In which we check whether your website has been beseiged by zombie content…

Are some of your web pages a bit slow? Do they make you moan or wail in despair when you see them? Are they a bit grey and possibly have words flapping loose? Do you have nightmares about them and fear they want to suck the living will from you?

*whispers* You might have an infestation of zombie content on your website.

That is to say your website might be a bit bloated because it’s carrying a lot of dead weight. Pages which have outstayed their welcome and which fail to serve any purpose at the end of their useful lifespan.

The information might be out of date, the campaign might have long since passed. The pages could be the unwitting victims of vanity publishing or a page that was once vital but the user or business need which spawned it has now disappeared.

This zombie content, pages that should have gone to their grave (or at least the archive) but haven’t are still hanging around your website. While they’re doing that they’re getting in the way of your visitors. Do I need to tell you that’s not good? Well, it’s not, not good at all.

Creating content, publishing content, even promoting that content are all pretty common activities and whether we get them right or not there’s a whole load of people busily getting on with these activities. Content management though, that’s got to include taking care of your content when it comes to the end of its life.

Stages of digital content lifecycle

There are a few different theories about how many stages content goes through in its lifecycle. Gerry McGovern proposes there are three – creation, editing, publishing and Bob Boiko argues in a similar vein in the Content Management Bible.

Others make cases for up to seven stages in lifecycle, with this longer cradle-to-grave pathway proposed by Bob Doyle recognising that there is an end to a piece of content’s useful life and action should be taken to actively manage this end point (he calls this archives).

You could infact make the chain even longer by getting tighter on activities within each point of the lifecycle. Kristina Halvorson suggested 15 steps to the cycle in Content Strategy for the Web – audit, analyse, strategise, categorise, structure, create, revise, revise, revise, approve, tag, format, publish, update, archive. This takes into account that getting content right isn’t an easy or quick process but also that the current way of working online requires more than just writing and publishing the right words – you need to make your content findable (tag).

Not all content lives forever

To my mind the number of phases in the lifecycle will depend on the piece of content – a tweet will have a different lifecycle to an organisation’s contact page on their website to a personal Facebook status update to a news report published on YouTube.

Self-publishing for pleasure or vanity (and perhaps this blog falls into both!) will likely have less phases than something official for an organisation’s website just because there are less people involved. This blog post, for example, will have the following lifecycle – created,edited, published, active (being promoted, visited and commented on),archived. That last bit – the archive, well that happens pretty automatically on a blog as newer content knocks it back and eventually it finds eternal peace in a month by month archive. You may need a more hands on process for your organisation’s web content though.

For a typical organisation web page I’d suggest the following lifecycle:

1. Creation – this could be curation of existing content from other sources, original work or collaboration. I’d say that this first step can include gathering many content types together to form a page (words, images, documents, links) and also should include tagging and addition of any metadata.
2. Editing – this may be done as part of the next step or may be done before. It may loop around between steps 2 and 3 a lot before moving to its next phase.
3. Approval – possible two-step between an offline approval through organisation hierarchy and online through workflow processes.
4. Active – like the blog this will be when you content is useful, in use, being promoted, visited, shared and talked about. During the active phase there should be several loops where the content is checked and possibly revised (so briefly revisting steps 2 and 3 again). At some point one of these visits will end with you moving to step 5.
5. Archive or removal – this is the point at which your content has stopped being useful or in use. You may need it to remain in public view but it needs to be marked as out of date, linked to its successor and be embalmed – change its metadata to stop it getting in a users way when they search. You may be able to remove it from your website altogether however as a whole page or its component parts it may need to be stored somewhere to meet your organisation’s record management needs.
6. Reanimation – your content may need to come back from the dead. Seasonal content in particular could be retrieved from your archive and start it’s lifecycle at step 2 again.

Lots of people are excelling at steps 1-4 and while they think of themselves as ‘content managers’ they’re really ‘content creators’. To be a content manager you need to see past your content’s hey day and plan for it’s demise, and be willing to take action at the appropriate point. Don’t allow zombie content to flourish on your website through failure to work out the right lifecycle and manage the content through all the phases.

*If your problem isn’t with zombie content but with actual zombies then I believe removing the head or destroying the brain is the way to go. Good luck.

Photo credit

Image by aeviin of Zombie Walk Warsaw 2008 published under a creative commons licence on Flickr.

Related posts:

1. Content strategy in local government
2. Content strategy linkapaloosa
3. Getting to know you

I’m pleased to finally announce that Carl Haggerty and I have come good on our UK GovCamp 2012 pledge to found an online space for discussions and knowledge sharing on digital content strategy in local government and wider public sector.

This week we launched the Digital Content Strategy group on the Knowledge Hub and we’re hoping this will be a good starting point to build a community. share knowledge and files, have discussions and bring together blog posts on the subject.

Over the last couple of months we’ve tried out a couple of different online spaces to try and make what we envisioned a reality but, for now, KHub seems to be closest fit and the place where most practitioners can access and are happy to share stuff.

While we’re intending to focus the group on content strategy in local government the group is open and so if you feel it would be a good place to learn and share from your own work in or around the sector please do join us. You can get started by joining the KHub and then joining the group.

Carl and I will be facilitating the group but if you’d like to join us then just drop one of us a line.

Let’s get the Digital Content Strategy in local gov conversations underway…

Related posts:

1. Content strategy WTF? session at UKGC12
2. KHub consultation – a response
3. Content strategy linkapaloosa

I’ve been thinking about women in tech again recently. Or rather the lack of women in tech / digital.

It’s something that makes it way to the front of the thought queue every couple of weeks but got a boost a few days ago when I was sent the infographic below off the back of my post about women and ambition.

The infographic shows that girls are smarter than boys but perform worse when asked to actively think about their gender. Some of the figures are pretty shocking although no surprise.

Even in the non-techy bits of digital I tend to see there are definitely more men than women (although it’s an unfair representation of society in a number of other ways as well.

Putting aside the ratio of men to women for a moment what about this stat: “One fifth of female computer science students questioned whether they belonged there”. If it’s something you’re interested in, good at and have chosen should you ever have to question whether you should do something based on gender?

Created by: Engineering Degree

There’s been a couple of other interesting conversations I’ve seen this week about women in tech. One about sexism in tech being one of the reasons women don’t go into the field or stay there. The discussion came off the back of this piece.

And then today I noticed a conversation on Twitter between LouLouK, Adrian Short and Phil Rumens about whether Wired UK is too male-focused or whether it is that way because their readership is predominantly male.

The conversation covered some interesting points in a short number of tweets including what ‘geek’ actually means now. Is it a label which is being corrupted by advertisers? Who identifies with this term?

Aside from recognising the issues here what is / could be done in a practical sense to move forward? Even if the number of women working or attracted to the many disciplines in the tech field grows slowly how can we help the women already working their feel they belong?

Related posts:

1. Mike Saunt

Well, almost. And what have I done?

This blog has been dormant for most of it. I started 2012 with the intention to blog something about local government digital comms every week. And like all resolutions I started off strong. Then life, rather than laziness, got in the way.

But my early commitment was fuelled by Dan Slee – he encouraged me to blog every week – and from his enthusiasm and gentle pushes on Twitter Weekly Blog Club was conceived.

Even though I’ve not actively been posting since March I’ve kept an eye on the Weekly Blog Club and been impressed not only with the wide range of curated content but also the genuine support network it’s become.

It seemed only right that in breaking my own blogging silence I recognise Weekly Blog Club.

Mainly helmed by Janet Davies it’s also had guest editors curate the posts to spread the load. It’s encouraged people to start writing on subjects that interest them, helped them get something from blogging on a personal and professional level. All this from an off-the-cuff jokey tweet about my own lack of commitment to regular blogging.

Whether or not you write, whatever your interests, if you like reading original words and thinking then I’d strongly suggest you start following on Twitter or head over the blog.

What about me in 2013?

I suppose it’s time to get back on the blogging carousel!

I’ve been writing (a lot) in 2012 but not about local government or digital comms. It’s still my day job but my writing this year has been focussed on a different subject, albeit one just as close to my heart; music.

I’ve been incredibly honoured to become a part of the Louder Than War editorial team and be given opportunities not only to write about, but meet, some of my most favourite artists. It’s taken some getting used to one of my Top 5 Music Journalists of All Time being my editor but it’s wonderful to get feedback on my writing and work from someone who’s own writing and ethic I admire very much.

Anyway, if you’re interested in that side of my writing you can find my author profile on Louder Than War here.

It’s also time though to get back into writing for this blog on local government and digital comms. 2013 will be a big year on this front – the work of the Government Digital Service and GovUK has transformed central government but this year could be local government’s time to harness the pockets of innovation and really move forward as a sector.

There’s interesting things happening on that front and I’ll blog more about it in the coming weeks.

For now though, it’s time to press publish and see if all the sparks still fire in the right places

Oh, and happy New Year everyone!

Related posts:

1. The Fear

More than half the population of the UK is using Facebook but with recent changes to the algorithm controlling who sees what is the party over for businesses and organisations using the social network?

How great a deal for organisations has Facebook been over the last few years? Loads of people you want to reach are using it (and using it a lot), you can set up a presence there in a few minutes, it’s free and well, everyone else has been getting on there, why shouldn’t you? On paper (or screens) it looks like the holy grail of communications and traffic sources.

Things that look too good to be true usually are though and recently organisations have been questioning whether Facebook is really the place for them. Sometimes this has come out of good solid evidence that their business just won’t succeed in the space (wrong business, wrong audience) and other times it’s just been a knee-jerk to having to work harder to play Facebook at the eyeballs-on-posts game.

The new EdgeRank algorithm Facebook uses to decide who sees what is geared toward individuals and making organisations pay to promote. And while this has been met by cries of ‘it’s not fair’ from those who’ve put lots of investment into pages just to see the return snatched from them it’s actually a pretty reasonable move by what is, afterall, a business.

So, now Facebook has started limiting the reach of your effort is it time to ditch the network and get your social media comms on elsewhere? I don’t think so. At least not yet.

It’s all about effort you see – and you’re probably just going to have to make a little bit more to make the network the point at which your users’ need and your business need meet.

Why are you there?

Well, apart from the reasons listed above (it’s free, everyone uses it, other organisations in my sector are) what is the business aim you’re working toward meeting or the user need you’re trying to fulfill? “We’re engaging” is a little bit woolly if we’re honest. With who? What for?

Unless you’ve got a clear aim and a plan for how to get there you’re probably wasting your (and your organisation’s time) on Facebook anyway. Sure, your plan can (and probably should) change as you adapt to a changing set of goals / circumstance, different user behaviour, or indeed the platform itself.

One page to rule them all might not be the way to go – and your digital spidey sense can tell you this as much as the data – but smaller pages serving niche interests and communities may work better.

The long-standing question has been ‘Who wants to ‘like’ their council?’. My feeling is still that a corporate page will have limited appeal but pages for services people are passionate about (countryside, libraries, civic pride), or campaign pages, will do better. To level up you have to make them all work as well as possible for the purpose they serve and know how you would utilise them to reach a wider audience with emergency, or even just a cross-issue, communications.

Brace for impact – here comes EdgeRank

So, you’ve got a few hundred people liking your page and the little number at the bottom of each post tells you that most of the time the number of people seeing that update is in double figures. Seems OK if you don’t delve deeper. But let’s express that number another way:

Take the number of people seeing a post on your page /  number of ‘likes’ for your page overall = % of ‘likers’ seeing your post

It’s probably a lot lower than the 15% of Page likers Facebook itself says will see your updates in their newsfeed under the new EdgeRank algorithm. Most page managers noticed this at the end of last year as the new algorithm rolled out. Simon Dell blogged about it here and Matthew Murray also blogged about how it had impacted on the local gov page he manages.

Around 25% would be a more palatable percentage. It can be done but you have to hit on the right formula – and that’s going to be different depending what your page is about, who your audience is, how you’re telling them about the page and what you’re putting there to interest them.

The music publication page I help manage has more than 11,300 ‘likers’, most of our posts reach 15-25% but we can see up to 70% reach on stuff that is interesting / unique. Know your audience, know your page and know what you’re doing to link the two together and increase the eyeballs each post you make gets in front of.

Time to leave or time to be better?

One answer to how local gov, organisations and businesses make the most of Facebook is, quite simply, for them to be better at using the network. Easier said than done, especially as everyone is being expected to do more with less.

And, assuming you want to be better at engaging or delivering via the social network, how do you do that?

Well, tracking and evaluating is one way. How many Facebook Page managers really know what’s working for their page, what the people ‘liking’ their page actually ‘like’ and how this fits with the bigger digital picture for their organisation? Probably not as many as should.

There are more than 200 types of data you can get from your Facebook Insights. You’re not going to have time to look at them all nevermind analyse and plan from them. That’s ok though as you’re not going to need them all.

I’d suggest you do need to get some basics in hand though – headline figures such as how many likes you have (and how much this has grown by) are fine but need some more detail to be useful. Check how many subscribers you’ve got (people who have told Facebook to show your updates in their feed), what sort of posts are getting the highest levels of engagement and reach, what day and time is busiest on your page (clue: it’s probably not during your office hours as this is a ‘social’ network for the everyman/woman).

Page managers have all this data at their fingertips and should be using it, along with some qualitative data pulled from their activity and analytics from their other digital presences, to get the most (and offer the most) through their Facebook page.

The bottom line is that if you use all of this quantitative and qualitative data to inform your efforts and you’re still not getting people engage with you on the network, it’s probably not the right channel for what you’re trying to achieve. There’s no shame in that – you just have to adjust your expectations and your business plan accordingly.

Give it to me quick

In summary then:

• EdgeRank is limiting the number of people seeing the posts you make on your page in their newsfeed: Fact
• Review why your organisation is using the network, and how you’ve established your presence (one page for your whole organisation or many pages for services or niche communities).
• Get to grips with your data. Learn how to use Insights and use the data to track activity, understand the platform and audience. Then be better.
• Don’t forget your qualitative data too. Insights give you the numbers, you need to gather the qualitative info to balance it out and give context.
• Try to stay away from knee-jerk reactions. Like any communications, engagement or service delivery activity you should investigate why you’re going to use a certain channel, and likewise you should know exactly why you’re going to stop. Don’t forget to compare the ‘success’ of your page with your ‘success’ in other channels.

The title of this blog post is taken from the Blur track Death of a Party. See the video here.

Sarah also writes about music at Louder Than War and is a local music promoter at Noble and Wild. You can also follow her on Twitter.

Related posts:

1. Turning the volume down
2. Social networking for councils
3. Fifteen feet of pure white snow

Alright, so we didn’t have quite fifteen feet of snow this year (or at least not yet!) but we had enough for me to put together five thoughts about digital comms in winter weather.

1. Customer service and information provision is needed around the clock – it was more obvious than ever this year that social media is now a natural part of a great many people’s lives. This we already knew from recent stats (link) but it’s interesting to see it happening in reality on your own profiles. What was even more interesting / frightening is that people have no concept of ‘out of hours’ online. If they can find you in a digital space they expect an answer as quickly at 11pm on a Friday night as they do a 10.30am on a Wednesday. Dealing with this ‘always on’ presence is something that needs to be tackled.
2. Responsive design to suit your audience – the speed at which mobile / tablet is taking a share of the digital audience is really quite phenomenal, and it shows no sign of stopping. This means, right at the top of your to do list, should be finding ways you can better reach and provide information to them. My flag is firmly planted in the responsive design camp – make your site and your content transform dependent on the device accessing it.
3. Findability and not being complacent about search – In the past I’ve been as guilty as any of being complacent about search, about skimming the surface of how things get ‘found’ and thinking SEO is mostly a dark art. But my mind began to be changed when I read the still-excellent ‘Search’ by John Batelle four or five years ago (ish). Search is more important than ever, and is changing. No longer can you purely rely on the authority of your domain, but need a cohesive approach to triumph in both organic (and the value of this is diminishing as display space is at such a premium on smaller devices and paid-for get’s prime position) and paid-for results. If people can’t find you it doesn’t matter how much great stuff you’re doing, the benefit melts away.
4. Resilience and making sure you can take the load – of course, if people can find you then may come in a blizzard, huge drifts of traffic threatening to overwhelm your website. Common sense but be as sure as you possibly can that your website can take the numbers if and when they do come, and have a back-up plan to get back online quickly or push info out through other channels while you dig your server out.
5. Analysis and making a plan for next time – the most important part of anything you do; finding the evidence, learning from it and using it to inform your plan for next time. If you don’t know the finer details of reach, engagement and quality of interaction you’re using digital socially and not for business or service delivery. Get your measurements in order and know how to interpret the data you gather. A vital skill for digital comms practitioners that is rising ever higher in the mix you need to perform well.

And one final thought; recently snow has become sexy in local government comms. Everyone wants in on that grit action and although there are some fairly complex business processes being redesigned in the digital wake, as well as a nudgenudgenudge at culture change this is quite low-hanging fruit in the wider digital service delivery picture. That’s not to say it isn’t important, that it doesn’t touch the lives of a big percentage of the population, or that it isn’t a fine fast-paced open-field in which to learn, adapt and deliver digital comms.

It is all that, but it’s also not the end. Principles developed here, experience gained, should be pointed toward other services in need of the amplification and digital delivery treatment. And the general conversation needs to move on from Twitter Gritter to a more mature model for this topic and all the others too.

The title of this post refers to a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds song – check out the video for 15 Feet of Pure White Snow here.

Sarah also writes about music at Louder Than War – read those words here.

Related posts:

1. Snow…to go!
2. Crisis comms online
3. Death of a party

I’ve mentioned LocalGov Digital in a couple of posts now and as things have now been formalised it seems only right to say a little more about it, especially as I’ve just been elected Communications Lead for the steering group.

What is LocalGov Digital?

LocalGov Digital is a practitioner network created and functioning in the spirit of local government’s sector-led improvement agenda.

Our overarching purpose is to raise standards in web provision and the use of digital by councils across the country, and to create a digital framework that is flexible enough to respond to local needs.

We exist to support improvement strategies in the delivery of services so that local government can be efficient, productive and serve local needs.

Our belief is that an overarching and fundamental principle is that local government is and should be ‘open by default and digital by design’.

At the centre is a steering group which connects the wider network with national bodies such as the Local Government Association (LGA – the voice of local government), government departments and other partners involved in improving how services are delivered to citizens.

What’s your involvement?

The group has so far been self-selecting and I’m honoured that the work I’ve done at Derbyshire, collaboratively as part of my MA (in eCommunications) and the thoughts published on this blog and elsewhere online have led to me being a part of LocalGov Digital.

The steering group has met a couple of times to discuss terms of reference, what we are, what projects we feel are key and how we’ll achieve that. This week the group voted on a few positions to give the work some shape. The results were:

• Chair – Carl Haggerty, Devon County Council. Carl and his work on digital content strategy for a transforming organisation has been key in the creation of this group.
• Vice Chair (South) – Phil Rumens, West Berkshire District Council. Phil has a great mix of technical and communications skills and has been a driving force in getting the group started.
• Vice Chair (North) – Carl Whistlecraft, Kirklees Council. Carl is a driving force in transforming democratic services through digital and this experience, and the areas of work he represents, are an essential part of the group.
• Communications Lead (South) – Alastair Smith, Hackney Council. One of the best communicators in local government right now I’m very happy to be sharing the comms lead responsibilities with Al.
• Communications Lead (North) – Sarah Lay, Derbyshire County Council. Yep, that’s me. A grown-up position on a grown-up committee, providing communications support for work I really believe is not only vital but achievable.

Where can I find out more?

We’re working on this at the moment. The website is under-development and should be available very soon. In the meantime you can follow us on twitter or take a look at #localgovdigital.

Related posts:

1. Digital Content Strategy KHub group
2. ReallyUsefulDay – GDS meets localgov
3. KHub consultation – a response

What does an ‘innovation space’ look like?

As with so very many things my thoughts started to whir after passively being involved in a Twitter discussion (predominently) between Phil Rumens, Sarah Jennings and Carl Haggerty.

What started as a back and forth about the possibility of an outdoor govcamp, considered a govcamp tour and simultenous camps in various locations (using Govstock for rural camps and the citycamp type badge for urban happenings) and sort of wound up being about innovation spaces (well, wound up in so much as the conversation has slowed for now).

It’s all interesting stuff in itself – I’d certainly be interested in Govstock or the CampCamp which has been talked about before (an unconference outdoors in actually tents and the like). But what really caught my eye was the talk about innovation spaces.

At the Digital Summit event last week (and I will blog about that soon) Carl was part of the panel and one of the first things he mentioned was the room we were in. The facilities at Local Government House are nothing to sniff about, interesting enough and suited to conferences and workshops but, Carl asked, is it inspiring?

He compared the white walls of the room we were in that day to the colourful, quirky, offices of Google. He pondered whether we need to rethink the environment that surrounds us, as well as change culture, if we’re to really support and encourage digital innovation in local government.

That question was still going around somewhere in the back of my mind as I watched the Twitter conversation happen today – and it started flashing brighter as the words ‘innovation space’ were tweeted.

What does an ‘innovation space’ look like, I wondered? Is it the great outdoors as suggested by Govstock, is it the bright colours and playfulness of an internet empires urban office, or is it the removal of outside stimulus to let thoughts flow (think floatation tank or the dimly lit reflective practice room at UKGC12).

Is it less about the physical environment and more about the removal of the expected cultural norm. The flattening of hierarchies, trusting and listening to people, allowing choice and passion to be the order of the day.

Is it that an innovation spaces would be different to each person? That one person would find inspiration in the bright colours while the next would find them a distraction? That dim quiet room would be oppressive boredom for some.

So what’s the answer? As usual I’m not sure I know. I don’t think there is a wrong one though other than doing nothing at all. Try different ways to nurture creativity, to inspire and support innovation. It might be getting outside, it might be changing the space you work in, it might be chatting to likeminds and constructive challengers online, or it might be going off grid. I guess it might even be a combination.

So, what does an innovation space look like?

This post is titled after Wide Open Space by Mansun.

No related posts.

Back in 2009 I was part of an advisory group formed as part of the process of setting up the platform which became the LGA’s Knowledge Hub. Fast-forward to today and the LGA are running a consultation on their proposals to close the network.

A formal response has been published by the LocalGov Digital steering group, which I am now a part of and you can read this on our website here.

As part of the group, and a digital practitioner within local government, I’d encourage anyone else in the sector to make their views on the future of KHub know to the LGA. You can send them your views at info@local.gov.uk or in the public knowledge hub group. The consultation closes this week so don’t put it off!

For my part my views have been expressed in the LocalGov Digital response – I’m keen for the LGA to consider the less-tangible services provided to the sector as part of KHub; community management, facilitation, influence and invaluable ‘joining up’ between layers of government and other sectors.

It is these skills and services I fear losing more than any ‘tool’ – the KHub platform in its current form doesn’t fulfill the needs of users and that’s certainly something that could be improved or replaced by a system that does. But whatever the platform, whoever hosts it, those other skills and services are a vital part of the mix.

Related posts:

1. Digital Content Strategy KHub group
2. Local government and social media – response to Ingrid Koeler at IDeA
3. So you wanna be a movie star?

After eight and a half years at Derbyshire County Council I’m crossing the border to take up a new position with Nottinghamshire County Council.

I’m really pleased to announce I’ll be taking up the post of Senior Digital Officer from 5 August and I’m looking forward to the challenges of being within a new organisation, taking on new projects and meeting new people.

I’m also looking forward to writing more on this blog and becoming more involved in the local gov digital (and indeed the LocalGov Digital) communities for sharing and learning.

Initially my focus at Nottinghamshire will be on intranet, internal communications and employee engagement – an area I’ve held an interest in since being Intranet Manager for Northcliffe newspapers. I’m looking forward to getting stuck in and helping the county council forward with their ideas.

I’ll be retaining my place on the LocalGov Digital steering group and I’m looking forward to representing Nottinghamshire in this network, as well as forging links with other authorities across the East Midlands region.

I’ve learnt lots during my time at Derbyshire – from the eGovernment agenda and launching websites, intranet, extranets; to adapting governence models and gaining further experience of training people; helping the organisation take its first steps into social media; devising real-time results coverage for local elections; and merging communications, service delivery and customer service through digital. I’ve also had the chance to work with some great people and I hope to keep in touch with them as I hop over the border to a new authority.

All this experience and learning from colleagues, as well as the informal self-directed learning I’ve done through getting involved in digital networks, GovCamps and more, that I’ll take with me on this next stage of my journey. I look forward to sharing parts of it with you here!

Don’t forget you can also follow me on Twitter or search for Sarah Lay on G+ and add me to your circles.

Related posts:

1. Public sector intranets

Yesterday, 9 July 2013, was the first of the planned annual Harkive days. The project aims to gather a snapshot of how people are listening to music by asking them to share their day via blogging or social media.

It’s an interesting proposition – capturing changing trends over time not only on how we listen, but when we listen.

There were plenty of high profile music journalists and broadcasters sharing their examples and the hashtag on Twitter was a really interesting read. It sounds as if it’s gone well – more than 1000 contributions on the day and more coming in, this being just one of them.

So the world was listening, but what did I hear?

I suspect my own listening habit is slightly out of kilter with the norm – partly because I listen to such high volumes of music for my work with Louder Than War but because I also actively seek out formats that are less popular such as cassettes and vinyl (although both have made a slight resurgence).

Keeping the diary – some of which I tweeted but is here in full – made me more aware of what I was doing and the formats I was listening on. And it made me think about a post by Phil Rumens called Ding Dong and the Digital Divide on how digital exclusion starts to be cultural exclusion.

I’d strongly recommend his post here but in short he surmises that if you don’t / can’t / won’t listen to music digitally you’re in danger of being cut off or limited in choice due to the demise of the local record store. This is probably extra true of rural areas.

It also made me think of an equally recommended post by Andrew Dubber called Deleting Music revisited about how much music is being lost. He proposes a project to digitise music – not just popular, big selling stuff – but the stuff around the edges, the master tapes sitting in vaults that no-one has access to. It’s a project to catalogue and keep the musical ephemera, as much a part of culture and society as anything else, before it decays to dust without being heard.

Listening diary

So two posts of digital music stuff there for you but here’s my contribution to the first Harkive here’s my listening diary for 9 July 2013:

07:00 – 08:00 The radio is on in the kitchen while the kids have breakfast. I’m not really listening to be honest, it’s background noise, not because I’m uninterested but because I’m getting sorted for the day. It’s tuned to 6Music.

08:00 – 09:00 The commuting hour. I drive to work and on a Tuesday my toddler is also in the car. This morning we listened to a five track Beat Mark sampler on cassette (yes, my car still has a radio cassette player) that the band gave me after a gig on Sunday night. We also listen to a bit of Tim Burgess’s Oh No I Love You More on my iPhone via the car stereo and together we sing a couple of nursery rhymes. I imagine I’m pretty niche in listening to tapes in the car these days.

12:30 Lunchtime at the day job (no music played in the office) and I listen to a track by a band I’m writing about. It’s on Soundcloud and I listen via headphones from my iPhone. The band is Prizefighter, the track Museum Island, the article about them here.

13:00 Don’t know where it’s come from but Blame it on the Boogie is persistently going round and round my head.

16:00 (ish) Office windows are open and a car stopped outside blares out some unidentified beats.

17:30 – 18:15 The backwards commute. Toddler back in the car we listen to the first tape I reach when I delve into the glove box – appears to be a home made compilation from around 2002. Windows down in the sunshine we hear some britpop classics – Oasis Live Forever, Longpigs On and On and Gomez Tijuana Lady. We also hear Portishead, Cornershop and Sneaker Pimps? It’s a bit random to be honest.

20:45 – 23:00 Most of my listening for pleasure or Louder Than War (the two aren’t mutually exclusive by the way) is done between 20.30 and midnight on week nights. It’s after the kids have gone to bed and my other half has gone to work (usually, not always) so it’s time I can just listen to whatever I like or whatever I need to.

Tonight I listen to the A side of Beat Mark’s LP Howls of Joy which I bought at their gig earlier in the week. I also listen to the new Scott and Charlene’s Wedding / Fawn Spots split single on CD and an album by Whitemoor on CD. I’m writing the review of the Whitemoor album so it involves a bit of skipping back and forth to go over things in my own mind. I then stream a load of stuff that’s appeared in my inbox, tonight that’s on my phone but I’m pretty changeable about using that, a netbook (yeah, I know, tablets are the new thing) or the Mac.

I watch videos by Secret Colours and Max Raptor as well as tracks by Altered Hours (who I’m working on an article about) and Bentcousin – I stream one on Bandcamp and one on Soundcloud.

It’s probably a pretty average listening day for me to be honest. Some evenings it’s loads more individual tracks and downloads, some nights it’s just albums but it’s always a mix of formats. I’ll be interested to hear what the wider Harkive picture shows and see how this changes in the coming years.

You can visit the Harkive website for more info.

Related posts:

1. Power to the people
2. Stop, collaborate & listen

I’ve been indulging in some reflective thinking on how I use social media, and how that has changed over time, and how that might change further in the future.

That thinking led me to sketch out this engagement cycle (although the version you see on this page was made all digital and that by the lovely Carl Bembridge) to try and visualise that change in usage.

The reflection started with the realisation that I use Twitter, in particular, in a very different way to how I used it, say, two years ago.

Consume

The first reflection was that I don’t ‘talk’ as much as I ‘listen’ on Twitter these days. In other words I’m pretty much a social media consumer these days. Or at least I am on that platform – more on that later.

The main reasons for that shift were fairly easily identified – external forces both good and bad but also a slight splintering of my digital identity. While I still mix both parts of my life (digital for local gov and music journalism) under one Twitter account I have split off other bits. For example the music PR and promotion I do is on the Noble and Wild account.

Curate

However, for all my listening I go through fits of curating. After not saying anything but reading lots I’m most likely to be retweeting or favouriting things. Some of this is about being able to come back to things later on, some of it is because it feels lower risk  and less personal than creating.

Speaking of which…

Creating

I create all the time but that might not be very obvious from my social media profiles at the moment. Whether it’s writing for Louder Than War, doing music PR, stuff I do at work there’s plenty of creating going on so why do I share it less? Well, it’s those reasons under ‘consume’. Sharing my creations has definitely become a more conscious decision than it was at one point. On further reflection that means I’m creating for other reasons than purely sharing, and that’s a good thing.

It’s a cycle

I don’t think I’m on my first circumnavigation of this cycle. I think I went round it faster when I first started using Twitter in 2008, and I think I might have been round it at least once more since then. I think this time it’s become a multi-direction cycle – that consumption doesn’t necessarily lead to creation to curation and so on.

Is it platform specific?

I think some of it is. And some of it is visible / private specific – for example on Facebook my visible activity has slowed but my use of Chat and messages has increased. And Pinterest is still all about the curation, I probably do less than some but when I’ve got a project on I am pin happy.

So, what does it all mean?

It’s been interesting to work that out. Some of it is music journalism being a bigger part of my digital identity and that most bands court consumption not engagement on social media (I will probably write about this some other time). Some of it is those changing circumstances. Some of it is that I think other people I once engaged with or find thought-provoking and challenging are also in the ‘consumption phase’ (not to call the rest of my ‘bubble’ dull, just a change in the flow of conversation around me). Some of it is that my interest and time is split across a greater number of platforms.

That’s what it means for me. But I did reflect, briefly, on what it might mean for others. In the same way I have noticed a piping down from some voices in my stream I have wondered if others noticed I contribute less? Does it matter? If I’m still reading their blogs, following their links, favouriting, retweeting does it matter if I engage less directly?

Ultimately I guess it does – we can’t all be social consumers, someone has to create or curate stuff for us to consume. And so this is a cycle that feeds the engagement process as much as reflects my personal engagement via the social web.

Has anyone else noticed, or reflected, on the way their use of social media has changed?

You can read my words about music on Louder Than War, follow me on Twitter or search for Sarah Lay on G+ and add me to your circles!

Related posts:

1. Epic Social Media for the Public Sector – South West
2. Dave Briggs – four steps to social media success
3. Overcoming small hurdles in digital engagement #localgovcamp

Is responsive design an interesting sideshow, taking up time and money that should or could be spent on basic readability and improving content?

This is the debate posed by Malcolm Davison of the Writing for the Web agency in his blog post ‘Forget Adapting for Mobile‘. His post came after some discussion on the topic on the Content Strategy Google group (that discussion in this thread).

The post contains some good points and a link to an interesting presentation with lots of good-looking stats about user behaviour across device. I can’t disagree that working on quality content is A Good Thing.

HOWEVER (there had to be an however, right?) while I agree with the underlying point of the argument posed in the post I’m not sure I can completely agree that responsive (or adaptive) design should be completely pushed aside as unnecessary frippery.

Since he posted earlier today there has been a lively thread running in the Content Strategy Google Group with practitioners trying to understand more fully the intention of the post and make their own views clear. If you’d rather you can dive straight into that thread here.

So, where to begin? Well, how about with the evidence that forms the basis for the post?

Looking into the Google research cited they state a number of points of context around how an individual may choose which device to use – the amount of time available, the goal or task in mind, location and attitude. They then add this context to each device (they use mobile to indicate smartphone, while laptop / PC are in together, tablets and TV). However, some critical thinking is needed around this research as there is little quantifying or contextual information about the data it presents. My thoughts that follow are based on assumptions of my reading of the research, the subsequent blog post and forum thread.

Is responsive design a ‘nice to have’?

I think 30% is pretty much the level of ‘mobile’ traffic that most local government sites are seeing at the moment. Unlike the report I use this as an accumulated figure of smartphone and tablet use. And I would question whether those devices are still used in the way listed in the report – for information on the go or to kill a bit of time (smartphone) and for entertainment (tablets). Why do I question it? Well, I don’t have a tablet but I do have a smartphone. My usage of that device is much higher than the 38% the report found, and I use it for everything. Am I unusual? Maybe. But that’s partly my reason for blogging about this!

Of the other devices I have access to I could choose desktop or laptop (I’m discounting TV in my case – we don’t have an interactive TV and view it infrequently. I accept I’m probably the exception in that case!). Whatever I’m doing (away from my day job) it usually starts on my phone. If I have to move to another device to complete the task I do feel as if something has failed and that my user experience is poorer for it.

And I have a choice. What about those that don’t? Is multiple device usage more common amongst urbanites than those in rural areas where broadband may be poor? And what about those from deprived backgrounds – maybe they have no device at all but if they do I bet it’s a smartphone.

Some of the tasks suggested in Malcolm’s post I would have to switch devices for – but I’d feel let down by the provider that I did. I would want to be able to complete them all from a smartphone (or tablet) as that is my device of choice.

And in the other direction, what about devices which aren’t widely used yet but may well become mainstream in the future? Wearable tech is out there now and there’s going to be all kinds of stuff we can’t anticipate fully right now. Is ‘mobile’ really just messy shorthand for ‘multiplicity of choice’?

All of this is part of why responsive isn’t just a nice to have or buzzword of the moment. You can pay lip service to it but you could also make a real and long-lasting, even futureproof, change to the way you work your digital content; by separating out the presentation level (responsive / mobile design) from structured content (mark-up to define what shows where when).

Structured content

And what of serving content which is appropriate to the device? This isn’t really covered in the original post but, the thread headed off in this direction with some really interesting points around structured content and content mark-up as the way to serve the right content, in the right way, at the right time.

There were lots of posts about doing this via a CMS and the use of DITA. There were some glib explanations and there were some techy descriptions of how structured content could and should happen in the background, how it fits with business objectives and even the practical impact storing content this way would have on authors.

It’s the sort of discussion digital practitioners should probably have more (thinking of my own sector here, clearly discussions generally are happening) and in local government, perhaps it is time to help each other find ways that separate the presentation layer from the content, rather than letting technology define what we can or can’t do?

Content first? Mobile first? User first?

But how do we discuss this with the boardroom, the senior managers or elected members? They probably have no interest in hearing about the benefits of structured content. It’s a tactic that will help achieve an organisational goal. As with so many things it needs discussing in the right way.

And maybe mobile (as defined in the thread – not really about smartphones or tablets but a messy shorthand for the multiplicity of devices now in play – with more to come, Google Glass and wearable internet anyone?) is the way to phrase this conversation. With stats that traffic is coming from other devices, research on how your audience is accessing, their expectation and ability, discussing implementing a responsive design or ‘mobile-friendly site’ is the way in.

The discussion included this quote from Karen McGrane which summed my thoughts up well (thanks Karen for unknowingly helping me articulate some thoughts here!):

“Use mobile as a Trojan horse, as a catalyst to fix what’s wrong with your website and process.”

To clarify this Karen added in a subsequent post:

“I don’t mean because they care about mobile, we build a siloed website. I mean that we tell them, you want mobile, you need to fix your CMS, improve your editorial process and workflow, and create structured, flexible, presentation-independent content for reuse. You use mobile as your ‘aha’ moment to fix the underlying problem.”

Is the original post wrong?

No – it’s just one view which seems to look at presentation and content as one inseperable entity. In lots of people’s digital worlds – particularly around local gov I expect – that will be true. But there is another way and maybe we should be talking about that and moving toward it?

Image ‘Portatil-tablet-smartphone’ by Miniyo73 on Flickr. Shared under the Creative Commons licence.

Would love to hear thoughts on this – you can usually find me on Twitter or use me a comment below. And don’t forget <plug> you can my words about music over on Louder Than War </plug>.

Related posts:

1. Web Content Gov Camp – Coventry
2. Fifteen feet of pure white snow
3. Content strategy linkapaloosa

A few years ago (alright, 13 years ago) I wrote my undergraduate journalism dissertation on whether the internet would spell the end of printed newspapers.

I concluded that the availabilty of information online would certainly damage the traditional print business model and readership but it wouldn’t die unless digital could be made highly convenient and even tactile.

Back then the idea of a smartphone or tablet, even the paperwhite of a Kindle, hadn’t crossed my mind. In my studies I was talking about something so technologically advanced I may as well have been talking about jet packs or hover boards. However, these few years on (alright, 13 years on) that faraway vision of the future is very much here and print is certainly facing a crisis.

I don’t think about my dissertation often but it came to mind as I listened to my Louder Than War editor John Robb discuss music journalism with Manchester Evening News’ culture correspondent Sarah Walters. The chat was part of a set of masterclasses taking place in Tim Peaks Diner at Kendal Calling festival this year.

Of course, it was interesting to listen to John talk about his experiences of coming to music journalism not through formal training but through the passion of writing fanzines. Long, long before I met him or joined the Louder Than War team John was one of my favourite music writers so it was great to hear him talk.

And it was great to hear Sarah’s slightly different career path. Although she too had come from fanzines she’d gone down the route of a journalism degree.

The most interesting part of the discussion for me though was the difference between being a regional print journalist and writing on the internet. There was good insights into the different agendas for each channel, the different style of writing because of the differening audience and platform capability.

All of this led to conjecture on the future of the print channel and of music journalism as a career. For me, hearing the different views and positioning myself within the scenarios (wrote fanzines, got a degree in journalism, now a ‘hobbyist’ critic in that I have a paying day job in another field, but a hobbyist who’s an editor of one of the UK’s biggest music websites). Will there be more like me – a mixed career path where journalism isn’t always the earning component or can it continue in the structure it’s held traditionally?

The best workshops or talks I’ve been to have left me with more questions than answers and this was certainly one of those.

Is this the future of music journalism? With so much access to online and the ability to publish so easily – whether writing or music – what is the place of the critic these days?

And with the way work is changing is the value of my journalism less than someone who receives a salary specifically to be a critic? And if it does – why?

Thoughts?

Whatever the value I reviewed Kendal Calling, and wrote a special on Tim Peaks Diner, for Louder Than War.

Related posts:

1. Harkive – how people listen to music today
2. The future of journalism

Back at the end of July I was guest editor for a day over at Comms2Point0. This means writing a post and curating some (hopefully) useful links.

It’s taken me two months but here’s the post I wrote for them on search and SEO. The original posting is on the Comms2Point0 blog here.

*****

Search is important because so many people do it online. Thirty-five per cent of all UK visits online came from a search engine in January 2012, according to this survey by Hitwise, and the most popular engine of choice is Google (it had an 89% market share in the UK in June 2013). If so many people are using search as a short-cut to what they want online you need to make sure your information is the stuff that gets found.

Unravelling the mystery of search

Let’s start with demystifying some of these acronyms shall we? So, SEO – Search Engine Optimisation, or how to make your content better not only for the person reading it but the search engine indexing it to get them there in the first place. If you’ve heard the term before it’s probably been mumbled in hushed tones as if it is some dark art not for the faint hearted or ethical.

But SEO isn’t that at all, it’s the way in which search engines find, organise and rank all of the information out there and present that to a web user who’s started their online visit by typing in a keyword or phrase vaguely describing what they’re looking for. That gives you SERP by the way – Search Engine Result Page, or the way in which the users choices are presented back to them.

On your SERP you have a mix of organic and paid for results (PPC – Pay Per Click, is a form of advertising by paying for your result to be show when a certain keyword is used). The organic stuff gets the majority of the clicks – 94% of them in fact – so it’s worth making sure you’ve done what you can to get the top spots in the list.

For now. Viewing on different devices with smaller screens (smartphones for example) causes the results page to display in a slightly different way which may make people choose a paid-for rather than organic link. But that’s a subject to discuss another day!

Four principles for search-friendly, quality content

The good news is that if you’ve been working at creating great content that is relevant to your audience then you’ve got the basis for some top-notch SEO. Back in the day there were plenty of dodgy practices you could carry out (buzzword – black hat / white hat, ethically or sound practices designed to get better search placement for less-than-ideal content) but Google now looks more closely at the quality and relevancy of content than ever before.

For all digital content there are four principles you should look to fulfill to help your content be found by the right person, at the right time. The principles utilises skills that PRs and communicators have used across their work on other channels, in fact much of the profession’s established practices make them a great fit as SEO evolves to be about quality content.

Here’s how you can start to get your content optimised for search:

• Relevant – how many of us are repping a truly unique proposition? Not many of us I’d wager. Local government has been especially guilty of relying on being the sole provider of a service in a given geographical area to skip over SEO (or *whisper it* quality content). But we’re in a world of increasing competition (and for local government commissioned services) and crossing your fingers and hoping that people will find you, or choose you, online is a risky strategy.

• Trustworthy – aim to be the definitive source for information on your subject, or for your product. Some of this may come from your domain name (again, traditionally .gov.uk addresses have carried higher credibility due to the limitations on acquiring one) or through getting lots of inbound links to your page. Think of these as citations, recommendations from others that your content is useful.
• High quality – yes, your spelling and grammar matter. Junk the jargon, use capital letters correctly, develop a consistent appropriate tone and make your content readable as well as interesting.
• Engaging – your search positioning now factors in social signals too. How shareable, likable, +1-able is the information you’re putting out on social networks? It isn’t good enough to broadcast links to your web pages (for *so* many reasons) you need to be getting great engagement going and being an active participator in your communities and networks.

Of course this is the tip of the iceberg with search engine optimisation and there are many skills and practices you can apply to your digital content to help it get found.

Some practices are more technical or in-depth than others but as a starting point make sure whatever you create meets the four principles here and you’ll have taken the first step on your journey toward mastering SEO.

You can read my words about music on Louder Than War or follow me on Twitter.

On Friday I went down to London for a LocalGov Digital steering group meeting. In my role as comms lead for the group I live tweeted the day (see the hashtag #localgovdigital) and wrote up some formal notes from the day on the website.

Here though are my personal thoughts and take-aways from the day.

It’s been almost a year since the LocalGov Digital steering group came together formally and the meeting on Friday saw tangible deliverables start to be made. It was a great feeling to see real things come out of the group after a relatively short time. They may be small at the moment but it’s a proof of concept for the network.

All of the work being done across the agreed streams is interesting, impressive and ultimately of wider use across the sector but my own sphere of interest and work is most closely aligned with the content and design stream.

The main deliverable for this was a set of content guidelines – a checklist to question why content is being created as well as a style guide and best practice guide – that councils can take as a base and build on local variations where needed.

It was great that the work Phil Rumens, Jason Williams and Marc Snaith have done on this was accepted by the group and will be published for use by the network soon. It would be even better to see other established networks advising in this area – SocITM, CIPR etc – taking this free resource and promoting to their own members.

The other highlight for me was inviting Birmingham City Council’s Simon Gray in to present on a usability tool he’s developed. This came out of an email discussion with Simon after seeing him talk about the tool on Twitter a week or so before the meeting.

The tool and process seeks to test all of the transactions a council may offer, recognising that it’s not just the high volume transactions that hold value but that by getting the all of the smaller volume transactions right cumulatively there will be a saving or efficiency and of course it will lead to a better user experience, potentially higher satisfaction etc.

The decision was taken for the group to begin working collaboratively with Simon on developing this tool to make it suitable for different tiers of local government (with different tasks / services to test) and to try and add objectivity to review too. This will initially be done in closed alpha but I’d personally like to see this move to an open alpha around the time of the next steering group meeting in around eight weeks from now.

For me the tool will have a practical application in my daily working life but it (and the content guidelines) embody what I hoped would come from the group – the ability to surface expertise and beneficial work happening in pockets throughout local government, use collective knowledge and time to build upon the idea and have the network to amplify for the greater good across the sector. It’s quite a wonderful feeling to see that theory beginning to become practice.

But is that enough of a reason for the group to continue? One of the things Chair (and Public Leaders Network Public Service Awards Leadership Excellence nominee) Carl Haggerty asked group members to begin thinking about was what the purpose, remit and shape of the group may take in the future.

To my mind it will take a little longer to begin to really achieve the networking aims of the group and so it will need to exist longer than this first year. Good progress has been made in raising the profile of the LocalGov Digital network with links to the Digital Alliance and opportunities coming up with groups like the County Council Network. I agree with Carl that eventually digital will become a natural part of conversation and work within these networks and then LocalGov Digital may cease to exist as a separate entity – but I don’t think we’re at that point yet.

But everyone’s time on the group needs to be justified and productive so a hub and spoke model of organisation may be more practical going into the second year. Taking the steering group – in about the same size it is now – with smaller ‘spoke’ groups tackling work streams in more detail. I think these ‘spoke’ groups could deliver tangible outputs on specific themes while the central ‘hub’ steering group continues to push on the wider agenda, the overall outcome, and normalising digital within existing networks.

It may be that the hub steering group would seek to increase insight through involving non-exec members from other key groups in an advisory capacity, without allowing these external influences to unduly direct practitioners – I’m keen the group remains for and by practitioners while recognising expertise and work from elsewhere.

The ‘spoke’ groups may also be a way of actively involving more of the existing expertise, the practitioner network the group seeks to represent. I could certainly see how the content and design, democracy, and tech and infrastructure work streams could expand to be ‘spoke’ groups with more involvement from more practitioners.

I’m pretty sure my thoughts on this will develop over the next few weeks and it’ll be interesting to hear other views. A year ago the steering group members blogged about why they wanted to be a part of the network – it would be interesting to get their views now on whether it met what they wanted and where they see it going from here.

I guess the most important question would be to digital practitioners across local government and be ‘what do you want LocalGov Digital to do for you in the future?’

Visit the LocalGov Digital website for more information and updates from the work streams. You can also follow the network on Twitter.

You can read my words about music on Louder Than War and you can follow me on Twitter.

The Guardian are hosting a live online chat on Friday 11 October 2013 between noon and 2pm on ‘how can councils be more effective online?’

I’m really pleased to have been asked to be a part of the panel during the chat and am looking forward to some good discussion about the challenges and opportunities.

The panel also includes Phil Rumens (West Berkshire and vice chair of Local Gov Digital), Helen Reynolds (Monmouthshire), Sarah Jennings (LGA), Ben Matthews (FutureGov) and a couple of councillors and chief execs as well.

To join on the day or leave a question in advance go to the Guardian website.

Local government and digital not your thing? You can find my words about music on Louder Than War. Or follow me on Twitter for a mix of both.

Last week the LocalGov Digital steering group published its digital content standard. The standard, which pulls together good practice from local government and public sector organisations around the world, is a digital style guide, content quality checklist and advice on things like organic SEO.

I’ve been really pleased to see the standard published for a number of reasons.

Firstly on a personal level. The standard came out of work stream led by Phil Rumens, Jason Williams and Marc Snaith but I was pleased to have fed some of my experience and expertise into the creation of the standard.

And I’m also pleased for the group. Just a year after we first came together we’ve delivered the first tangible resource to the sector. It fits with the principles we work to – broadly ‘digital by design, open by default’ as well as more specifically to raise aspirations across the sector and provide support through practical resources as well as networking.

Then finally, I’m really excited for local gov digital content out there. Local government hears a lot that it isn’t doing digital well but there are very few offering realistic and practical help to improve.

This is just one small part of how the sector can work together to make things better for individual councils as well as local government overall. It seems like a really simple, obvious idea to pool resource and knowledge and re-share with the sector but it’s actually quite disruptive – proving that expertise and good practice is within the sector, not just outside.

So – let’s talk about the standard itself. It is essentially a style guide, content quality checklist and advice on digital content such as organic SEO. The standard is not perfect – it’s not really intended to be. Everything that the group publishes is in a ‘beta’ format – a first version ready for collaborative development by the sector or to evolve as technology and user behaviour does.

The standard was published as a PDF but is being converted to a web format more in keeping with the advice we’re giving in the standard and making it possible to do the collaborative development.

And we know that the SEO guidance needs reviewing. Google released the Hummingbird update as the standard was published but if anything this shows the need for any such standard to be a ‘living’ document, evolving as the digital landscape does.

I’m really pleased that West Berkshire and Devon are adopting the standard and hope more council’s will adopt and feed into the standard. And I’m really excited about what other practical tools we can put in a kit to help local government continue to improve and digital practitioners pursue aspirations even in this time of austerity.

Find the standard on the LocalGov Digital website.

It’s been a funny couple of weeks as I’ve found myself on the Guardian website twice.

I have been in a national newspaper before but that was for surviving an emergency operation rather than anything to do with my professional knowledge or abilities. This felt far more exciting and just a tad scary too.

With the Guardian I’ve been pleased to be part of an expert panel discussion ideas around how councils can be more effective online and then profiled as part of the Local Leaders ‘meet our members’ section.

How can councils be more effective online?

This live discussion took place on Friday 11 October 2013 and saw a panel including myself, Phil Rumens (West Berkshire Council, vice chair LocalGov Digital), Sarah Jennings (Local Government Association, LocalGov Digital), Helen Reynolds (Monmouthshire Council), Vicky Sargent (SocITM), Ben Matthews (FutureGov), a couple of councillors and a couple of chief execs as well as a representative from discussion sponsors SaS.

It was a great discussion that took in discussion on whether there was digital talent in local government and how to retain it (yes, there is but it’s not always recognised); what makes a great digital team (leadership, respect and trust); why aren’t there more women in digital; innovation and good practice across the sector (Shift Surrey one of the really interesting examples here).

You can read the full discussion in the comments of this article or there is a round-up article of a top tip from each of the panel here.

For my part I hope my contributions were useful to the discussion and I certainly found it useful in furthering my thinking on work I am doing at the moment.

Meet our members – an interview with Guardian Local Leaders Network

After the discussion I was asked to do an interview as part of the newspaper website’s ‘meet our members’ series.

This takes the form of a Q&A to show a professional profile and I’ve been honoured to be described as ‘the woman behind Nottinghamshire’s digital strategy’ (maybe, but certainly not the only person behind or involved in it) as well as discussing again talent in the sector and being a woman in digital.

And it nationally confirmed my age as 34. Lovely.

You can read the profile here.

And if you’d rather read my words about music than my thoughts on digital and local government then check me out over at Louder Than War. For chat about either then follow me over on Twitter.

facebook (Photo credit: sitmonkeysupreme)

As I was idly scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed this morning I happened across an article shared by a former colleague.

The article, on Huffington Post, details the seven most annoying types of post people can make on the network. These include bragging, attention seeking and over-sharing the minutae of everyday life.

I’m sure most people have been guilty of posting status updates falling into the ‘insufferable’ categories described (yeah, guilty) but it got me thinking that it’s not just individuals who behave this way, organisations do too. In fact, organisations may be even more guilty, and therefore more likely to annoy, and not just on Facebook but on other social media platforms too.

The article proposes that: “A Facebook status is annoying if it primarily serves the author and does nothing positive for anyone reading it.” Think about that for a minute. And then think about how often your organisation’s posts would fall into this category. Honestly? It’s probably more often than you either a) want to admit or b) want it to if you’re seeking online engagement, positive reputation or traffic to your website.

What this might remind you of is the 80/20 rule of social media. Not aware of that one? Well, that one states that only 20% of your posts should be self-promotion and the rest of the time you should be social. No one likes the guy at the party who ignores all the conversation around him to persistently, and loudly, give a monologue about how great he is.

So – if you’re just posting links to your press releases or self-congratulating on success chances are you’re status is being shot directly into a social media void (or worse, is actually making your followers / customers / audience feel hostile toward your organisation).

Sure, these messages are important to you and in fact are probably important to some or all of your audience – but don’t let broadcast be the backbone of your social media strategy, let it be a minor part of the mix. As Social Media Today put it: “It’s social media, not me media.”

So, what’s your 80%?

Well, if it’s not about you, it’s about other people right?

Be a part of the conversation’s around you and try to be a valuable part of the community. Whether that’s giving out gritting information in a timely, findable way during winter or discussing this year’s nominations for the Man Booker prize. It could be taking part in Twitter hash tag chats or joining (even starting) a G+ Community.

Whatever it is, just remember that despite what McFly might have sung it’s not all about you – you’re a part but not the centre of the conversation, even on your organisation’s own social media profile.

Which organisations are doing social media right? Leave me a comment or tweet me.

And if you’re more excited by the McFly reference than the social media talk take a look at my words about music on Louder Than War.