festival greener. The week after I will be trying to convince a magazine who recently ran a convention for the first time that Twitter is the key to instant information dissemination to geeks who all have mobiles in their pockets. The week after that, who knows?

The following are my musings on the challenges which web 2.0 will present to Councils which I sent, after some very deep breaths, to the Communications Department. I am unaccustomed to popping my head above the parapet at work. I am geek also equates to I am shy.

I've been on the web for 15 years now. The rules have changed, the speed of communication has changed, the general feeling among 'geeks' has not, and nor has their sociology. I dislike the word, but essentially, some of the most powerful tweeters with the most followers are self confessed geeks, people like Stephen Fry, Neil Gaimain (author), Wil Wheaton (ex Star Trek: The Next Generation actor, now pro blogger), Jonathon Ross. As Twitter grows their influence will wane, as celebrity culture takes over and the demographics of Twitter change.

At the current moment in time, however, the following facts seem true:

• Twitter attracts, at the moment, a certain group of people. Whether they fit into Acorn or not (I suspect they do), they have certain general traits. Middle class, educated, eloquent, not afraid to express their opinion, access to all forms of the web, well read in the blogosphere, personal connections through 2nd and 3rd parties to influential people. Whilst take up rates of broadband connection within our area may not be as high as in some other areas of the country, schoolchildren still have access at school and on their phones, likewise college students. By using Twitter we are disseminating information to a very specific group of people, those who do have 'always-on' internet access, and those who are aware of Twitters existence. However, these are people who perhaps don't read paper media any more, don't read the local newspaper, don't read Councils paper based communications. For them, the internet is the way they learn about everything, to the exclusion of other more traditional forms of media. You cannot carry a paper in your pocket.

• The borders between famous/celebrity/talented/important and us 'normal' people are breaking down. I can send messages to the editor of SFX magazine or any other numbers of magazines, the organisers of my favourite music festival, my favourite authors, bands, blog writers, and I can get a response. Sometimes instantly, sometimes not. But this would never have happened before Twitter, you would have needed a personal email address. That would have been perceived as an intrusion, akin to phoning someone on their direct line. Now those barriers are not in place and peoples connections with others are multiplying. Some are more accesable than others, but the nature of access has changed. This will directly affect us. If people ask questions of our twitter feed, are those contacts being logged, is there a facility to attribute it to social media, are we measured on this in NI's, how do we judge an avoidable contact, what kind of reply are people being given? Are they being told to telephone instead of someone interacting with them directly? Does the twitter feed need to be manned during office hours with a live human being who can find answers for people and reply? Is this another face of our call centre? How busy is the person covering the feed likely to be? Are we an information push, or do we intend to be interactive. If we are not being interactive, are we defeating the point of Twitter itself, which seems to have become 'to interact'. Will this affect how we are perceived and therefore limit those who take our messages seriously or follow us? (I'll come to public perception later, it's a big one)

• Peoples interests, hobbies, day to day curiosities are being catalogued. I can search, using Twibes, for people who are interested in exactly the same thing as me. Or, indeed, search for people who know something about a subject I don't, but want to. Hashtags catalogue in the same way, collating groups of disparate people together who would never have spoken before Twitter by a common goal or interest. Is there a way we can encourage community spirit in the virtual world in a way we seem to have lost in reality, turning things full circle and encouraging communities to come together in reality to make changes to their environment through discussion on social media?

• Goals, objectives, agendas, firestorms. Last week Paperchase learnt a bitter lesson in failed PR, pathetically unprofessional email responses, what happens when you come to a battleground too late, and how peoples perceptions of you as a company matter. http://econsultancy.com/blog/5425-paperchase-social-media-and-crisis-management-speed-versus-substance#blog_comment_22313 tells the story well, but it examines only half the issue. On the one side, yes, the public and private sector have been taken by surprise in the speed with which Twitter can be utilised to get a clear and concise message across. And yes, perhaps the depth of feeling aimed against them was a little of a shock to the system. But that shock expressed only shows how little they understand the demographic of Twitter users. Social conscience and ethics, hitherto, have been words on a strategy report or year end report. A brief nod, and move on.

Part of being a group who are no longer seeing barriers to discussion, commentary, instant information sharing and access to people that was impossible before, is the dropping of self moderation and inhibition. People are no longer hesitant about expressing opinions. The retweet function means that something can go viral in 15 minutes if the influential geek tweeters pick up on it. And on a really fundamental level, people from Korea to the US saw a big corporation being a bully and reacted, by calling the corporation out on it and emailing Paperchase to complain about their plaguerism. Paperchases initial response to those first emails was 'Do not always believe everything you read.......' - unprofessional, unhelpful, defensive and most definitely not a professional press release cleared with internal PR. Their second response was a post on their webpage explaining that the offending artwork had been purchased from a studio who had assured them of the above board origins of the artwork. The third update finally named the studio and explained the artist had been contacted. It transpires the contact was in December and denied all culpability. It also now appears that Paperchase are refusing to talk to the artist by email, and will only communicate by telephone. Cynics would suggest deniability is coming into play here somewhere and someone has finally spoken to their Legal Department.

As a case study for how not to deal with a bomb going off in your face, Paperchase have performed admirably. Of all the things we needs to worry about in its use of social media, this is it. By entering the social media arena, we have agreed by inference to play by social medias rules. Paperchase did not have a social media presence until last night. They entered the battleground late and lost all credibility in doing so. Credibility is key here, because without it, peoples perceptions of you as an organisation will plummet. The idea that what happens in Twitterverse stays there no longer washes either, both the Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/7215124/Paperchase-forced-to-deny-it-plagiarised-British-artists-work-after-Twitter-campaign.html and the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/feb/11/paperchase-design-hidden-eloise picked up on the story within hours. Instantaneous mob rule appears to have arrived. And yet, if this were the case, surely there would be more firestorms, more hauling over the coals?

The fundamental lesson to learn here is not that Twitter will crucify you if you make a mistake. It will crucify you if you make a mistake and then fail to compensate, apologise, respond professionally or contact your PR department before opening your mouth. These are lessons which we need to learn. The importance of never responding to anything on any social media site ever without first checking it with PR, when it relates in any way whatsoever with your work area, or BWDBC in general cannot be emphasised enough. It needs to be a discplinary offence to do so and it needs to be included in the acceptable use policy. Your own opinion is your own opinion, absolutely, but as someone who is tweeting who is identifiable as working for a particular organisation, you are a representative of that organisation whether you like it or not. The same is true for blogging, for Facebook, for any social media. What you say is instantly quotable, undeletable, and can be retweeted in 2 seconds into the streams of thousands of other people, including the local newspapers. I strongly believe the adage 'if you've nothing positive to say, don't say anything at all'. We're not restricting peoples free speech, we're asking them to be responsible ambassadors for us out in the social media world. The issue with the social media world, is that you still work for the Council in that world, whether you are sitting at your desk or not. There is nothing so simple as removing your badge or branded fleece to denote the end of your involvement. If you enter the arena of social media, these are the sacrifices you make.

Public perception is important. Whilst being professional is important, corporations like Paperchase who sign up to things like Twitter for no other reason than to defend themselves are given short shrift. Twitter is about interaction as is all social media. It's about being able to ask the most esoteric question regarding some random piece of software and receiving a reply from some bloke in Chicago who you've never met, giving you the answer. Or at least it is for me. It's not about coming across as cool. It's not about trying to be young and cool and hip. It's about being honest and upfront if you have failed and directing focus back onto what you're doing to fix the problem. The Xmas period tweets were a perfect example of this. People moaned about gritting or lack of it, we switched to a stream of information about what was being gritted, when, and how often. Managing public perception is something which can be done easily through social media and I strongly believe that we are on the right track. We are communicating our successes, acknowledging our failures, but also redirecting focus from our failures to our measures to address those failures. We are being what Paperchase were not, honest, up front, clear, concise, not changing our story and ensuring that the public know what they need to know. I believe continueing to do this will stand us in good stead.

• Personal versus professional logins for social media sites. This is tricky for me. I have an online presence which spans many communities, forums, old BBS's, blogsites, Google Wave and Twitter. I appreciate I am not er, 'normal' in this respect. So putting that aside, how do you address the issue of someone saying their work accounts can be held accountable if not portraying us in a positive light, but that their private ones can't? The London Ambulance Service were one of the first employers to have this problem, thanks to the popularity of the Random Acts of Reality blog, written by an Emergency Medical Technician working for the LAS. The author wrote an interesting summary of how not to lose your job if you're publically blogging about your employers here: http://randomreality.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2005/3/17/443453.html - despite trying, I've yet to find a public comment on this blog from the LAS but this quote "This is one of the reasons, he suggests, that his colleagues and managers at the London Ambulance Service Trust, (who Reynolds concedes could have stopped him in his tracks if they wanted to) have embraced the blog." from http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2006/aug/30/health.healthandwellbeing is the closest I've got to finding that his employers, despite his honesty, are fine with the blog and wont be pursueing him to stop writing it any time soon. It's an interesting take, and it's offered as evidence that complete lockdown is not always the way forward. However, a complete restriction on blogging etc is far easier to manage than opening up the floodgates and then having to address the issues each individual blog raises as more and more people decide they have a view and they're expressing it come what may. It's definitely something we need a statement on though because eventually it will become an issue.

• Social media in worktime. I use Twitter for a number of things. Out of work hours I'll post interesting links, pics of where I am and what I'm doing, and chat about sci fi and geekery. In work hours, I use it as a way of asking for help from a massive pool of people who have a lot of different experience levels in a number of different technical areas. There's a bloke in Colarado who helps me with GIS, a girl from Pitney Bowes who I send suggestions to about Map Info's usability, friends who are better at Excel and Visual Basic who I can ask about formula construction - and I get these answers and feedback instantly. If I were to wait for ICT, as I have done in the past, I would wait a month. With Twitter, the help is instant. That's invaluable to me. I also work as the lone geek in Environmental Services off site. I can't pop my head around someones door on a different floor and ask for help or to bounce ideas off someone. Twitter and social media allows me access to a think tank of people who I can bounce ideas of. I am no longer restricted by my physical geography. However, Twitter is a different bunni to most social media. I can't chat for hours on there, the character limit restricts me. There are no games, no groups, no distractions. I read other peoples feeds in a quick glance. It doesn't time suck. Other social media such as Facebook does. Therefore someone is going to need to examine the payoff between allowing Facebook to be accessed through the Councils network to allow different Departments to engage with their target audiences - I am specifically thinking of Childrens Services and Social Services here - against the very real possibility of numerous employees spending most of their working day lost in the chat and games available there.

• Mentioning something you don't want to mention. There is a very real possibility that in mentioning social media and developing a policy at all, it will bring to the notice of people hitherto unaware of such things the possibility of causing trouble with blogs, or sinking worktime into Facebook. Therefore there needs to be some kind of statement included on how access and usage will be monitored and who it will be fed back to and what the outcome is likely to be if you are found to have accessed these sites inside work hours if you do not have a good reason to do so i.e. running a Connexions group or the suchlike. In this vein, perhaps going down the route of social media ambassadors may be an option - a nominated person (or people) within each Section who is responsible for representing that particular section in social media circles. They would be put on an access list for Twitter, Facebook et al and everyone else who wanted to access those sites and post something in work time would need to go through those people. I don't know if this is practical from a ICT point of view, it should just be a case of putting facebook, twitter et all on everyones ban list and adding it to the exception list for all the other people who have been nominated.

I am aware that some of these suggestions will not be popular. I am aware that restricting access to anything comes with its own problems. I am also aware that at the end of the day, I am paid by my employers to come into the office and do some work. In the new shiny world, I do believe there is a massive space for social media, an opportunity to engage groups of people hitherto disengaged with the concept of community, a way of interacting with people who would never normally speak to their Council or see any need to. I believe that contacts regarding basic questions can be avoided by efficient communication, and efficient communication no longer involves delivering a leaflet to every door in the Borough.

I put mine straight in the recycling bin. I read The Guardian on my iphone and I pay for it. I watch freeview in realtime on my iphone. Yet I still read books in bed. I am not alone in this because I talk to very many people who do exactly the same thing. I am, perhaps, not the majority, but I am a minority with a new voice who wants to vote but who doesn't know who to vote for because no one is telling me their policies in arenas I pay attention to. I am the minority but I want to be part of the community, contributing to shaping the future of our world, but I am finding new ways to do it in an arena which I understand the rules of. I don't attend community groups. I don't go to church. I do check certain forums, blogs, twitter feeds and webpages on a daily basis. I have a social conscience, I care about the environment, I recycle, I am reasonably well educated. I believe social media and the rules of communication are changing. I am proud and relieved to work for a Council which acknowledges that.