Social Media

Parties can be intimidating places. They can be fun of course, but a room full of strangers talking about things you might not understand, perhaps in languages you don't know, and with seemingly effortless confidence can be a difficult environment to step into.

The Live Web is like the biggest party that has ever been held. The new network of blogs, podcasts, social networking spaces, and photo and video sharing sites is creating a world of conversations. It is true some of these are absurd, pointless or even boring, but some of the conversations are about real issues and real people. These are the corners of the party where charities and campaigns can get involved, find new allies and build powerful new networks.

By joining in these conversations charities and campaigns, regardless of their size, can create powerful new content relationships which they can use for fundraising or campaigning.

There are number of ways of getting involved in the Live Web.  At the simplest level, go to www.technorati.com and search for your issue.  When you find bloggers who are talking about your area of work, visit their sites and leave a comment.  The next level up is blogging yourself.  Go to WordPress.com, set up a blog, and start talking about your work, the people you meet and the issues you deal with.

Ideally, set up more than one blog and get multiple voices joining in the party, as Greenpeace has started to do with its staff http://weblog.greenpeace.org/ . If you're really adventurous, you can get involved in other online communities, Save the Children for instance has even set up a presence in the multi user online game Second Life - (http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1964407,00.html ).  And of course the really interesting stuff begins when you start to enable your clients or service users to join in the conversation As the Media Action Group for Mental Health have started to do on its MindBlogging site (http://www.mindbloggling.org.uk ).

The problem is however that like all parties, nobody is in charge. It is impossible to run around a party telling people what to talk about, how to talk, or who to talk to. In short, even if you were the host, you cannot manage a party. If you tried the party would soon fail.

The same is true of the Live Web party, you cannot control the conversations, even those you’re involved in. You also cannot determine what other people chip into the conversation… even if they work for you.

Sometimes managers fear what will happen if their staff start to blog about their work. They fear they have not been ‘trained’. They worry they might stray from be ‘message’. They might understand the huge potential if their staff are circulating around the party making new connections, discussing new ideas, finding new partners, but they still worry about how they might behave.

One response to this is simply to say that there's nothing an organisation or its managers can do. Your staff are blogging, are updating their MySpace pages, posting videos to YouTube etc. Just like they talk about their work when they leave the office and go to the pub, they are talking about their work at the Live Web party they have discovered. On the positive side, this means they are taking their passion out of the office and sharing it.

Perhaps like a parent, you need to trust them to behave well. They are professionals and you trust them to talk about their organisation and their work with passion, commitment and professionalism when they are in the real world. So trust them to do the same in the virtual.

However like all good parents you have a responsibility to equip them to do that. Maybe your organisation needs to work out a Live Web policy, a set of best practices and basic principles that can guide your staff when they talk online. Microsoft, which ironically has been one of the biggest companies to embrace the Live Web for its staff, has a very loose policy which it calls "Blog Smart". Other organisations have more clearly defined policies (see below).

Blog policies

Maybe your organisation should go further and provide training for its staff in how best to speak on the Live Web. Your organisation could take a lead in helping your staff translate their passion into an effective voice which they can use to best effect at the party.

The party shows no sign of stopping. People are talking about your issues at the party and if your organisation's perspective, or more importantly its passion shown through its staff is not there, another organisations’ people, passion and voice will be.

Other resources:

http://tinyurl.com/2cdtzu
http://forrester.typepad.com/charleneli/2004/11/blogging_policy.html
http://tinyurl.com/8agwf

For more on the New Media project at the ICT Hub, visit http://www.icthub.org.uk/how_we_can_help/New_Media.html

Paul Caplan, Media Trust

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