the guardian : improving local government comms debate
Monday, November 21, 2011
Darren Caveney in comms, dan slee, guardian debate, local government, social media, social media, twitter, twitter

by Dan Slee

There were some fascinating points to come out of an online Guardian discussion on how to improve local government communications.

There was also plenty of pointers for people across the public sector.

One thing was quite clear. We need to change, evolve and adapt. The old ways of working no longer work for everyone.

Yes, carry on with the traditional comms.

But realise that new channels are evolving that need a whole new approach and way of thinking.

By all means wait two weeks to sign off a press release if you have two weeks. But would that work in crisis comms?

We'd all be pretty sure the resident whose street had iced up would like to know if his bin was going to be collected that day. Or rather, by 8am.

In the Guardian discussion Tom Stannard, director of policy and communications at Blackburn with Darwen borough council made a good point:

"There is no absolute best practice yet, rather evolving good practice: Councils should continue to be part of this evolution.

"Trying to utterly "corporatise" social media channel management will probably backfire in the long run, if you're not training and empowering staff who manage at the frontline to use these tools, experiment and innovate with them, and weave them into a corporate plan on customer contact.

"If we aren't training and enthusing our staff about the benefits and potential of digital and social media for customer services in the long run we're missing a trick."

We're all learning. We can learn by doing and sharing.

Which is exactly why Comms2point0.co.uk has come about.

Read the full Guardian discussion.

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Article originally appeared on comms2point0 free online resource for creative comms people (http://twoheads.squarespace.com/).
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