The one question I would ask what happens when you find:

• a blog post critical about the agency or one of its’ policies,
• a series of critical blog posts, with a number of comments supporting the authors view,
• a facebook group, critical about the agency or one of it’s policies, or
• a social networking site which is solely about your agency, and most of the content critical?

And would your action be different if was brought to your attention by:

• a junior staff member,
• senior management,
• the minister, or
• traditional media like the doyen of current affairs shows Today, Tonight?

These scenarios are what all could happen to your agency in the near future. If you need some examples do a Google Blog Search on your agency and have a look at the results. The results for TransPerth Complaint returns a dozen results. 12 hours in a WA Emergency Department is the fourth great article by the same author on the inner workings of a Perth hospital over at Perth Norg. Over 7000 Western Australians have joined the Facebook group Perth people who love Day Light Saving. And to pick on TransPerth again there is Dumb Rider.

How should your agency react in these situations and what can be done to reduce the risk, should be enough to get any Government Department thinking about a Social Media Strategy.

I have spent over ten years in various Policy and Communications units in the Government and while trying to not sound like an extra from the Hollowmen, there is a subtle difference between strategy and policy. Strategies set the targets, policies are methods for getting there.

Communications Strategy

Most Government Departments have a Communications Strategy, which should be a high level document which broad terms define the communication aims of the agency. With statements like to increase awareness amongst the most disadvantages clients: youth, indigenous, homeless and the elderly of their right and responsibilities in regard to ….

Unfortunately most Communications Strategies are based on previous strategies and are from the time of mass media as the only channel, very much a talk to ideology rather than communicate with.

Most communication strategies are only reviewed every three years or so, which unfortunately in this time of rapidly changing communications technology and practices, is far too long. The maximum time should be 12 to 18 months.

Online Communications Strategy

An Online Communications Strategy should be the aims of what the agency wants to achieve in online communications in the next 12 months, it should directly relate to their Communications Strategy. Any longer is an unrealistic time span, given the rapid changes in online communications technology.

An example would be use social media, paticularly user generated material to inform young people about their rights

Social Media Strategy

A Social Media Strategy is what the agency wants to achieve in the near future using social media. IT should directly relate to the Online Communications Strategy and be far more specific. For example in conjuction with partners, run a competition/s inviting youth to create videos, about their rights with …

As social media technology and behaviour is rapidly changing, only a brave soul, will let a Social Media Strategy last more than 6 months without a review.

Campaign Strategy

This is the strategy for a single social media campaign, it should be directly related to the Social Media Policy, it should run the life of the campaign. Though it needs to be review if the campaign runs more than 3 months. Particularly evaluating how successful a campaign is.

A typical Campaign Strategy is very detailed, with targets and methods of achieving these aims. For example “In conjunction with X, run a competition for young people to upload video to YouTube that informs people about the rights when renting, the prizes will be …”

Social Media Policy

A Social Media Policies should be the rules on engagement. What an agency or employee should and should not do. Before even starting a campaign used in our example, there needs to be policies about User Generate Content, covering such things as user rights, objectionable material etc.

Unfortunately the only Social Media Policy most government departments have is access to all/most social media site is restricted. This is an unproductive policy of the lot, as when the agency needs people with social media expertise where do they find them.

Another reason for even creating some low level Social Media Policies about use and abuse of social media, is to avoid situations like who owns your online networking contacts. A social media policy on contacts would of resolve this questions, quickly. No policies or even worse a No Social Media policy would of left all the contacts in the hands of the ex-employee.

So Many Strategies

You do not need neccarily need four levels strategies, you could get away with a Communications Strategy and either Online Communications Strategy or a Social Media Strategy. Provided each level contains enough details.

However, four levels if strategy is a far more agile approach, allowing for rapid iteration, regular review and quick changes if aims are not being met.

Who writes the Strategy and Policies?

The Communications Strategy, should be written by senior management with communications staff input. The senior management set the goals, the communications staff make sure it is achievable.

The Online Communications Strategy, should be written by the communications staff using the Communications Strategy as a guide. The only input from the IT section should be is the strategy achievable in the time frame. This is all about communications not technology.

Social Media Strategy and Social Media Policies need to be written by people who understand socila media, if you have not got anybody in the agency will these skills then import the talent. There are people out there with the expertise to help you, so hire them to get the basics right first time. It will make all future steps much easier.

It is all Bureaucracy with a capital B

I totally disagree, having a number of short concise strategies makes life easier. A single one page strategy is much easier to see how successful you are at meeting your targets. It makes it much easier to get meaningful KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and are faster to review the strategy and refine it.

Recently, I had a bad experience with Transperth, so I blogged about my experience. I was wondering how Transperth should respond, when I found I was invited to contribute to the Office of eGovernments’s updating of the Guidelines for State Government Websites and the second item on the agenda was Web 2.0, blogs, wikis, RSS, etc.. I realised guidelines are not the complete solutions, There needs to be a encompassing strategy in any agency before guidelines are employed.

The internet is now a major communication channel. In the last two government departments I worked, more people where getting information from their websites than all other communications channels combined.

While the web has given government agencies a inexpensive channel to communicate their message. The internet and particularly social media have also given others an equal inexpensive and effective channel to communicate their alternative message. It is far easier to communicate online, for example, with my bad experience with Transperth, I told 5 people offline and over 100 people online about my experience. Significantly the research (Corporate Social Responsibility Survey 07) shows that people are more than twice as likely to trust a friend than a corporate website.

If you look at results of the Demographic Profiling of Victorian Government Website Visitors 2007 it shows close to 30% of all internet visitors to Victorian Government websites read blogs and 10% contribute to blogs. That is a large number of customers who are capable of providing or listening to alternative views about you. That does not include the over 2.2 million FaceBook members or users of other social networking sites or services.

If the 30% of your website visitors that are blog readers is not enough, social media has an impact well beyond that. Do a Google search on Transperth the results are interesting, the Transperth site is the first result the second is Transperth Dumb Rider System which is critical of Transperth, as are two more of the top ten results. This is because Google appears to be biased towards social media sites, in ranking the results it returns. As a large number of visitors arrive at your site through Google, the appearance of critical web pages highly in search results has damaged your reputation in the eyes of clients even before they arrive at your site.

The issues as I see them with the rise of social media and it’s impact on government agencies to communicate their message are:

• The number of alternative voices and a good proportion of your clients are willing to listen.
• People are more likely to trust other people, particularly ones they have pre-exisiting relationships with than your website or other communication channel.
• Even if you web based clients do not use social media, they results of others using social media can have an effect on your relationship with them.