Comments on: Explaining social media to senior managers

By: Emma Salveson

Emma Salveson — Fri, 14 May 2010 09:56:14 +0000

Hi Michele, really interesting article. Wondered whether you would mind if I linked to it in the Recommends section of our website? If you could let me know that would be great.

Thanks, Emma

By: john culkin

john culkin — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 10:51:03 +0000

Great post. I’ve had to do something similar recently (wish i’d found this sooner…) but the one thing I’ve found it hard to demonstrate is the idea, as you say, that “although only a small proportion of people online actively contribute, a large number observe online conversations and are influenced by what they read.”

This for me is key. You might have only 50-100 regular posters to your site – not an indication of great success by any means, especially for a public sector audience with a large target audience. It would be easier to justify using social media if you could quantify how much the readers who don;t contribute have been influenced, but this is very hard to do. If anyone has a solution, I’m all ears..!

By: Communities and Collaboration » Bookmarks for February 14th through February 17th

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 13:03:00 +0000

[...] Explaining social media to senior managers by Michele Ide-Smith – This week I had the opportunity to present to senior managers in my organisation (a local authority) to explain what social media is, how it is affecting us and why we need to develop a social media strategy. The key message of the presentation was: [...]

By: Numbers count « Policy and Performance

Numbers count « Policy and Performance — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 21:30:48 +0000

[...] Sometimes simple numbers aren’t enough, but they can help. Michele Ide-Smith relied on clear circulation analysis to convey the benefits of social media to senior managers at her [...]

By: FutureGov » Useful links » links for 2010-02-13

FutureGov » Useful links » links for 2010-02-13 — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 13:02:31 +0000

[...] Explaining social media to senior managers by Michele Ide-Smith good advice (tags: management social strategy media government howto communication local localauthority leadership advice guidance gov20) [...]

By: SOCIAL MEDIA: Your EIGHT step guide to getting started… « The Dan Slee Blog

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 22:15:31 +0000

[...] are some quality blog posts on the subject. Michelle Ide-Smith recently wrote a post that nails how to construct an argument in [...]

By: Michele Ide-Smith

Michele Ide-Smith — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:02:37 +0000

The thing about social media is that people use it to talk about your organisation, whether you choose to use it or not. The point of my presentation to Senior Managers was to make them aware of how social media could affect us and the risks of not taking any action (even if all we do is listen to what is being said about us). With relatively little effort we could monitor what people are saying about us and our services and learn from that. Social media also provides some great opportunities to engage with our citizens, which would help us achieve objectives of our community engagement strategy. All that said, you are right that accessibility of social media is a problem. Sites like Facebook and YouTube are not accessible. The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 requires public service providers to make "reasonable adjustments" for people with disabilities. An interpretation of the law could mean ensuring you don't rely on just one inaccessible channel to provide information or services. This is not ideal and seems to contradict the emphasis in recent years on making public sector services accessible (and effort expended by development and content teams trying to make their web sites accessible). I am certainly not one to dismiss the importance of ensuring your web sites and services are accessible. I have been interested in accessibility since 2001 - at that time I worked in a digital agency and met with a fair bit of resistance from colleagues, who couldn't understand why it would be beneficial to advise clients about web accessibility. Social media is evolving though. There are some alternatives, e.g. Easy YouTube is an accessible version of YouTube's service. I won't go into lots of detail here as Jack Pickard wrote an excellent post on this subject. Nomensa have also written some useful information on the subject. I suggest you read both as a starter.

By: Cameron Moon

Cameron Moon — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:10:23 +0000

I am a bit concerned by you comments on digital exclusion.

As a developer for a local authority our priority is to use technologies which are inclusive and accessible. I am unsure how you can justify the use of such technologies in an inaccessible format if they are the responsibility of a local authority.

Clarification would be appreciated.

By: links for 2009-11-10 | tdalton.co.uk

links for 2009-11-10 | tdalton.co.uk — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:04:52 +0000

[...] Explaining social media to senior managers by Michele Ide-Smith "This week I had the opportunity to present to senior managers in my organisation (a local authority) to explain what social media is, how it is affecting us and why we need to develop a social media strategy." (tags: government howto web2.0 socialmedia) [...]

By: Tim Lloyd

Tim Lloyd — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 07:25:53 +0000

Great post, and very assuring.
I am involved with a similar process at the moment. I have found it very helpful to draw comparisons with mainstream media, and make it clear that social media complements, not replaces, newspapers, TV etc.
There seems to be an underlying fear that somehow what ‘we’ are presenting is a threat to senior manager’s comfort zone and the media that they have worked with a great number of years.