Go interactive!
Communicate better! Let
citizens participate actively. No more just one-way information. This website gives a number of concrete examples. And many more will come.
Yes, the new media and the new communication technologies are very fascinating. But they may
never be at the centre of our work - a purpose in themselves. As communication people we have to look at, how we best
can use them in practice. The individual services one by one. But much more often a clever combination of several of them. Some day before too long they will converge and make the use of them even more easy and userfriendly.
Niels Jørgen Thøgersen
e-mail:
kimbrer@gmail.com Skype: kimbrer
Home Page:
www.simplesite.com/kimbrer
P R E S E N T A T I O N
Name :
Why
SOCIAL MEDIA
Date : February 8, 2011
Main points:
Social media
are
media
for
social interaction
, using highly accessible and scalable communication techniques. Social media is the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogue. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein also define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of
Web 2.0
, which allows the creation and exchange of
user-generated content
."
Businesses
also refer to social media as
consumer-generated media
(CGM). A common thread running through all definitions of social media is a blending of technology and social interaction for the co-creation of value.
This is what Wikipedia says about social media. And I agree to that definition.
Why should I as a public communicator be interested in social media ? Isn’t it just a sort of non-serious entertainment, which steals a lot of time for everybody?
The simple answer is: NO – NO – NO !
If you want to be sure that you are present where people are today, then you have to use social media. It’s as simple as that.
But isn’t a good and perhaps even interactive website enough ? Shouldn’t we first and foremost concentrate on developing and looking after that?
No, this is not enough today. It is important to have a good and up-to-date website. Of course. But it has to be backed up by different social media. Or the other way around. And even if you for whatever reason have a bad website you still have to use an intelligent mix of social media.
So – in practical terms – what can you use Social Media for ?
-
To Engage – To Involve citizens
And not only one way ( like Obama’s Be the first to know ) But in particular two ways. Get people on their toes to get actively involved. Make them feel ownership to the topic you are dealing with. Don’t be afraid to loose some control. Show people that you are really interested in their views and actions. Be active yourself. At all times.
-
To Mobilise citizens.
Mobilise them for a clear purpose – for actions which are easy to understand. The role of social media in the on-going Arab revolutions is evident. Before that we saw similar cases of mobilizing people in Iran, Moldova and Belarus. You can also use social media to mobilize people in a local area.
-
To Inspire citizens.
Not least in political campaigns. Like Obama’s YES WE CAN. Known worldwide.
-
To Seek Advice.
Politicians do that – even directly from plenary sessions in the middle of a debate. Organisations do that. And why shouldn’t public institutions do it. There is so much expertise and so much commitment out there – why not profit from that. Personally I use LinkedIn and often also Facebook and Twitter for that purpose. With great success.
-
To Give Information.
Though this easily becomes one-way web 1.0 operations it can still be used.
-
Most important of all:
Always use an intelligent MIX of social media.
Use one social media to back up other social media. Concrete example: Make Breaking News on YouTube. And inform all your contacts and friends on Facebook, Twitter, etc. 5 minutes before that they should look at YouTube, if they “want to be the first to know”. And people love to know first. In this way you also bypass the filter of the media. Instead of you running after the media the media will run after you. If your Breaking News and other initiatives are worth running after
J
-
Make sure that all your social media are also available on mobile
devices
( such as smartphones, normal mobile phones, PDAs, etc. )
The number of mobile devices have in many countries bypassed the number of normal computers – a trend which most certainly will continue.
-
Very important point too:
Be active on the blogs and social media of others too.
Select the most visited ones ( from media, from politicians, from organizations ) and take active part in the discussions and networking there too.
-
Online training in social media
:
We should in my view give priority to efficient training, not least online training in the use of social media in public communication. I will at the workshop give information on a number of existing possibilities and make suggestions to the next steps
-
Websites and other literature on social media in public communication
:
I will make an overview for the workshop.
Another aspect of great importance for the efficient use of social media is to be able to know in REAL time what others ( media, blogs, etc. ) are saying and writing.
The Club of Venice has already created a special online monitor called
LIVING EUROPE
for this purpose. It monitors every ten minutes more than 4.000 online media in 28 European countries. And by a simple click you can yourself machine translate any article into 20 different languages. The translation into English is still the best one. It is all free and available to everybody on the web.
Address:
www.livingeurope.eu
The next step is that we will also launch in the very near future a new free, online monitor, which will constantly follows as many
websites and blogs of European politicians and national politicians
in the 27 member states of the EU. The purpose is to make it easy for everybody to follow the debate in all countries – and again with a built-in machine translation from all languages. And in this way contribute to creating a more lively European public space.
A pilot project is being tested at the moment.
Niels Jørgen Thøgersen
kimbrer@gmail.com
www.simplesite.com/kimbrer