This is an excellent post and just shows that a few weeks on I’m only just catching up with much of what was said at #ukgc10. I would have loved to attend this session as it deals with a big part of what I’m doing in Walsall. But it clashed with Liz’s website session and I learned loads there.

Where to start?

I don’t hold with the idea that you can’t deal with bloggers. You should go where the conversation is. If that’s the letters page of the Express & Star, then go there. If it’s the weekly journalist then go there. If it’s a blog with 500 unique visitors a month then go there. It really makes no odds. I simply don’t hold with the veteran journalist turned press officer position that you can only talk to hacks. And I say that as an NUJ member who worked on papers for 13 years.

We put bloggers on our mailing lists for press releases at their request. Why? To that I answer ‘why not?’. No, they don’t always get cut and pasted in the fashion of an underpaid journalist who is looking for 4 x 20cm pieces in 15 minutes to get a page away. But I don’t really expect that. What it does do is provide the council position before Chinese whispers get carried away.

Michael Grimes’ adapted flow chart for speaking to bloggers (and Tweeters) is excellent and codifies the approach that we have been experimenting with in Walsall. To put that simply, if people are being unreasonable then you can’t move things on. If they are being mis-guided then what’s not to like about giving a steer and a link to helpful information?

I agree entirely with Sharon O’Dea about presumed competence. Where you know something about a subject you can comment. And yes, in your own name identifying where you are from. If it’s something you are unsure of a holding comment and a piece – in clear English – from a relevant offcer can work well. The traditional model of getting a statement and clearing a statement past half a dozen just won’t wash. Social media is just too fast for that. But I’m guessing that we’ve all woken up to that. Right?

You are dead right in saying that press officers too need to adapt. They need to be blog-savvy. They need to know their way around Twitter and Facebook and they need to know what a Flip does too. For a starter.

I like the lecture by the BBC’s Robert Peston which spoke of how a journalist needs to write, as questions, blog, tweet and do a whole load of stuff that their forerunners never had to.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by sarahlay: Blogged: #ukgc10 session on #uksnow & crisis comms online: http://bit.ly/bfGAJW…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by sarahlay: Blogged: The future of journalism session at #ukgc10: http://bit.ly/99G4ey…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by sarahlay: @helenewilliams here is the post on snow (sort of) that I said I’d get round to writing! http://bit.ly/6azyPg…

The response, generally, was one of aggressive disinterest, with people claiming such tools would amount to an ‘organizational autopsy’ and provide unwanted confirmation about the demise of top-down-one-size-fits-all communication. So, in rejecting social network applications, organizations sealed the fate of intranets as yet another top-down, largely one-way channel, consuming resources in excess of their impact in many cases.

The advent of social media–in effect–doesn’t necessarily include mapping, but it allows the relationships behind those maps and connections to be more visible, the best connections most easily engaged, and organizational defense of top-down-one-size-fits-all to be weakened, but not necessarily fully overcome.

Mike Klein–The Intersection, Brussels
http://intersectionblog.wordpress.com

I agree that it would definitely be harder or at least a bigger step for someone outside of comms to get started on this road. I hope in my organisation being a contact point for them would allow confidence in going forward as well as offering advice.

I think your points about sustainability are interesting. It sounds like I’m doing something similar to you although perhaps in a different way. We have a couple of corporate things run by me but everything else we’ve got going is run by people in the service areas. They have my guidance and support (and that of the rest of my team – not just me!) but do the updates etc themselves.

I agree that this is really important if social media is to be used more widely throughout organisation. I like the idea of surgeries